NVIDIA is now worth $4 trillion. Is it reasonable to assume that $1.5 trillion of that is unrealized capital gains for people who live in California (investors, employees, etc.; Jensen Huang alone owns 3.5 percent of the company)? If so, that’s 1.5e12*13.3% = $200 billion in potential capital gains tax to be collected by California. California’s entire annual state budget is only about $322 billion. So, if the above assumptions are correct, collecting taxes from California residents who own NVIDIA could pay for at least 6 months of whatever government programs Gavin Newsom and friends can dream up and, therefore, NVIDIA will do more to make progressive Democrats look good than any company in history.
(Of course, a handful of people might move away from California before selling their appreciated shares, but that shouldn’t have a huge effect on the aggregate potential for taxation.)
How about for the Feds? Including the Obamacare NITT rake of 3.8 percent, there is a potential harvest of 23.8 percent for the federal government of however much isn’t owned by foreigners (18 percent of the overall market). If substantially all of the $4 trillion is unrealized capital gains that could be about $780 billion for the federal government, enough to pay off a princely 2% of U.S. debt (just need another 50 NVIDIAs and we can have the entire National Debt squared away).
CNBC:
A wealth tax would wipe out all index funds, pensions, & the stonk market. It would all go back to bailing out the government pensions.
California lays claim to gains on RSUs earned in the state, even after you move out of state.
Record high prices, historically low trading volumes. Bubblicious.
Business model is entirely based on trade secrets, copyrights and patents. They manufacture nothing. Nvidia is riding the AI bubble. AI lays bare the absurdity of the new notion of “intellectual property” that has corrupted the institutionalized monopolies of copyright and patents. In the meanwhile, go ahead and kick yourselves for not buying in April.