Professor and Billionaire Tax Co-Drafter Shanske Appears in N.Y. Times, New Yorker, Daily Journal

Professor Darien Shanske, an architect of California’s Proposition 40 (Billionaire Tax Act), spoke to the Sacramento Bee, co-wrote a commentary in the Daily Journal and was mentioned in the New Yorker and New York Times Magazine as media coverage of the hotly contested proposal ramps up in anticipation of the Nov. 3 election.

In an Oct. 12 Bee piece headlined “Who designed Prop. 40? Meet the academics behind California’s billionaire tax brawl,” Shanske called the proposed tax, aimed at offsetting federal budget cuts to health care, "very efficient."

“It’s way more efficient than taking millions (in) health insurance away from millions of people," Shanske said. "As it also happens, it’s morally a slam dunk because you’re asking the people who have the most to help provide the most basic human services to their fellow citizens.”

An Oct. 4 New Yorker story headlined “The Battle to Pass a Billionaire Tax” and an Oct. 14 New York Times story headlined “How California’s Ultrarich Are Trying to Stop the World’s First Billionaire Tax” also mentioned Shanske’s role in drafting Proposition 40.

The initiative has faced strong opposition from Google co-founder Sergey Brin and other billionaires who formed a coalition called Building a Better California and created Propositions 41 and 42, initiatives designed to block Proposition 40.  

Shanske and University of Missouri School of Law Professor and Proposition 40 co-drafter David Gamage wrote a joint Sept. 28 Daily Journal op-ed headlined “The billionaire tax is good policy and good law” and have written an explainer of the proposition and a response to common objections.

Darien Shanske is a Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of Law at UC Davis. His academic interests include taxation, particularly state and local taxation, local government law, public finance, and political theory, particularly jurisprudence.