• The families of celebrities like Anderson Cooper and King Princess have been rich for generations.
• Some families, like the Gyllenhaals, became wealthy through the entertainment industry.
• Others, like the Delevingnes, have connections to royals.

Many celebrities have built their wealth from the ground up, but some were born into luxury.

Among these wealthy families are celebrities like Anderson Cooper, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Nick Kroll, who have had access to vast wealth and opportunities from an early age.

These stars were set up for success before stepping into the spotlight, which, in some cases, shaped their path to fame and fortune.

Here are 15 celebrities who were raised in wealthy families before they became famous.

1. Nick Kroll

Kroll is an actor, comedian, writer, and producer known for Comedy Central's "The Kroll Show" and for creating and starring in Netflix's "Big Mouth" and "Human Resources," among other hit shows, but he's not the only success story in his family. 

His father, Jules Kroll, founded a corporate investigation company, Kroll Inc., which he sold in 2004 for almost $2 billion, Forbes reported in 2014.

Nick Kroll grew up in Westchester County, New York. In 2009, he told The New Yorker that he and his siblings had a relatively normal childhood. He also said that although he was grateful that his father made time for him despite his job, he felt embarrassed when Jules would arrive at his Little League games in a limousine.

2. Anderson Cooper

Journalist and commentator Anderson Cooper is a direct descendant of the Vanderbilts.

His great-great-great-grandfather, Cornelius Vanderbilt, built his fortune primarily through investing in steamships and railroads.

"He had more money than the US Treasury," Cooper told CBS in 2021.

Cooper's mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, grew up an American socialite because of her family's status. She later became an artist, actor, designer, and author. She died in 2019.

His father, Wyatt Emory Cooper, was Vanderbilt's fourth husband. Before he died at the age of 50, he worked as an author and an actor.

3. Gwyneth Paltrow

Gwyneth Paltrow comes from a family of entertainment-industry natives. She spent her childhood at prestigious private schools in Los Angeles and New York City before dropping out of college to act.

Bruce Paltrow, her father, was a nine-time Emmy-nominated director and producer. His most notable titles include "St. Elsewhere" and "White Shadow." Meanwhile, her mother is Emmy- and Tony-winning actor Blythe Danner of "Meet the Parents," "Meet the Fockers," and "The Last Kiss."

Despite her parents' success, Paltrow refers to herself as "completely self-made." 

"People think, 'She's just a rich kid.' Until I was 18, I was. Then I was broke. I've never taken a dime off my parents. I'm completely self-made," she told Glamour in 2016.

4. Cara Delevingne

Supermodel and actor Cara Delevingne is the daughter of Charles Delevingne, a successful real-estate developer, and Pandora Delevingne, a socialite. Her paternal grandmother was a socialite, and her paternal grandfather was a notable lawyer and politician.

But that's not where it ends. According to Vogue, Cara's maternal grandfather, Sir Jocelyn Stevens, owned Queen magazine, which is now Harper's Bazaar. Further, her maternal grandmother, Janie Sheffield, was a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, the sister of Queen Elizabeth II.

5. Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the great-great-granddaughter of Léopold Louis-Dreyfus, who founded the Louis Dreyfus Company, a merchant firm that deals primarily with agriculture, food, and shipping.

Her father, Gerard Louis-Dreyfus, eventually became chairman of the company. In 2006, about 10 years before his death, Forbes estimated his net worth at $3.4 billion and ranked him the 200th-richest billionaire in the world.

In 2018, the "Seinfeld" star told The New Yorker that her father's wealth is overestimated by the press and that she finds the term "billionaire heiress" to be "heinous."

6. Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal

Their father, Stephen Gyllenhaal, is an Emmy-winning director who has worked on films such as "Paris Trout," "Homegrown," and "A Dangerous Woman." Their mother, Naomi Foner Gyllenhaal, is an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning screenwriter whose most notable film is "Running On Empty."

The Gyllenhaal siblings, Maggie and Jake, have had prolific careers since their costarring breakout roles in "Donnie Darko" in 2001.

In 2010, Jake told The Guardian, "My mother would say that there are people who have so much money who don't give any of it away, and there are other people who have much less money, who give more than the richest people in the world. It should all be about giving something back."

 

7. King Princess

Pop artist King Princess — or Mikaela Mullaney Straus — is the great-great-grandchild of Isidor and Ida Straus.

Before the couple fell victim to the Titanic's sinking, Isidor served in the United States Congress and co-owned Macy's with his brother. Isidor and Ida Straus have been depicted in multiple movies and have a memorial garden in New York City.

In 2019, King Princess told Rolling Stone that she didn't inherit their money.

"They were very rich and Jewish, [but] I didn't inherit any of this money. It was a little frustrating, but whatever," she said.

The pop star's father, Oliver Straus, is also successful. He owns a recording studio in Brooklyn called Mission Sound, where world-famous bands like the Arctic Monkeys have recorded music.

8. Armie Hammer

Armand Hammer, Armie Hammer's great-grandfather, was an oil tycoon who managed Occidental Petroleum Corporation. In 1986, Forbes estimated Armand Hammer's net worth to be $200 million.

However, Armand Hammer's biographer, Neil Lyndon, referred to him as "the most satanic man of the second half of the 20th Century" and the "embodiment of sin [and] ruthless ego" in a 2022 docuseries, "House of Hammer."

Armie Hammer has also been mired in controversy. In 2021, multiple women accused him of sexual and emotional abuse. At the time, Armie said any interactions with his partners were consensual and denied the allegations. The Los Angeles Police Department investigated a claim of sexual assault, but he was not charged. In 2023, he told Air Mail he'd been emotionally abusive to his accusers. 

9. Lana Del Rey

Lana Del Rey, whose given name is Lizzy Grant, is the daughter of Rob Grant, the founder of WebMediaProperties.com. According to Who API, Grant's company operated 1,600 websites and owned about 800 domain names as of 2012.

A 2012 article in The Guardian by Paul Harris discusses how Lana Del Rey hid her real identity as she rose to stardom.

"People were suspicious of the way Grant's failed album, and all her social media websites appeared to have been scrubbed from the internet just before Del Rey appeared," Harris wrote. 

The same article also claims that her father backed her career when she was just starting out.

10. Nicola Peltz Beckham

Actor Nicola Peltz Beckham, who has appeared in TV shows like "Bates Motel" and "Welcome to Chippendales" and movies including "Transformers: Age of Extinction," married Brooklyn Beckham — son of Victoria and David Beckham — in 2022. But even before her wedding day, she was part of a high-profile family known for its influence in business and social circles.

She was born in 1995 to parents Claudia Heffner and Nelson Peltz in Westchester, New York — her father is the founder of the investment firm Trian Fund Management and has an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion according to Forbes.

In a 2024 interview with WWD, Peltz Beckham acknowledged that she didn't have an upbringing like that of her character in "Lola," in which she starred as a stripper.

"I wanted to write a story from a person's perspective and another point of view that was not my personal view and not my upbringing. I am an actress and my dream is to get to look at the world from different perspectives," she said.

11. Stella Lefty

Singer Stella Lefty is the daughter of Eric Lefkofsky, CEO of Tempus AI and founder of Groupon. In Forbes' 2026 ranking of the 400 wealthiest Americans, Lefkofsky ranked 261st with an estimated net worth of $6.5 billion.

Business Insider's Callie Alhgrim reported a lot of negative online discourse about Lefty regarding her fame in relation to her father.

"Obviously, there's going to be this conversation around it, which I totally understand," Lefty told Vanity Fair in an interview published in August this year.

12. Jessica Pegula

Tennis player Jessica Pegula is the daughter of Terry and Kim Pegula, who own the Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres. Terry Pegula founded the oil and gas company East Resources, which he sold the majority of for $4.7 billion in 2010, according to Forbes.

Terry Pegula ranked 120th in Forbes' 2026 list of the 400 wealthiest Americans.

Jessica Pegula said in an episode of Netflix's "Break Point" that "some people get this image that it's really easy for me because my dad is very wealthy, but that didn't happen till I was 17 or 18," adding that "they gave me a great childhood and instilled a lot of work ethic in me."

13. Kate and Rooney Mara

Actors Kate and Rooney Mara are the daughters of Chris Mara and Kathleen Rooney, who come from NFL royalty.

Chris Mara's grandfather founded the New York Giants, and Rooney's grandfather founded the Pittsburgh Steelers, according to People.

In 2015, Forbes estimated the Rooney family's net worth at $1.2 billion.

14. Emma Navarro

Tennis player Emma Navarro is the daughter of billionaire businessman Ben Navarro.

He cofounded Sherman Financial Group and has an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion, according to the Forbes 2026 World Billionaires list.

In a 2021 interview with Charleston Magazine, Emma Navarro said: "My dad has always been in my corner, getting me the coaching and training, whatever I needed."

15. Gracie Abrams

Singer Gracie Abrams is the daughter of Katie McGrath and J.J. Abrams.

J.J. Abrams is a filmmaker behind shows like "Lost" and major films, including some in the "Star Wars" series. He is the co-CEO of Bad Robot Productions, which Katie McGrath also leads.

"I had a safety net, and that allowed me the ability to experiment and to concentrate, and I had the gift of time to dedicate to doing this thing I loved," Abrams said in an episode of The New York Times' Popcast.

No matter what happens in Tuesday's elections, support for wealth taxes keeps growing. Its justification is based on the idea that the very rich owe all of us something, and taxing their fortunes is collecting on that debt. We're told their success fuels inequality and that it's selfish of them to keep so much, especially if they don't proclaim that they want to do more for society.

Former International Monetary Fund chief economist Olivier Blanchard of France recently gave this narrative a clear voice. Writing on X, he wondered why California's wealthiest are spending so heavily to defeat Proposition 40, the supposed one-time 5 percent tax on the net worth of billionaires. Blanchard added that billionaires "typically have not indicated that they are building their wealth to eventually make the world a better place."

The entire notion misunderstands how fortunes are made. In a market economy, people don't build great wealth first and redeem it later through good works. They build it by making the world better first.

When I buy an $800 smartphone, it's because I value the phone more than whatever else I would have bought with the money. The seller values my $800 more than they do the phone. We both walk away richer by our own measure. Neither owes the other anything more.

Repeat this exchange a few hundred million times, and vast fortunes take shape for the people who create amazing technology so abundantly and affordably that we take it for granted. More importantly, though, people hand over every cent of it voluntarily.

As my colleague Arnold Kling aptly explained over the weekend, "Profits are earned within a positive-sum game for society. Profits induce firms to serve consumers and to innovate." The drive for wealth taxes relies on "the opposite point of view. It regards profits as something that businesses take from the rest of us, as if we can take innovation and efficiency for granted. [It] acts as if we are in a zero-sum environment in which one person's gain is necessarily another person's loss."

And, yes, the gains are divided more fairly than people think. Nobel laureate and Yale University economist William Nordhaus estimated that innovators in the U.S. business sector personally captured, on average, a mere 2.2 percent of the social surplus they created between 1948 and 2001. The other 97.8 percent went to everyone else in the form of lower prices, higher wages, better products and goods, and services that didn't previously exist.

In short, the world has already been compensated, many times over.

Those urging billionaires to acquiesce also err by blithely assuming that the state that grabs the money will use it well enough to "make the world a better place." The burden of proof is on them. California's government already spends roughly $350 billion a year. What will the extra few billion accomplish that the rest hasn't?

"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys," as journalist and satirist P.J. O'Rourke used to say. Maybe California's billionaires aren't eager to fund a Merced-to-Bakersfield rail line that the state prices around $35 billion and its inspector general puts closer to $48 billion. Perhaps they're hesitant to backfill pension funds like the California Public Employees' Retirement System, whose staff concedes is unlikely to hit an assumed 6.8 percent return without leaning on private equity.

Prop 40's revenue is earmarked for health care, but money is fungible. In the end, California has one budget. Every earmarked dollar frees another for something else. Some billionaires might simply have concluded that their philanthropy does more good elsewhere, or that their dollars are more beneficial when invested in private enterprises.

The tax also doubles down on California's worst habit: spend, spend, spend, and then tax, tax, tax. The money is never enough to cover all the spending. A one-time levy spent over five years doesn't fix that. It funds new commitments with temporary money. Some will want to make the tax permanent, which its intellectual architects clearly prefer and may have made possible. And yet that still won't be enough.

That's the commitment problem that Blanchard admits California can't solve. Billionaires are wise to distrust the "one-time" promise.

What worries me most is the moral framework. When a society convinces itself that the people making life better and less costly are the problem, we eventually stop getting those people.

Contrary to Blanchard's naive belief, billionaires aren't lacking in public spirit. Even if we ignore their often massive charitable giving, we can't forget that the market already collected their contribution and handed a large share of it to the rest of us. We should stop demanding they apologize for the other two cents.

COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM

The post Billionaires Have Already Paid Us Back. So Why Does California Want More? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

• Elon Musk says it's "pointless" to save for the long term, as he expects "super intelligent abundance."
• The Tesla and SpaceX CEO was replying to an X user who said they'd stopped stressing about spending.
• Musk previously said that if he's right about the future, "saving for retirement will be irrelevant."

Elon Musk says it's not worth saving for the long term, as nest eggs won't matter.

"Saving money for the distant future is pointless with the advent of super intelligent abundance," Musk said in an X post on Thursday, doubling down on one of his most polarizing predictions.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO was replying to a user who said they weren't stressing over their "questionable financial decisions" because a future of abundance meant "most of it won't matter in a few years anyway."

The world's richest person — who has a nearly $1 trillion net worth — has previously advised against saving for decades to come.

"Don't worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years," Musk said during a podcast episode released in January. "It won't matter."

"If any of the things that we've said are true, saving for retirement will be irrelevant," he added.

Musk said at the time that he expects progress in AI, energy, and robotics to supercharge productivity, resulting in plentiful resources so that "anyone can have whatever stuff they want."

In that world, he continued, everyone would have access to "better medical care than anyone has today," there would be "no scarcity of goods and services," and "you can learn anything you want about anything for free."

Business Insider spoke to seven personal finance and AI experts about those comments, and they all agreed people should keep saving for retirement given the risk that Musk may be wrong.

Musk laid out an even more utopian vision on a recent podcast, predicting that advances in robotics and space travel would lead to a multiplanetary economy, at which point "money becomes irrelevant" and "conventional currency will not matter."

Several other tech leaders have predicted AI and other technologies will transform the way we live.

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates said on a recent podcast episode that AI will lead to "true abundance" with robots able to "build houses, grow food, do surgery."

But he also warned the next two decades will be "as tumultuous a period as there's been in human history," as technological advances will mean "none of the things that human labor provides to the economy will be necessary for most goods and services."

Similarly, Musk has predicted a "bumpy" transition to a brighter future. He's suggested government checks for all as the best solution to AI-fueled job destruction.

Self-described "progressive capitalist" Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) defended taxing California billionaires via Proposition 40 by saying, "You didn't build this money yourself." 

The post Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna Defends ‘Wealth Tax’ on California Billionaires: ‘You Didn’t Build This Money Yourself’ appeared first on Breitbart.

This week, editors Peter Suderman, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch are joined by Associate Editor Liz Wolfe to discuss California's proposed 5 percent wealth tax on billionaires, which a Hoover Institution study suggests could ultimately cost the state $39 billion in lost revenue. With wealthy residents already leaving California, the panel examines whether the measure will survive next week's vote, why Gov. Gavin Newsom opposes it, and how public sector unions have helped fuel the state's spending problems.

The panelists then look to France, where mounting unrest and economic stagnation raise questions about the long-term consequences of high taxes, expansive welfare programs, and pension obligations that increasingly burden younger generations. Next, they discuss Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado returning home after 10 months in exile. Then, with the midterm elections next week, the editors examine whether Trump's tariffs, war with Iran, and mounting allegations of corruption will deliver Democrats control of Congress. Finally, a listener asks whether today's democratic socialist movement will ultimately be remembered like the libertarian and Tea Party movements of the early 2010s.

0:00—California's wealth tax proposal

13:02—Will France protests influence America?

22:50—Corina Machado returns to Venezuela.

31:19—Listener question on the DSA

44:40—2026 Midterm elections preview

58:34—Weekly cultural recommendations

Upcoming Reason Events

Reason Versus - Authoritarianism Is a Right-Wing Problem, November 10

Mentioned in the Podcast:

"Will the Wealth Tax Fail?" by Liz Wolfe
"France Is a Warning to California's Tax-the-Rich Crowd," by Veronique de Rugy
"California's 'Wealth Tax' Could Cost the State $39 Billion," by Eric Boehm
"Report: California's Proposed 'Billionaire Tax' Is Based on Bad Research," by J.D. Tuccille
"A Wealth Tax Built on Billionaires Who Aren't Really Billionaires," by Veronique de Rugy
"New Book Says Jared Kushner Funneled Money to Middle East Mercenaries. Kushner Denies It." by Matthew Petti
"Trump's Tariffs Are Politically Toxic," by Eric Boehm
"The Democrats' Socialist Moment," by Matt Welch
"Family Separation Drama Fjord Is a Haunting Depiction of Unchecked State Power," by Peter Suderman

The post California's Wealth Tax Could Cost the State $39 Billion appeared first on Reason Magazine.

• Bill Gates says AI will bring about an age of abundance in 20 years, but it'll be a rocky road.
• He predicted robots will displace human workers and "build houses, grow food, do surgery."
• Some jobs might be reserved for people, and work limits could preserve employment, Gates said.

Bill Gates says AI will create "true abundance," but the next two decades before it arrives will be "as tumultuous a period as there's been in human history."

"My big concern is this 20-year transition period, where they'll have winners and losers and a lot of disruption," the Microsoft cofounder and billionaire philanthropist said on the latest episode of the "Decoder" podcast.

Gates echoed widespread concerns about white-collar jobs, saying that telesales, telesupport, and accounting will disappear as AI will be able to do those "radically cheaper, radically faster, and even more accurately." As for blue-collar jobs, humanoid robots will take over those, he said.

"If we don't choose to massively slow down or stop, then we will have robots that can build houses, grow food, do surgery," Gates said. "And none of the things that human labor provides to the economy will be necessary for most goods and services."

He also underscored how jarring it will be for someone like him, whose vast resources have allowed him to lead the charge toward eliminating malaria and tackling other humanitarian crises.

"And when the AI says to me, 'No, I'm better than you, you go play pickleball and I'll get back to you, I'm gonna take care of this' — I mean, it's kind of humorous, but it's not humorous," he said.

Gates shared his long-held view that work is vital to giving people a sense of purpose, a way to earn an income, a reason to show up every day, an avenue to build relationships with colleagues, and a path to build things and solve problems.

He suggested that certain activities such as art, sports, cooking, and childcare could one day be reserved for humans, "even though the AI could do those things better."

Gates also highlighted that measures such as early retirement and caps on working hours could help maintain some level of human employment.

He envisioned some people saying, "Let's be like the Amish and let's only use AI for certain things," so they won't have to give up "helping each other or coming up with unique ideas."

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon have both proposed a shorter workweek as a less painful alternative to AI-driven unemployment.

Gates is one of several tech leaders to warn of job disruption on the road to an age of abundance.

Elon Musk has predicted a "bumpy" transition and proposed government checks for all as the best solution to AI-driven job losses. He's said that technology will drive production costs so low that everyone can have "whatever stuff they want," work will become "optional," and it's not worth saving for retirement in 10 or 20 years as money won't matter.

Similarly, Anthropic's Dario Amodei has said that AI promises to "raise the quality of life for everyone," but the "short-term shock will be unprecedented in size."

However, OpenAI's Sam Altman said in May that AI hasn't eliminated as many white-collar jobs as he expected, and he no longer anticipates a "jobs apocalypse."

Despite widespread worry about AI taking corporate jobs, and high-profile layoffs at major companies such as Amazon and Meta, national unemployment hasn't increased materially during the AI boom.

• Mark Cuban compared swarms of AI agents to cockroaches finding ways into systems.
• Cuban said agents can launch brute-force attacks at scale without inventing new hacks.
• Cuban said defenders can also "spray" their systems with AI, which makes defenses more accessible.

Mark Cuban has pest-control tips for the AI age.

Speaking at a Reuters NEXT Newsmaker event on Friday, the entrepreneur and billionaire investor compared the threat posed by swarms of AI agents to cockroaches finding their way into a freshly treated house.

"When I go talk to cybersecurity experts, I ask them all the time. I'm like, when we hear about these hacks and breakthroughs and, you know, different problems, do these AIs invent something new?" Cuban said.

"No, they didn't invent something new," Cuban added. "But they're able to do something in mass volume that it's all brute force hacks."

Cuban compared the challenge to keeping cockroaches out of a house.

"It's like the cockroach theory, where if somebody can create enough agents, it'll find a way to get in, and then it just exploits that. But the good news is you can spray your systems with just as much AI, and I think there's gonna be more effort from the good guys trying to stop the bad guys," Cuban said. "I'm not a doomer at all."

The AI industry is already creating its own team of exterminators to contain risks.

OpenAI safety roles on LinkedIn jumped by 91% over the past year, spanning work such as system testing, technical research, and governance.

The risks have also surfaced during testing. Anthropic said that three Claude models accessed organizations’ live systems without permission after a third-party testing environment was misconfigured. The company subsequently introduced real-time classifiers to detect and block attempts to escape testing environments.

Cuban said AI could make malicious activity more accessible, but the same techniques could also strengthen defenses.

"There will be scenarios where bad stuff happens, but we've always had hacks," said Cuban. "And if it's brute force on that side with the bad guys, you can also use brute force with the good guys."

In his book The Nerd Reich, journalist Gil Durán examines how Silicon Valley’s wealthiest investors are extending their influence over American politics, democratic institutions and national sovereignty. His warnings come amid unprecedented political spending by technology billionaires and growing concern over private control of strategic infrastructure.

Elon Musk has contributed more than $276 million since July to Republican political causes ahead of the United States midterm elections on 3 November. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said decisions over Ukraine’s access to SpaceX satellite communications rest with the company rather than the White House. Both developments demonstrate how private technological and financial resources can influence decisions traditionally associated with government.

For journalist Gil Durán, author of The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy, published by Avid Reader Press in August 2026, the issue extends beyond campaign donations. In a recent interview, he argued that a group of Silicon Valley investors is using its financial influence and control of technology to challenge the authority of elected governments.

“We’re at a decisive stage of that race,” Durán said when asked about the contest between technology and democracy described by venture capitalist Peter Thiel. His argument is that wealth alone no longer satisfies some of the industry’s most influential figures; they also want a direct role in determining how societies are governed.

The ideological origins of billionaire power

Durán places Thiel at the centre of this movement. In a 2009 essay, The Education of a Libertarian, the PayPal co-founder wrote that he no longer believed freedom and democracy were compatible. He argued that technological innovation could allow individuals to escape the constraints of conventional politics.

Thiel subsequently clarified that he was not advocating disenfranchisement. His stated position was that majority rule often frustrated individual liberty. Durán, however, interprets the essay and Thiel’s subsequent political investments as evidence of a sustained interest in diminishing democratic constraints on private power.

The book also examines The Sovereign Individual, a 1997 work by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg that anticipated how digital currencies and technological change might weaken the power of nation states. Durán sees its influence in later arguments for privately organised alternatives to traditional government.

One example is The Network State, developed by entrepreneur Balaji Srinivasan. It proposes that online communities could acquire territory and eventually obtain diplomatic recognition. Advocates describe a voluntary model of political organisation; Durán regards the prospect of corporate-financed jurisdictions as a challenge to public accountability.

From venture capital to the White House

The relationship between Thiel and Vice-President JD Vance illustrates how venture capital can translate into political influence. Thiel supported Vance’s early investment career and contributed $15 million to a super PAC backing his successful 2022 Senate bid. Durán attributes much of Vance’s political ascent to that support, although voters, party endorsements and Vance’s own campaigning also shaped the result.

Musk’s latest contributions offer a more immediate example. His donations since July include $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund and more than $76 million to America PAC. Such spending is lawful under the rules governing independent political committees, which cannot coordinate their expenditure with candidates.

Durán contends that similar pressures affect Democrats, arguing that wealthy donors can exercise influence across party lines. His criticism therefore concerns the political system’s dependence on private funding as much as any particular administration.

Technology as an instrument of strategic power

The consequences extend beyond elections. Ukraine’s dependence on satellite communications has exposed how a privately owned service can become essential to military operations. Restrictions affecting Starlink-related services have prompted competing accounts from US officials and SpaceX over responsibility for the decision. Rubio’s latest remarks point towards commercial control, while earlier reporting attributed the decision to Washington.

Artificial intelligence raises comparable questions of ownership and oversight. Durán argues that investors promoting transformative AI may also seek regulatory conditions that protect their substantial financial commitments. His prediction of a possible investment bubble remains a judgement, not an established outcome.

In Europe, the debate has immediate regulatory consequences. The EU’s Digital Services Act requires major online platforms to assess risks to elections and civic debate, while enforcement of important provisions of the AI Act began in August 2026. These measures address the influence of companies whose platforms and systems operate across borders.

Durán’s interpretation of Silicon Valley as a coherent anti-democratic movement remains contested. The entrepreneurs he discusses have differing interests, and their political influence does not itself establish a common plan to dismantle democratic government.

Their influence is nevertheless measurable in campaign finances, government contracts and control over infrastructure essential to national security. None of these forms of power requires holding elected office.

A proposed "wealth tax" on California's billionaires could backfire and cost the state tens of billions of dollars in the long run.

If the proposed tax drives wealthier residents out of the state, California could end up losing between $1 billion and $3.5 billion annually in income taxes, according to a working paper published this week. A pair of researchers at Stanford University warn that the state could end up losing an estimated $39 billion because of the consequences of the wealth tax.

"These findings suggest that the Billionaire Tax Act will not fulfill the primary functions for which it was designed," write researchers Benjamin Jaros and Joshua Rauh.

Voters in California will decide next month whether to impose the one-time, 5 percent tax when they vote on Proposition 40. The ballot measure is dividing Democrats—Gov. Gavin Newsom opposes it, while progressive Rep. Ro Khanna (D–Calif.) claims it is the "most important ballot initiative in America and a fight for the soul of our party."

And it's already spurring some billionaires to flee the state—including venture capitalist Peter Thiel and Google co-founder Larry Page. Including those two, the seven billionaires who have publicly said they are leaving the state represent more than $539 billion of the nearly $1.9 trillion aggregate net worth of California's billionaires, the researchers note.

With other departures likely happening more quietly, the new study estimates that the tax will generate about $30 billion, a far cry from the $100 billion that the tax's supporters expect. The "behavioral response" from billionaires in California "has eroded most of the projected tax base," write Jaros and Rauh.

That's still a pretty big pot of revenue. In the long run, however, the state is likely to lose out.

After running 100,000 simulations using different assumptions, the two researchers report that "85 percent of plausible outcomes produce a negative" result in state revenue.

Other recent experiments with special taxes on wealth have backfired in similar ways. In response to a new wealth tax in Washington State, Jeff Bezos relocated to Florida, and iconic Seattle brand Starbucks shifted more of its corporate headquarters to Tennessee. Studies have shown that a "millionaires tax" in Massachusetts contributed to wealth moving out of that state.

Capital is always mobile, despite the best efforts of politicians. And if you were a billionaire living in California, why would you stick around?

Polls show voters are narrowly divided over Proposition 40. A Politico poll published earlier this month showed 46 percent of voters plan to vote for the measure, while 43 percent oppose it. Voters were similarly divided when asked if they expected it to pass or not.

The post California's 'Wealth Tax' Could Cost the State $39 Billion appeared first on Reason Magazine.