I edited it by moving sentences around.
The Google founders’ shrinking connections to California underscore the impact of a potential ballot measure that would affect the state’s wealthiest residents. Proposed by a health care union, the measure calls for Californians worth more than $1 billion to pay a one-time tax that would be equivalent of 5 percent of their assets.
The ballot initiative, which was proposed by the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West to offset federal budget cuts that will affect California’s health care system. If the measure gains enough signatures to reach the state ballot in November and wins approval, it would retroactively apply to anyone who lived in the state as of Jan. 1 and they would have five years to pay it.
Their combined net worths total more than $518 billion. Gov. Gavin Newsom has called the measure bad policy, arguing that it will lead billionaires to simply move to tax-friendlier states.
Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia and one of California’s wealthiest men, was among the few billionaires who publicly said they accepted the wealth tax. “We chose to live in Silicon Valley and whatever taxes they would like to apply, so be it,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Television this week, adding that he was “perfectly fine” with it. An Nvidia spokesman declined to comment.