Palmer Luckey has been a California billionaire since he was 21 years old, when he sold his first company, virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR, to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014. His current company, defense tech firm Anduril, is headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, not far from Long Beach, where Luckey grew up. And Anduril is worth far more. It was last valued at $61 billion. While Luckey clearly despises the proposed California billionaire wealth tax, a ballot measure that would tax the net worth of the state's richest residents, he said he's not leaving California over it. 'I think that this tax act, if you can call it a tax, is going to cause a lot of problems. It's causing a lot of people to run who I don't want to be running. It's going to cause companies that I work with to leave the state, which is a problem for me. As of right now, though, I'm not running. I am staying. I think California is something special. I want to fight for California,' Luckey said during an invite-only press conference on Monday....

During Meta's earnings call on Wednesday, the company revealed its board had approved a new class of nonvoting stock, called Class C common stock. The shares give the holder an ownership stake but no vote on company decisions. This class takes effect in January. Meta says it will use the stock for capital raising, employee pay, and acquisitions ' including its expensive push into AI ' while maintaining the current voting structure that favors its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, who controls around 60% of the vote. Now, however, the New York Times has reported there's another reason for the new class: helping Zuckerberg pay for California's proposed 'billionaire tax,' if voters approve it. Because the new shares carry no votes, he could sell some of them to cover the tax without giving up voting control. Proposition 40, which was drafted by Berkeley tax law professors and is being sponsored by California's largest healthcare union (SEIU United Healthcare Workers West), would level a one-time 5% wealth tax on the net worth of several hundred California billionaires who primarily live in the state. Backers say the policy could generate as much as $100 billion over five years, the bulk of which would be used to pay for the state's healthcare needs, with the rest being used for food assistance and education....

Don't go writing the obituary for the U.S. electric vehicle just yet. After sales tanked following the cancellation of tax credits last year, they've been growing for the last three consecutive quarters, according to a new report from Cox Automotive. EVs captured 6.1% of the U.S. market, their best showing since the third quarter of 2025. The data shows that the EV market is 'finding its footing again,' Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive, said in an analysis that accompanied the new report. EV prices have become more competitive, and high gas prices have sparked renewed consumer interest, she added. Toyota, Rivian, and Subaru led the pack. Sales of the Toyota bZ and Lexus RZ about doubled following a refresh that hit dealerships late last year. The updated models adopted Tesla-style charging ports and received larger batteries, more powerful motors, and faster charging times. The recovery in the U.S. mimics what occurred in Germany after the government stopped incentives for EV purchases in November 2023, a year earlier than expected. The following month, sales fell by more than half. But after hitting that low, the market steadily recovered. German EV sales in August, the most recent month for which data is available, were the second highest on record....

If I were dictator of the world and wished to maximize economic efficiency, the answer would be fairly obvious. Impose a tax on activities that create greenhouse gases designed to reflect the marginal cost they create. That is the standard economic solution, due to Pigou, for problems of negative externalities. Since the tax brings in additional revenue, combine it with a corresponding reduction in whatever taxes currently have the largest adverse effects. To begin with, they would not be based on a realistic estimate of the marginal costs; insofar as they would be based on anything, judging by past arguments over Kyoto and similar proposals, it would be a target level of temperature. If the level of taxes needed to hold warming down to the target level turned out to be much higher than the marginal damage done at that level, as it well might be, we would be buying lower temperature at a price higher than it was worth. I offer as further evidence the arguments I have had over the years, especially back when I was posting in climate threads on Facebook, with people certain that global warming would have catastrophic consequences but unable to support that conviction with anything more than handwaving arguments. Judging by casual observation, they are the norm, not the outliers, of their movement....