Vox

If you listen to venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz explain why they’re supporting Donald Trump, between the discussions of crypto and China and AI, you’ll detect a much more conventional reason for rich people to vote Republican: They’re worried about Democrats raising their taxes.

Specifically, Andreessen and Horowitz railed against President Joe Biden’s proposed Billionaires Minimum Income Tax, which they claimed would destroy the startup ecosystem in Silicon Valley. They aren’t alone: Finance and tech commentators have been furious since Biden first unveiled the plan in 2022.

“Billionaires oppose tax increase” has a certain “dog bites man” quality to it as a story. But this particular iteration viscerally annoys me. For one thing, Andreessen and Horowitz are complaining about a tax that not only is dead on arrival in Congress but one that the Supreme Court, just a couple weeks ago, implied would be unconstitutional.