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Life, Automated explores how AI and automation are reshaping everyday life through conversations with researchers, practitioners, artists, and other unexpected experts.
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Browse our guide on the best concerts, plays, galleries, and more to see this fall.
<em>Life, Automated</em> explores how AI and automation are reshaping everyday life through conversations with researchers, practitioners, artists, and other unexpected experts.
See TV Programming Manager Emma Casley’s recommendations from this month’s KQED 9, PLUS and Passport schedules.
Watch recordings of recent KQED Live events.
Support KQED by using your donor-advised fund to make a charitable gift.
The San Francisco Democratic Party has voted to oppose a proposed statewide billionaire tax, marking a rare divergence from the California Democratic Party, which endorsed the November ballot measure.
Proposition 40 has emerged as a lightning rod among Democrats, with the state party narrowly voting to endorse it while prominent moderate Democrats, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, have come out against it.
Wednesday’s vote came shortly after the majority-moderate San Francisco Democratic Party changed its bylaws earlier this summer to allow the local party to go against the state Democratic Party’s endorsements.
Supporters have said Proposition 40 would provide a much-needed injection of cash to California’s healthcare system at a time when federal cuts to Medicare have impacted residents across the state and city of San Francisco.
But opponents say it’s a misguided effort to tax the wealthy and could result in billionaires fleeing to other states.
“Passing a billionaire tax in California is not a long-term viable solution to providing affordable healthcare,” member Lanier Coles said. “We need federal tax reform to address the growing inequities and concentration of wealth.”
One member in the audience fired back: “That’s why you lost to Trump twice.”
The 17-4 vote fell along moderate-progressive lines. The measure would create a one-time 5% tax on Californians with a net worth that exceeds $1 billion who lived in the state as of Jan. 1, 2026. The tax could generate about $100 billion and would be paid by roughly 200 billionaires, according to the campaign.
The measure has garnered strong support from likely Democratic voters in California, according to a recent UC Berkeley poll.
But the state’s Democratic leaders are divided on the measure. In addition to the local and state Democratic Party split, Newsom and former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the Democratic frontrunner for governor, have both opposed Proposition 40.
Opponents of the measure say the one-time tax would not produce the long-term funding needed to backfill healthcare cuts from President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Groups opposing Proposition 40 include Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and the California Teachers Association.
California healthcare unions back the state billionaire tax and have received the support of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, who represents parts of Silicon Valley.
“Working families who are barely holding on here in San Francisco and across the state are paying their taxes,” San Francisco Democratic Party member Peter Gallotta said. “Billionaires making ungodly sums of money with more than they can spend in their lifetimes can afford to contribute more.”
Progressive members slammed their moderate colleagues for playing defense for billionaires, including powerful tech donors who have helped elect members of the local Democratic Party.
A no vote on Proposition 40 “would reinforce the public perception that our local Democratic Party is more responsive to the billionaire interest who spent heavily to elect the current majority than healthcare workers and working families,” former Supervisor Gordon Mar said. “The federal healthcare cuts facing California are not minor … Prop. 40 is the only proposal before voters and on the table more generally that approaches the scale of this crisis.”
San Francisco Democratic Party members Emma Hare and Eric Kingsbury put forward a resolution calling for a national wealth tax, which Newsom has also proposed.
“American government increasingly answers to an oligarchy of a few hundred households rather than to the more than three hundred million Americans it exists to serve,” reads the resolution, co-sponsored by Supervisor Matt Dorsey and party member Joe Sangirardi.
“If wealthy people know how to do anything really well, it’s to get through loopholes, and I think this measure has a lot of loopholes,” Hare said. “I think we can do better.”
