SAN DIEGO — In the 1980s, there was a famous ad campaign for Doritos starring a young stand-up comic named Jay Leno. The idea was that customers loved the crunchy tortilla chips so much that the supply could run out. The comedian assured us there was no need to worry. "Crunch all you want," Leno said. "We'll make more."

As a native Californian who is fed up with billionaires — many of whom seem to suffer from a social disorder that short-circuits their ability to act like human beings — that ad comes to mind when I think about the so-called California billionaire tax.

Prop. 40 would create a one-time 5% tax on the net worth of the estimated 200 billionaires who currently live in the Golden State.

The tax only applies to those who were California residents on Jan. 1, 2026. Because the initiative wasn't unveiled until November 2025, billionaires only had a matter of weeks to pull up stakes. That meant pulling their kids from schools, shutting down offices, selling homes and doing what people do when they go on the lam.

Some moguls have skedaddled. They yanked their business dealings and transferred their financial holdings to other states.

Google/Alphabet co-founders Larry Page (approx. net worth: $274 billion) and Sergey Brin ($253 billion), along with Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg ($239 billion), have each spent more than $100 million to buy lavish homes in Florida.

Oddly, some of the billionaires who left California have only one foot out the door. They still own massive homes in the state. Much of the exodus could be performative.

Even so, the tax refugees fleeing California bring to mind a lyric from Bruce Springsteen's ballad, "Youngstown." The Boss — a billionaire who lives in New Jersey — sings about abandoned factories in Northeast Ohio, and the fat cats who washed their hands of the town. Springsteen slaps back: "Now, sir, you tell me the world's changed. Once I made you rich enough, rich enough to forget my name."

California helped make its billionaires rich, even if their egos are too big to accept that. There would be no Google/Alphabet if Page and Brin had set up shop not in Silicon Valley but in Sarasota or Syracuse or Sioux City. From their perch in Northern California, they were close to Stanford University and San Francisco. Both provided access to a workforce that was highly educated and extremely skilled.

Ditto for Apple, Netflix, Meta, YouTube, Nvidia, Intel, Oracle, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. I could go on.

No CEO is an island unto himself. They drive to work on public streets, use public utilities like water and electricity, relax in public parks, and may even send their kids to exclusive public schools.

Meanwhile, proponents of Prop. 40 include labor unions and health care workers who say the revenue raised by the one-time tax — which could be as much as $100 billion — will help provide health care to Californians. The stated objective is to alleviate some of the pain inflicted on the state by budget cuts from a billionaire president.

Sure, Robin Hood. My home state is notorious for wasting money on boondoggles like a high-speed rail project that went nowhere. So, even if Sacramento gets its hands on those funds, there is no guarantee they will go where they are supposed to go.

According to the Guardian, tech moguls have spent more than $350 million combined to defeat the measure. They've even put on the ballot two other initiatives — Prop. 41 and Prop. 42 — either of which would override the billionaires' tax if approved.

In the end, I have mixed feelings about Prop. 40.

I don't like the idea of singling out any one group of Californians to pay a special tax created just for them. I also don't believe in class envy or punishing the successful. That's not fair.

But nor do I like the fact that the rich have rigged the tax system to ensure they pay little while reaping enormous profits. Billionaires make out like bandits in a system that taxes income, but not net worth — a system they helped build. That's not fair either.

For me, what tilts the scales is the extortion. The United States doesn't negotiate with terrorists. But California can be blackmailed by billionaires?

Yo, Richie Rich! If you want to leave, go ahead. Good riddance. In fact, I don't remember inviting you here in the first place. Just pay your bill before you go.

This is California, where billionaires are a dime a dozen. They can cry all they want. We'll make more.

To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Scott Graham at Unsplash