California’s tech oligarchs are portraying themselves as victims, as the left clamors to tax their wealth away.

Perhaps they should take some responsibility.

Once widely admired as feisty disrupters, these super-rich moguls now define the establishment in California, a state with more billionaires than any other.

And it is an establishment under threat.

The tech oligarchs used to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the state. But now, as they focus on AI as “the next big thing”, big players like Meta and Google have aggressively cut payrolls while announcing big profits.

Overall, the state’s tech workforce, under pressure everywhere, is shrinking faster than anywhere in the country, notes economist Gad Levanon. Since 2022, the state’s share of high-tech jobs has dropped from 19 to 16 percent.

So even as the oligarchs get ever richer, the California public gets the short end of the stick.

Newsom crows about California as “an economic powerhouse,”  but residents suffer the country’s   highest cost-of-living adjusted poverty rate, the highest functional illiteracy, and the worst housing unaffordability in the continental U.S. 

The state that has the nation’s most billionaires now ranks as the single worst state in terms of creating jobs that pay above average. 

In this environment, people may be less than thrilled to observe the billionaires’ lavish lifestyles — huge yachts, numerous mansions, and private jets — even as they embrace the “green” and progressive views that are de rigeur among their class.

But the oligarchs’ most damning error has been to fund the same groups and politicians that now are calling for their collective scalps.

Although the progressive press bleats over the oligarchs’ Trumpian ties, notably those of Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Elon Musk, most of the “tech bros” have backed progressive Democrats for a generation. 

Look at the donations by Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, and they all tell the same story: donations to progressive Democrats are markedly greater than those to Republicans.  

In 2024 two of five Kamala Harris’ top five corporate contributors, including employees, were Alphabet (Google) and Apple, with the University of California also near the top. 

Some of these contributions have gone to the very people now calling for their oligarchs’ collective scalps.

Take Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna, a powerful advocate for the proposed 5% wealth tax, whose campaign coffers include money from places like Google, whose co-founder Sergei Brin has become a conservative poster boy against the tax.

But it’s not just campaign contributions. Tech oligarchs and their foundations have been major contributors to front roups like the Tides Foundation, a major backer of leftist causes. They also, through the Silicon Valley Community Fund, chipped in big bucks to Black Lives Matter, a group whose Marxist orientation is no secret. 

When they control media directly, they tend to tell a basically progressive story. Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post has been so left oriented as to make the New York Times seem like Fox News.

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Google co-founder Sergei Brin may wow conservatives with his critique of the wealth tax, and sponsor initiatives to short circuit new levies, but his company has been a consistent supporter, and on-line promotor, of the progressive program for almost a generation.   

Amazon, too has been known to try restricting contributions of their customers to even well-established conservative groups. They have also delisted books that offended their left-of-center prejudices. 

The oligarchs have also long financed the left-wing nonprofits that proliferate in California and elsewhere. 

The green non-profits have been particularly damaging. Tech oligarchs have been heavy contributors to what analyst Robert Bryce has labeled “the anti-industry industry.”   

For years, tech elites did not trouble themselves about high energy prices associated with “green” energy. But now the oligarchs need cheap and reliable electricity to power AI.

Good luck with that.

California progressives, and their counterparts elsewhere,  increasingly oppose energy-intensive data centers and seek to regulate AI.

The recent attacks on Sam Altman’s San Francisco manse revealed a similar anti-corporate bias that has become ever more imbedded into the state’s political culture.

So why have these powerful people backed those who hate them? Some of it may reflect the fact that being located in a one-party state means genuflecting to the left. 

But it also results from a basic naivete and love of virtue-signaling, common to the tech elite. They may know their bits and bytes, but not the messy realities of political life. 

“They may be smart about technology,” notes long-time political consultant Arnold Steinberg, “but they are stupid about politics.”

To be sure, they could live with an opportunist like Gavin Newsom, at least until now. They could place their data centers in unfashionable “red” states, and move employees to more business-friendly locales, even as they enjoyed the qualitative advantages of living in California. 

But now their past actions are catching up to them and their cash hoards.

Couldn’t happen to more deserving gaggle. 

Joel Kotkin is the presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute of the University of Texas at Austin.