Asset Seizure: A One-Act Play

On March 2, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna introduced the “Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act”, a 5% annual wealth tax targeting America’s 938 billionaires. It taxes unrealized gains on illiquid assets, paper wealth that can’t be spent, for an estimated $4.4 trillion over a decade. We already know this experiment failed across Europe. Now they want to run it in the country that actually builds things.

Khanna represents CA-17, home to roughly one-third of the entire U.S. stock market by market cap, is the place he now wants to tax into oblivion. It is where modern value creation in Silicon Valley actually happens: built not out of old money, but out of code, math, engineering, sweat, and the ambition of young founders turning new tech into real companies.

The policy is so absurd we wrote a play about it.

ASSET SEIZURE: A Play in One Act

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

• GARRY TAN, trying to drink coffee
• RO KHANNA, congressman for Silicon Valley and against it
• BERNIE SANDERS, via sugar dispenser
• A BARISTA, collateral damage

Setting: A San Francisco coffee shop. GARRY is on his laptop. RO walks in, spots him, and sits down uninvited.

RO: Garry! Just the billionaire I wanted to see.

GARRY: I’m not a billionaire.

RO: That’s okay. The bill has a provision for people we think might become billionaires. We’re calling it the Pre-Crime Wealth Tax.

GARRY: That’s insane.

RO: Bernie’s idea. He wanted to call it the “Vibes-Based Assessment” but legal said no.

GARRY: Ro, you represent Silicon Valley. Your actual constituents are the people building companies.

RO: And I love them. I just also want to take their money.

GARRY: That’s not love.

RO: It’s love in the congressional sense.

GARRY: That’s the worst kind of love.

RO: Second worst. The worst is when Bernie calls you “brother” and then puts you in a bill.

A BARISTA approaches.

BARISTA: Can I get you guys anything?

RO: I’ll have a flat white. He’s paying. (to Garry) Consider it a micro-wealth-transfer.

GARRY: I’ll have a drip coffee.

RO: See? Already adapting to the post-wealth-tax economy. That’s the resilience I keep telling Bernie about.

GARRY: Let me ask you something. You went to UChicago. You understand economics. You know a wealth tax doesn’t work.

RO: Garry, I also went to Yale Law School. I understand what works and what polls.

GARRY: So you admit…

RO: I admit nothing. That’s the other thing I learned at Yale Law.

GARRY: The California wealth tax would have driven every founder to Miami.

RO: Which is why we went federal. No escape.

GARRY: That’s not a policy argument, that’s a hostage negotiation.

RO: (writing on napkin) “Hostage negotiation…” That’s great framing for the fundraising email. Can I use that?

GARRY: No.

RO: Too late, I’m texting it to my comms team.

GARRY: You raised $15 million from outside your district by demonizing tech founders.

RO: I’m not demonizing anyone. I’m democratizing revenue collection.

GARRY: You literally called us “the Epstein class.”

RO: That was the New York Times. I would never say that.

GARRY: You retweeted it.

RO: Retweets are not endorsements, Garry. I learned that from tech people.

BERNIE SANDERS enters on FaceTime, projected from Ro’s phone propped against the sugar dispenser.

BERNIE: (on speaker, very loud) RO. IS HE AGREEING TO THE TAX.

RO: We’re still in the persuasion phase, Bernie.

BERNIE: THE PERSUASION PHASE IS OVER. WE INTRODUCED THE BILL YESTERDAY.

GARRY: Senator Sanders, do you know what unrealized gains are?

BERNIE: I DON’T CARE WHAT THEY ARE. IF A BILLIONAIRE HAS THEM, WE TAX THEM.

GARRY: What if they’re losses?

BERNIE: (long pause) THEN THEY SHOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER AT CAPITALISM.

RO: Look, Garry. Let’s find common ground. You want to build housing. I want to build housing.

GARRY: Great.

RO: We just disagree on whether the people who build the housing should be allowed to keep any money afterward.

GARRY: That’s not common ground. That’s a canyon with a bridge you set on fire.

RO: A bipartisan bridge. Bernie and I are building a new one. Funded by the wealth tax.

GARRY: You know what’s going to happen? Founders will incorporate in Ireland. They’ll move to Dubai. The tax base will shrink.

RO: And then we tax the empty houses they leave behind.

GARRY: That’s a different bad policy.

RO: We have many. Would you like to see the full menu?

The barista returns with the coffee.

BARISTA: That’ll be $14.

GARRY: (reaches for wallet)

RO: (puts hand on Garry’s arm) Wait. Let me get this one.

GARRY: …Really?

RO: (pulls out phone, opens Venmo) I’m requesting $14 from you. But I want you to feel seen in this moment.

GARRY: Ro. Seriously. What’s your endgame here? You want to be governor? President?

RO: I want to be the guy who made billionaires pay their fair share.

GARRY: What’s “fair”?

RO: Whatever number polls above 60%.

GARRY: That’s not a principle.

RO: It’s a democratic principle. The people have spoken. They want your money.

GARRY: The people also want to ban homework and make Pizza Friday a federal holiday.

RO: Don’t give Bernie ideas.

BERNIE: (still on speaker) I HEARD THAT. PIZZA FRIDAY IS NOT OFF THE TABLE.

GARRY: You’ve been to YC Demo Day. You’ve seen what startups do. These are people trying to cure cancer, fix climate change.

RO: And I support all of that! I just want 5% of it. Annually.

GARRY: Of unrealized gains. On illiquid assets. You’re taxing people on money that doesn’t exist yet.

RO: Garry, I’m a politician. Taxing things that don’t exist is what we do. Have you seen the federal budget?

Long pause. They both sip coffee.

GARRY: …That was actually funny.

RO: I know. I workshop material with AOC. She’s surprisingly good at punch-up.

GARRY: I believe that.

RO: So. Same time next week? I’m introducing a bill to tax coffee purchases over $7.

GARRY: This was $14.

RO: Then you’re already in the highest bracket. Congratulations.

BLACKOUT.

POST-CREDITS SCENE: Bernie is still on FaceTime. No one remembered to hang up.

BERNIE: HELLO? IS ANYONE THERE? I HAVE MORE THINGS TO TAX.

END.

The Real Numbers Behind the Jokes

Every joke in that play maps to something real.

The Sanders-Khanna bill was introduced March 2, 2026. A 5% annual tax on 938 American billionaires’ net worth, targeting unrealized gains on assets that can’t be easily sold. DoorDash co-founder Tony Xu’s liability under this framework would hit 173% of his shares’ value because voting rights inflate valuations. That’s not a tax. That’s a forced liquidation.

Khanna represents the wealthiest congressional district in America while pushing to confiscate its residents’ paper wealth. He also traded $55.7 million in stocks last year, beat the market by 13%, and logged nearly 4,000 trades as the third-most prolific trader in Congress. Calling for wealth confiscation while personally making eight figures from investing is a kind of confidence only Yale Law School can produce.

Archived tweet

1/3 of the US stock market is in “his district,”but won’t be in another 10 years because of Ro Khanna’s support of asset seizure of post tax wealth and unrealized gains taxes that will kill startups Destroy California startups and you set back American innovation by a decade https://t.co/3HMP1qMdYQ https://t.co/9JQitFicFK [Quoting @RoKhanna]: We have lost 68,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump took office. We have lost 161,000 blue collar jobs. We need new economic leadership that doesn't concentrate wealth & power in the hands of the few. An economy that works for all Americans. We need a new economic patriotism.

Garry Tan @garrytan January 14, 2026

Europe already ran this experiment. Twelve countries had wealth taxes in 1990. Three remain. When entrepreneurs left France, employment dropped 33%, investment dropped 22%, and tax payments dropped 51%. The revenue these taxes were supposed to generate vanished. Capital is mobile. The jobs it abandons are not.

Ethan Agarwal launched a primary challenge against Khanna on March 3, 2026. I grew up in Fremont, inside this district. CA-17 is 56% Asian American immigrants who came here for economic mobility, not wealth destruction. The June 2026 primary is the mechanism. The voters of CA-17 get the last word.