Six of California's 214 billionaires have been widely reported to have left the state in time to avoid a proposed 5% wealth tax - but that small cohort would have collectively generated $27 billion in tax revenue, roughly a fourth of the initiative's projected $100 billion haul.
But after decades of outsourcing tungsten production, the federal government has now begun restricting imports. United States Tungsten founders Stacy Hastie and Randy Waterfield saw this coming. They're reviving what was once America's largest tungsten mine, the Tungsten Queen. It's a site holding an estimated 1 million tons of tungsten with an in-ground value approaching $450 million, the company says. And it says it is already in talks with the U.S. Government.
Brin, who co-founded Google in 1998 with Larry Page, is currently locked in a game of net-worth musical chairs with his new down-the-street neighbor Larry Ellison. Earlier this month, Forbes reported that "Brin leapfrogged Oracle's Larry Ellison and Amazon's Jeff Bezos on Tuesday to become the world's third-richest person." The 52-year-old billionaire has reported ties to Alpine Bay LLC, a Reno, Nevada-based entity that purchased the lakefront estate for $42 million in December after the lakefront palace languished on the market for eight years.
Brin has committed $20 million to a new organization called Building a Better California, a political and policy effort aimed squarely at California's worsening housing affordability problems, recent state disclosures show, as first reported by The New York Times. The money is part of a broader $35 million launch package that also includes $15 million from eight other wealthy business leaders, among them former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and venture capitalist Michael Moritz, who each contributed $2 million.
