In June, Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire when SpaceX began trading on the Nasdaq. Now, the U.S. midterms are here, and wealth taxation is on the ballot. 

Californians are set to vote on Proposition 40, which would take 5% of fortunes above $1 billion, once, and send nine-tenths of the revenue to fund California’s Medicaid program. A swarm of Silicon Valley billionaires, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin, has spent more than $333 million campaigning against the potential tax, warning it will backfire and push the wealthy to flee the sunshine state. 

Such reactions are not new. Even the income tax once looked like an assault on property. The Supreme Court struck one down as unconstitutional in 1895, and it took the 16th Amendment in 1913 to make it ordinary. Taxes on great fortunes may travel the same road and become unremarkable within a decade. Plus, research indicates that the wealthiest households often pay lower effective tax rates than the people who work for them. 

I support Proposition 40. But it is not sufficient in addressing the underlying economic issues at hand. 

A wealth tax like Proposition 40 tries to recover a share of value long after that value has been created, compounded, and defended. By then, the money has lawyers. Which is why the origins of this extreme wealth matter, now that the prospect of redistribution has so agitated the people holding it.

To understand how these systems work, think of the iPhone. As I argued in my book The Entrepreneurial State, the iPhone's foundational technologies came from public research: the internet, GPS, the touchscreen, and the voice recognition behind Siri. Speech understanding research at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Stanford Research Institute was funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the 1970s. Researchers then spent two more decades on language and learning systems no company would finance, because the payoff lay thirty years out. 

Or think of Google. The search algorithm that made Brin's fortune grew out of a National Science Foundation project at Stanford.

And then there’s SpaceX, whose listing made Musk a trillionaire, took $396 million from NASA to develop the Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsule, then $1.6 billion to fly cargo to the space station and $2.6 billion to fly astronauts. The world’s richest man was also the biggest political donor this election cycle, spending $366 million supporting Republican causes. 

Other people see them as tech bros. I see them as a brologarchy. They surfed off publicly financed research to earn enormous rents, and continue to profit off of them through what I call “algorithmic rents”: returns from owning the platforms, data, and models the rest of us must pass through, and manipulating what our “attention” sees. 

None of this takes anything away from the entrepreneurs. Turning a research program into a reusable rocket is hard. The public carried the risk in the years when these technologies had no market and no buyer. The state carries the blame: for not setting out, in the contracts, the terms of that initial investment and a fair share of the rewards for the risk the public took.

The Department of Energy made the asymmetry explicit in 2009, issuing two near-identical loan guarantees to two of Musk’s companies: $465 million to Tesla and $500 million to Solyndra. Solyndra, a now-bankrupt solar panel manufacturer, collapsed two years later, and the taxpayer absorbed the loss and the political damage. Tesla, by contrast, succeeded. Under its loan agreement, the government held warrants it could exercise only if Tesla failed to repay on schedule; Tesla repaid nine years early and the warrants lapsed. The public took the downside on one deal and wrote itself out of the upside on the other.

Economists call this socializing risk and privatizing reward. It describes a contract drafted without the confidence to ask for anything.

NASA once had that confidence. In the early 1960s, it moved Apollo contracts from cost-plus-fixed-fee to incentive contracts tying a contractor's fee to cost, schedule, and performance, setting terms rather than writing blank checks. More recently, the CHIPS and Science Act attached conditions to $52.7 billion of semiconductor funding, covering where plants get built and what jobs they create. 

I believe those conditions did not go far enough. Wage standards covered laborers and mechanics rather than every worker, and affected communities got no formal seat in the decisions. But the principle is American, recent, and bipartisan. Public money can come with terms.

This is called “pre-distribution,” shaping how value is created and shared at the outset, rather than waiting for the tax code to repair the damage, and it is a crucial principle for making capitalism work for us all. 

But establishing this kind of capitalism requires that we commit to another principle: access for all and reward sharing. If the public carries the risk, it should hold a claim on the reward. In practice, that means equity stakes in companies built on public loans, royalties on patents from publicly funded research, and a public fund that recycles the returns into the next round of risk. The United States has started to embrace this philosophy in its semiconductor infrastructure funding. It could do the same for our public investments in artificial intelligence, and those contracts are still being written.

These principles address our broader capitalist system and create a different framing from universal basic income, which many tech billionaires are quite fond of. A basic income leaves the origins of their fortunes untouched, treats wealth as given, and asks only for a transfer, which is why it can be endorsed without conceding anything. A citizens' dividend changes the logic, because it pays out on the grounds that the public helped create the value in the first place. That is a debt owed directly, not only through the tax code. And we know it is possible. Alaska has paid its residents a dividend from oil revenue since 1982.

None of this is an argument for voting against Proposition 40. California's billionaires should pay, and the state's health system needs the money. But a one-time levy collected decades after the fact is a costly way to claim a return that could have been written into the contract at the start. Redistribution settles old accounts. Pre-distribution can redesign an economy from the outset for more inclusive, sustainable growth. 

It matters that we act now. The next fortune is being built right now, on public research, with public money; we should make sure it serves the common good.

An economy is not weather, a natural phenomenon that cannot be designed differently or more fairly. It is a set of contracts, and we are the ones who write them. We can write them for an economy designed with people and for them, one that shares the knowledge and the rewards along the way. The common good economy provides the principles through which to achieve this.

Whether you’re watching a scary movie or tiptoeing through a haunted house, Halloween can stir up spooky feelings. A gory scene may force you to cover your eyes or jump out of your seat. What drives these reactions is fear, a powerful core emotion.

Being afraid can feel like getting stuck in your own horror show—your heart pounds, your pupils dilate, and you may gasp or scream. These reactions are not under conscious control; they’re rooted in biology. Like all emotions, fear plays an important role. It helps you survive and bolt for safety. 

Halloween gives you a chance to experiment with fear. It’s a time when the fright is real, but the threat is not. 

As psychotherapists who specialize in Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), we know that being able to name and work with fear is good for health. Acknowledging your emotions makes you less likely to suppress or avoid them, drink too much, or become numb to what you’re feeling. 

While these behaviors take the edge off temporarily, research shows that stuffing down your emotions can lead to mental-health concerns, such as depression and anxiety, which have become more common among U.S. children and adults in recent years.

If you’d like to safely explore your relationship with fear this Halloween season, here are five exercises we recommend. 

Recognize fear in your body

Have you ever tried to outsmart fear? Perhaps you scolded yourself for being a scaredy-cat or tried to stop the feeling with logic. Messages from society and our families often promote a mind-over-matter approach, reinforcing the belief that we can think our way out of an emotion. 

A healthier approach is to get out of your head and tune into your body. During a frightening moment, notice the telltale signs of alarm, like trembling hands, a racing heart, or feeling cold. These physical sensations are important messengers that clue you into what core emotions you’re experiencing. 

Once you identify and name them, their intensity will likely diminish. It may sound like a small act, but research shows that putting language on your emotions can help regulate and tame distress. 

Watch fear come and go

Gripping, painful emotions can seem permanent. But watching them come and go can remind your brain that even the most frightening experiences are temporary. 

During a spooky scene, you may want to cover your face or turn away. Rather than immediately distracting yourself, approach the emotion with curiosity. Observe how fear builds, peaks, and eventually subsides. 

Curiosity helps us embrace a sense of wonder. Research shows that a curious mindset can cultivate positive emotions and reduce worry. 

Calm the scary feeling

When fright takes hold, breathing techniques like 4-7-8 breathing or box breathing can soothe your nervous system. Taking long breaths instead of shallow ones sends oxygen to your muscles, which can help relieve tension. 

You can also practice what eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapists call “dual attention.” Keep your eyes glued to the frightening scene and stay with the sensations in your body as you take deep belly breaths. Research shows that belly breathing increases parasympathetic regulation of the heart through vagal pathways, helping the body settle into a calmer state. 

Discover how fear makes you want to move

When a ghoul jumps out or a frightening sound catches you off guard, pay attention to what your body wants to do. Do you feel an urge to flee, freeze, duck, or reach for someone’s hand? 

In AEDP, we call these “adaptive actions,” and they offer clues about how your nervous system responds to perceived danger. 

All core emotions, including fear, have impulses—energy in the body that makes us want to take action. When someone responds to our emotions with shame instead of empathy, we learn to block these impulses, creating a pressure-cooker effect. This can lead to symptoms like insomnia, muscular tension, and rumination that can hurt your health.

Noticing fear’s impulses expands your emotional awareness and sets the stage for you to work through other core emotions with greater wisdom. 

Notice how connection changes fear

Sharing a scary moment with another person can make it easier to tolerate. That’s because having someone by your side doesn’t just provide reassurance; it calms the amygdala, the brain’s emotional center, and helps you heal past wounds and traumas. 

We recommend this experiment: Watch a horror movie alone, and then with someone you trust. Or visit a haunted house with a trusted friend or partner. Notice what happens when you share the experience. 

A little emotions education goes a long way towards nurturing your well-being. By learning to stay with fear, you teach your brain that you can handle challenging emotions. 

And when we know emotions aren’t something to fear, we’re better equipped to handle life’s challenges with authenticity, flexibility, and courage.