Michael Smolens: Second home fee: San Diego’s small entry in the latest ‘tax the rich’ trend

San Diego’s latest consideration of a tax on empty second homes has hardly generated the passion and rhetoric surrounding California’s Billionaire Tax Act initiative.

But the proposals share some of the same themes, goals and circumstances. They seek to have people with assets beyond the reach of many pay more to finance increasingly strained public services amid federal funding reductions — and tax cuts weighted toward the upper-income brackets.

Those and similar efforts also come at a time when the familiar notion of taxing the rich, especially the ultra-rich, has regained momentum nationwide.

An underlying context for some of this is the long-simmering agitation over the wealth gap, which has grown for decades.

A little-noticed coincidence on this front occurred on Wednesday. As the San Diego City Council’s Rules Committee advanced a levy on empty second homes to the full council, a virtual nationwide news conference was held on the “Real Affordability Agenda.” The leaders at the news event referenced what they said were 100 state bills across the country “to rein in runaway wealth-hording by the ultra-rich and runaway cost of living for the rest of the country.”

Sean Elo-Rivera, the San Diego council member and author of the second-homes proposal, has not used that kind of stark, class-warfare rhetoric. But he has insisted that v...