After the Legislature imposed billions of dollars in new car and gas taxes on Californians last month, a friend emailed me to register his disappointment and disgust: “It’s like we live in an apartheid society where the politically powerful live in luxury and laugh at the working people of our state.”

Sadly, his point is accurate. The separation between the ruling class and the rest of Californians is becoming more extreme by the day. So much so, in fact, that California is beginning to resemble a society based on a caste system, meaning a formal structure of social stratification (usually associated with India) deriving from the hereditary division of the population into the highest caste (Brahmins) and various castes below.

California’s high cast Brahmins reside primarily in coastal enclaves including the San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Barbara, Malibu and the west side of Los Angeles but they are also numerous in the Silicon Valley and Hollywood. These elites tend to be high income or wealthy and can afford to separate themselves from the trials and tribulations suffered by average citizens. This immunity from “real world” problems allows them to obsess about issues like bathroom access, climate change or the president’s hair. They lack respect or compassion for less fortunate citizens and, if truth be known, they find those outside their caste to be annoying.

And a gas tax? This tax to them is nothing when they can avoid paying it by plugging in their $120,000, taxpayer subsidized Teslas. And if their cars do run on gas, they never even bother to check the price. These are folks who wouldn’t be caught dead in a Walmart.

Next in the caste hierarchy are the politicians and members of government employee unions. While the Brahmans may help to elect the politicians, as do the unions, this second tier caste is much less secure because they still have to scrounge for financial advantage. The unions — representing the highest compensated state and local workers in all 50 states — are constantly seeking more pay and benefits. And because the politicians are constantly trying to consolidate and expand their influence, they establish a symbiotic relationship with the unions to keep campaign contributions rolling in that guarantee reelection. (Some electeds, who have spent years living off the taxpayers’ dime, genuinely fear they may not be qualified for work in the private sector and so will do almost anything to keep a grip on power.)

These politicians will parrot the concerns of the Brahmins about matters like the environment, but they do not have a committed belief system. They trip all over themselves in their rush to make environmental law exceptions for projects like stadiums that are backed by wealthy interests or unions in a position to secure or advance the politicians’ careers.

The next rank on the scale of who’s who in California are the non-working poor. While the upper classes do not want to rub elbows with them, they are regarded as useful because their votes can be purchased through extensive entitlement programs that are paid for by the very lowest class.

On the very bottom rung of the stature ladder, the equivalent of the Indian’s “Untouchables,” are working Californians, and the lowest of these workers is anyone who labors at a job that requires perspiration — these are regarded as little more than beasts of burden.

When the elites bother to consider members of the working class, they regard them as a source of tax revenue and little more. Ideally, to their way of thinking, they exist to pay taxes and not make waves.

A massive new gas tax adding to the burden of working Californians? Why it is just the price of being able to share a beautiful state and great weather with their social betters.

Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.