How Would A Wealth Tax Work?
Friends,
Jeff Bezos says raising his taxes is pointless. βYou could double the taxes I pay and itβs not going to help that teacher in Queens,β he says.
Well, heβs partly right. Bezos has gotten away with paying no income tax in some years, so technically doubling that wouldnβt help. Thatβs why we need a wealth tax that even the slipperiest of billionaires canβt wriggle their way out of.
Iβm so pleased that my good friend and colleague Gaberiel Zucman, whose work has provided among the most important analysis of wealth taxes, is here to help us understand what it entails β and why the objections of the billionaires are wrong. Please watch.
Americaβs oligarchs β the richest 0.00001% βtogether they hold the equivalent of 14% of U.S. GDP in wealth: roughly $4 trillion.
At the peak of the first Gilded Age at the beginning of the 20th century, that same group of the population owned just 4% of the U.S. GDP in wealth.
Billionaire wealth is undermining our democracy. Just look at what Elon Musk is doing. Other billionaires are also polluting our politics.
Californians have an opportunity on November 3 to be the first state to enact a tax on billionaire wealth. Itβs right and just. It would help defer the extra expenses to Californians of filling the hole created by cuts in Medicaid and Medicare by the Trump regime β cuts made in order to give a huge tax cut mainly to the richest Americans.
And itβs a beginning of a movement toward taxing billionaires across the nation. Which is why theyβre so worried about it.
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