A wealth tax could raise trillions -- and save our democracy
BY CHUCK COLLINS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 01/31/19 07:00 AM EST
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has jolted the body politic with a bold proposal to tax the concentrated wealth of the richest 75,000 households in the United States. It’s about time someone took up this mantle.
Warren’s proposal would levy an annual 2 percent tax on wealth over $50 million, with the rate rising to 3 percent on wealth over $1 billion. Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man in the country, would pay $4.1 billion under the new tax.
The United States has a proud tradition of breaking up concentrated wealth. The first federal progressive income and estate taxes date from the first Gilded Age, over a century ago. That’s when President Theodore Roosevelt observed, “Of all forms of tyranny, the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth, the tyranny of a plutocracy.”
The wealth tax that Warren proposes would raise substantial revenue — by one estimate almost $3 trillion in the next decade. This would be a substantial boost for spending on green infrastructure, affordable higher education, and other investments that could expand opportunity.
But more fundamentally, the tax would be an investment in protecting democracy from the “tyranny of a plutocracy” that worried Roosevelt.
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/427315-a-wealth-tax-could-raise-trillions-and-save-our-democracy
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