Enthusiasm for a wealth tax on the country’s thin sliver of multimillionaires and billionaires may be unsurprising — after all, most Americans wouldn’t have to pay it. But now the idea is attracting support from a handful of those who would.
A letter published Monday on the website Medium.com calls for “a moderate wealth tax on the fortunes of the richest one-tenth of the richest 1 percent of Americans — on us.”
The “us” includes self-made billionaires like the financier George Soros and Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder, as well as heirs to dynastic riches like the filmmaker Abigail Disney and Liesel Pritzker Simmons and Ian Simmons, co-founders of the Blue Haven Initiative, an impact investment organization.
“We thought it would be a good idea,” Mr. Simmons explained by phone as he waited out a traffic jam in the Boston area. “Liesel and I decided to reach out to some other folks to see if they thought it was a good idea, too.”
The letter came together in the last two weeks. Eighteen individuals, spread among 11 families, added their names. All are active in progressive research and political organizations, some of which are pointedly focused on the swelling gap between the richest Americans and everyone else.
A recent analysis of a Federal Reserve report found that over the last three decades, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans saw their net worth grow by $21 trillion, while the wealth of the bottom 50 percent fell by $900 billion.
The letter unequivocally declares that a wealth tax “strengthens American freedom and democracy” and “is patriotic.”
...And it points out that economic researchers estimate that the richest 0.1 percent of Americans will pay 3.2 percent of their wealth in taxes this year compared with 7.2 percent paid by the bottom 99 percent. “The next dollar of new tax revenue should come from the most financially fortunate, not from middle-income and lower-income Americans,” the letter declares.
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A Message From the Billionaires Club: Tax Us
A Message From the Billionaires Club: Tax Us
“The Electoral College is DEI for rural white folks.”
Derek Cressman
Derek Cressman