Read the full opinion piece in “The Guardian”
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, in a new op-ed for “The Guardian,” Gabriel Zucman laid out how the Trump-Musk fight is more than a bad breakup — it’s the embodiment of how unprecedented wealth concentration has eroded our democracy and public institutions. Musk, the world’s richest man, has more power than any one person should have. Zucman, a University of California Berkeley and Paris School of Economics professor of economics argues we should see this moment as a warning sign and course correct by taxing billionaires to break up this dangerous concentration of wealth. One potential solution is a new wealth tax proposal, coined “Five and Dime,” which can combat the excessive wealth concentration corroding our democracy and stifling our economy.
This comes as the Senate considers sweeping tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. Recent polling shows 57% of Americans oppose such tax cuts for the rich.
Excerpts from the piece are highlighted below:
“As the world watches Donald Trump and Elon Musk publicly fight over the sweeping legislation moving through Congress, we should not let the drama distract us. There is something deeper afoot: unprecedented wealth concentration – and the unbridled power that comes with such wealth – has distorted our democracy and is driving societal and economic tensions.”
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“Musk is just one example of the ways in which unchecked concentration of wealth is eroding US democracy and economic equality. Just 800 families in the US are collectively worth almost $7tn – a record-breaking figure that exceeds the wealth of the bottom half of the US combined. While most of us earn money through labor, these ultra-wealthy individuals let the tax code and their investments do the work for them.”
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“A broken tax code means unchecked wealth-hoarding. The numbers are staggering: $1tn of wealth was created for the 19 richest US households just last year (to put that number into perspective, that is more than the output of the entire Swiss economy). That was the largest one-year increase in wealth ever recorded. I have studied this rapidly ballooning wealth concentration, and like my colleagues who focus on democracy and governance, I am alarmed by the increasingly aggressive power wielded by a small number of ultra-wealthy individuals.”
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“The good news is, hope is not lost. We can break up this dangerous concentration of wealth by taxing billionaires. There is growing public support for doing just this, even among Republican voters. A recent Morning Consult poll found that 70% of Republicans believed ‘the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes,’ up from 62% six years ago.”
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“With many of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy set to expire this year, legislators have an opportunity to reset the balance driving dangerous wealth-hoarding. […] One mechanism for achieving this goal is a wealth tax on the ultra-wealthy. The Tax Policy Center recently released an analysis of a new policy called the Five & Dime tax. This proposal would impose a 5% tax on household wealth exceeding $50m and a 10% tax on household wealth over $250m. The Five & Dime tax would raise $6.8tn over 10 years, slow the rate at which the US mints new billionaires, and reduce the billionaires’ share of total US wealth from 4% to 3%.”
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“While breaking up dangerous wealth concentration is reason enough to tax billionaires, this revenue could be invested in programs that support working families and in turn boost the economy.”
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For more information about the Tax the Greedy Billionaires campaign, visit https://taxgreed.org/
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