Let me congratulate the Service Staff Worldwide Union-United Healthcare Employees West and different commerce unions for gathering the signatures essential to place a 5% billionaires’ wealth tax on the California poll this November.
At a time of large and rising earnings and wealth inequality, this initiative is required now greater than ever. If handed, it could increase $100 billion from simply 200 billionaires in California who collectively are price greater than $2 trillion. That income would stop thousands and thousands of low-income and working-class Californians from dropping healthcare and diet help due to President Trump’s disastrous “Huge Lovely Invoice.”
Right here’s the straightforward fact. In California and throughout the nation, whereas working households battle to outlive, the billionaire class has by no means had it so good.
Final yr, the 5 wealthiest individuals in California alone turned $300 billion richer. Nationally, after receiving one of many largest tax breaks in trendy historical past, 938 billionaires elevated their wealth by $1.5 trillion. Extremely, the richest man alive, Elon Musk, now owns extra wealth than the underside 53% of U.S households.
This excessive inequality isn’t an aberration. Over the previous six years, U.S. billionaires greater than doubled their wealth, gaining over $4.6 trillion. In truth, since 1975, practically $80 trillion has been redistributed from the underside 90% to the highest 1%.
Whereas the very wealthy get a lot richer, greater than 60% of People live paycheck to paycheck. Practically half of older employees don’t have anything saved for retirement. Greater than 20% of seniors in America are attempting to outlive on lower than $15,000 a yr. In California, the kid poverty fee has practically tripled in simply 5 years to nearly 19%.
Regardless of huge positive aspects in productiveness and know-how, the common American employee is making $28 per week much less at present than they did 53 years in the past, adjusting for inflation.
Backside line: As a nation, this grotesque degree of earnings and wealth inequality is a matter that we will now not ignore and that we should confront.
Now, it ought to shock nobody that, whereas ballot after ballot exhibits robust public assist for this initiative, the billionaire class is working time beyond regulation to defeat it.
I perceive why Mark Zuckerberg, price $237 billion, would relatively spend $100 million on his third yacht than pay extra in taxes. I perceive why Larry Ellison, price $218 billion, would relatively spend $500 million on a non-public island in Hawaii than fear concerning the plight of working households.
However right here’s what I don’t perceive. Why are the opponents of this initiative unwilling to truthfully debate this subject? Why are they unwilling to debate the morality of their place?
I’d love to listen to from opponents like Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel and the opposite billionaires as to why they assume it’s extra essential for them to not pay their justifiable share of taxes whereas hospitals shut, kids go hungry and most cancers sufferers get evicted as a result of they can not afford costly remedy.
As a substitute of addressing that query, billionaires are threatening to punish the individuals of California. They declare that if voters cross a modest tax on billionaires, they may go away the state and take their companies with them. Let’s be clear: That’s extortion.
What these billionaires are actually saying is that democracy doesn’t apply to them — that if the bulk act in their very own pursuits, billionaires will retaliate.
However right here is the excellent news: The American individuals are catching on.
They’re uninterested in billionaires paying a decrease tax fee than the common employee whereas they battle with the hovering prices of healthcare, meals, housing, fuel and prescribed drugs.
They’re uninterested in companies like Disney, Tesla, Palantir and Ticketmaster making billions in income and paying nothing in federal earnings taxes whereas greater than 60,000 People die annually as a result of they can not afford to see a physician.
They’re uninterested in billionaires like Brin spending $57 million to defeat this tax on billionaires whereas his wealth has grown by greater than $120 billion since Trump was elected.
Throughout the nation, individuals are sick and bored with the greed and vanity of the billionaire class. They’re demanding an economic system that works for all.
That’s why I launched laws to ascertain a 5% annual wealth tax on the 938 billionaires in America who collectively are price greater than $8.2 trillion and characterize simply 0.000003% of our inhabitants. Over a decade, this invoice would increase $4.4 trillion.
If this laws had been to cross, in its first yr, it could present each man, girl and baby in a family making $150,000 or much less with a $3,000 direct cost — that’s $12,000 for a household of 4.
It could deal with the housing disaster by offering the assets essential to construct 7 million models of low-income and reasonably priced properties and residences.
It could increase Medicare to cowl dental, imaginative and prescient and listening to.
It could assure common childcare.
It could strengthen public training by guaranteeing no instructor earns lower than $60,000 a yr.
It could increase dwelling healthcare so seniors and folks with disabilities can dwell with dignity in their very own properties.
And it could restore healthcare to the 15 million People who’re dropping it below Trump.
All of this might be paid for by a 5% annual tax on the wealth of billionaires.
No one price lower than $1 billion would pay a penny extra in taxes.
My critics declare that this laws is “punitive” and “confiscatory.” Actually?
If this invoice was in impact this yr, Elon Musk would pay $39 billion extra in taxes, leaving him with “simply” $737 billion to outlive.
Jeff Bezos additionally would owe about $14 billion extra in taxes and would nonetheless have $265 billion to place a roof over his head.
In the meantime, life would dramatically enhance for a whole lot of thousands and thousands of People, and the richest individuals on this nation would barely discover a dent of their web price.
Practically a century in the past, Justice Louis Brandeis stated, “We are able to have democracy on this nation, or we will have nice wealth concentrated within the palms of the few, however we can not have each.”
What he stated was true in 1933. It’s much more correct at present. Within the yr 2026, allow us to select democracy over oligarchy. Allow us to demand that billionaires pay their justifiable share of taxes. And allow us to construct a society that works for the numerous, not the few.
Sen. Bernie Sanders represents Vermont within the U.S. Senate.
