The release of Donald Trump’s taxes to the NYT is a confirmation of many things long assumed about Donald Trump, or already documented in other ways: he is a failed businessman, deeply in debt, a scammer who usually avoids paying anything in taxes in spite of the wealth his father left him. But Donald Trump’s taxes are also a reminder of something that goes far beyond Trump: the mega-wealthy in this country will usually find ways to avoid paying taxes to support this country until you tax their wealth as well as their income. That fact is equally true with the successful big business people who, like Jeff Bezos with his wealth of $205 billion, as it is with the failing heirs to fortunes like Trump: none of them pay much in taxes because they don’t make much money in salaries.
The wealth tax is an idea whose time has come. Before the Trump paying no taxes story broke, a new poll out from the folks at Data For Progress on support for a wealth tax came out. Turns out the voters really like it. Not just progressives or Democrats; not just voters in blue states. Nationally, voters support some form of a wealth tax by enormous margins, by more than 2-1, but Data For Progress also did deep dives into a wide range of purple and red states states with competitive elections, and found that there wasn’t a state polled where voters weren’t strongly in favor of a wealth tax.
And here’s some news that may surprise you: even a plurality of Republicans support a wealth tax, with a majority of them supporting it in five of the 11 states polled (ME, AZ, NC, GA, IA), and with support among Republicans never dropping below 37% in any of the other states.
Here are the overall numbers in the 11 states polled:
Voters who described themselves as moderates supported a wealth tax by 2-1 as well, 57-29. Suburban voters, whom both parties are obsessed with winning and are devoting most of their messaging towards, are in favor of it by 58-31. Rural voters, supposedly the most conservative of all, favor it 52-35. Even among voters who describe themselves as somewhat conservative, the numbers are tied: 44-44. The only ideological category where the polling shows a negative reaction to a wealth tax is the people who list themselves as very conservative.
Swing voters, moderate voters, suburban voters, rural voters: all the classic swing groups in American politics are strongly for taxing wealth. So what explains why this policy isn’t at the center of the 2020 campaign, especially with all these new spending initiatives Democrats are united behind in terms of climate change, health care, child care, and rebuilding our nation’s crumbling infrastructure?
It’s the difference between what I have always called ‘DC centrism’ vs what is actually centrism in the real world of voters. DC Centrism, shaped by lobbyists for Big Business and think tanks funded by the wealthy, is full of ideas like cutting Social Security and Medicare and going easy on regulations for Wall Street, Big Tech, Pharma, Big Oil, and other big businesses. These ideas have never been popular among most voters, but a lot of the establishment players in DC think of them as responsible, centrist things to do to make the Democratic Party more friendly to Big Business interests.
Outside of DC, among actual voters in this country, those ideas aren’t centrist, they are violently opposed by most people. And among those same real voters, when they hear about an idea like the wealth tax, it sounds perfectly sensible and reasonable. In fact, in the DFP poll, when you make the classic arguments the establishment tends to make against the wealth tax -- that it’s impractical, that it might slow the economy, etc -- voters did not turn away, their support for the wealth tax stayed strong.
The wealth tax, in fact, turned out to be the most popular tax among all the taxes mentioned as a way to pay for a big new spending program (infrastructure was the one they tested), and was so popular that pairing infrastructure, a very popular idea already, with the wealth tax actually increased support for investing in infrastructure.
If, pray God, the Democrats win in 2020, this policy idea is important to have at the center of the debate next year. Our deficit is sky high, our economy is in shambles, and we desperately need to pay for policies that address crises in climate, child care, health care, and infrastructure. COVID has exacerbated all of these problems, and it is not going away any time soon.
We are going to need to start talking about revenue in a serious way. The wealth tax is both the most sensible and the most popular revenue idea out there. A 2-cent wealth tax on those with net wealth over $50 million would raise $2 trillion dollars over the next 10 years from a remarkably small number of people.
The story about Donald Trump’s taxes is the ultimate reminder: the wealth tax is the answer for all those uber-rich people -- whether the flailing heirs to their daddy’s big bucks, or the capitalists like Bezos minting new billions in their fortune every time they turn around.
Time for self-styled DC Centrists to make way for important economic policies like a wealth tax supported by the vast majority of voters throughout the country, including those who really are centrists and swing voters. It’s time to institute a wealth tax.