From the WSJ, Best of the Web afternoon email (yesterday). I especially like the point about Sanders not updating his ideas since the 70's. I've often thought that decade was the last time he read a book.
“Billionaires should not exist,” says Sen. Bernie Sanders (Socialist, Vt.). This week he sketched out a tax plan to ensure they won’t, at least in the United States.
According to the Sanders presidential campaign website:
It would start with a 1 percent tax on net worth above $32 million for a married couple. That means a married couple with $32.5 million would pay a wealth tax of just $5,000.
The tax rate would increase to 2 percent on net worth from $50 to $250 million, 3 percent from $250 to $500 million, 4 percent from $500 million to $1 billion, 5 percent from $1 to $2.5 billion, 6 percent from $2.5 to $5 billion, 7 percent from $5 to $10 billion, and 8 percent on wealth over $10 billion. These brackets are halved for singles.
Mr. Sanders often falsely claims that Scandinavia demonstrates the success of his socialist schemes, even though Scandinavian countries are home to some of the freest economies in the world. The confusion arises because many Sanders talking points haven’t been updated since the 1970s, when these countries were conducting disastrous experiments in government expansion. News of several decades of reform and revival hasn’t yet reached Sanders campaign headquarters.
When it comes to wealth taxes, once again we can thank our Scandinavian friends for showing why a Sanders scheme presented as a way to plunder the rich would also make the average citizen poorer. The Scandinavian experience also suggests that if Mr. Sanders ever does manage to enact a wealth tax, he really could achieve his goal of abolishing American billionaires.
Sweden abolished its wealth tax in 2007. In March of that year, as the government was preparing for repeal, Karl Ritter of the Associated Press reported:
The tax, which a handful of developed countries retain, was designed to keep the rich from getting richer -- but is increasingly seen as harming primarily the not-quite-rich upper middle classes.
The move, expected to be approved by Parliament later this year, underscores the country’s efforts to keep successful Swedes and their capital at home by reforming its fabled but costly welfare state.
“It’s not sustainable to keep taxes that radically diverge from other countries,” Finance Minister Anders Borg told the A.P. “Not if you want the money to stay in the country.”
The A.P. further noted the impact of one of the world’s heaviest tax burdens:
Not surprisingly, the wealthiest Swedes have fled the country, including IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad, No. 4 on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest people. He lives in Switzerland.
Five-time Wimbledon winner Bjorn Borg moved to tax-haven Monaco in the late 1970s... The government says more than 500 billion kronor ($70 billion) of Swedish capital is outside of the country’s borders.
“This is money that if it was brought home could be invested to create jobs and welfare in Sweden,” the four coalition leaders said in a joint statement this week.
Denmark had already abolished its wealth tax years earlier. Nordic neighbor Finland axed its wealth tax shortly before Sweden. And while Norway still taxes wealth, it has been reducing the burden in recent years while also cutting rates on corporate income.
Back here in the U.S., Vermont’s most famous Marxist aims to stem the ocean of money flowing out of the U.S. in the event he succeeds. As part of his plunder plan, Sen. Sanders is promising exit taxes at rates up to 60% of wealth to discourage billionaires from fleeing the U.S. and taking up residence in capitalist countries.
This might allow Mr. Sanders to hold many existing billionaires captive for a time. But his plan surely provides enough incentive for the next generation of entrepreneurs to find other locales to build their fortunes.
Thank goodness there’s a giant asterisk on the Sanders plan to achieve his dream of a country without billionaires. The Sanders plan is not constitutional, for the same reason that Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax is unconstitutional. The founders banned such direct taxes and the 16th Amendment only authorized the taxation of incomes, not balance sheets.
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Perhaps the moderators at October’s Democratic presidential debate will ask Mr. Sanders to comment on his unconstitutional wealth grab—not to mention the success of Scandinavian tax reform.
This proves he will never be elected president of the United of States!
Bye Bye Bernie!
Posted by: Jessica | Friday, September 27, 2019 at 08:09 AM