Bernie Proposes Wealth Tax
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We ran the numbers: There are 1295 news articles covering this topic. 77% (994) are left leaning, 17% (225) center, 6% (76) right leaning.
On Tuesday, Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders announces a new plan for a tax on the wealthiest Americans, which could cut billionaires’ wealth in half after 15 years. Sanders has long expressed his disgust at immense wealth inequality in the United States and has built his campaign around redistributing wealth from the richest 1 percent of people in the United States. The new plan would impose a 1 percent tax on households with a net worth above $32 million, with increasing marginal rates that would top out at an 8 percent tax on households with a net worth over $10 billion.
A left-leaning article from the New York Times compares Sanders’ plan with his rival Elizabeth Warren’s taxation plan. Warren’s plan, which she had previously announced, would impose a 2 percent tax on net worth from $50 million to $1 billion and a 3 percent tax on net worth over $1 billion. The article reports that Warren welcomed Sanders’ plan and stated that all the Democratic presidential candidates should be talking about a wealth tax, asking “Where are the rest of them?”
Right-leaning coverage of Sanders’ wealth tax from the Daily Caller describes Sanders’ plan as well as Warren’s, noting that Sanders has said that he hopes the day comes when billionaires do not exist. The article also reports that “The Supreme Court ruled that a wealth tax is unconstitutional in 1985 because it is a direct tax on personal property.” However, the article goes on to state that the American Bar Association does consider such a tax to be in accordance with the Constitution.
A centrist article from Bloomberg describes cutting billionaires’ wealth in half as a goal of Sanders’, and also describes his plan as taking Warren’s proposal and pushing it even further. The article also observes that Sanders is struggling to maintain his position in the top three Democratic primary candidates. According to Bloomberg, “Sanders, who is struggling to maintain his top-three standing in the Democratic presidential primary campaign, announced the proposal while campaigning in Iowa counties that voted for Barack Obama in 2012 before switching to Donald Trump in 2016.” The article also observes that the tax would raise an estimated $4.35 trillion in the next decade.
From the right
Here’s How Bernie Sanders’s Wealth Tax Would Aim To Raise $4.35 Trillion Over 10 Years
Daily Caller