How ‘Soaking The Rich’ Always Drowns The Middle Class

Progressives are once again peddling their novel, ingenious, groundbreaking idea: the wealth tax. Taxing wealthy individuals based on their net worth. Love it.

Except, of course, it isn’t novel, ingenious, or groundbreaking. It’s moronic, and it’s been tried and failed over and over again for centuries.

Those with less have been trying to steal from those with more for as long as governments have existed, and the inane ideas of the far-left are just the newest variation of this. Angie Nixon, a socialist running for U.S. Senate in Florida, wants a “federal asset registry” to impose a 5% annual wealth tax on everything you own, starting with billionaires. Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed is pushing a 7–8% annual wealth tax on the rich. California’s Billionaire Tax Act proposes a 5% tax on billionaires’ net worth. And the decrepit Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have been screaming about a wealth tax longer than I’ve been alive. No doubt they’ll keep screeching this song from the grave.

Set aside the morally abhorrent implications of this; the idea, after all, is stealing from those who have prospered so that government can manhandle their property as they please under the false pretenses of “EQUALITY.” The economics are just as damning.

Let’s look at a few examples.

In 1662, the Crown, under Charles II, was short of cash, so Parliament came up with the bright idea to tax hearths and chimneys. Two shillings a year for each one, on the theory that rich people had more of them. It failed. Homeowners simply bricked up their fireplaces before the “chimney-man” could count them. And the result? Less heat, brutal winters, worse indoor smoke, and more house fires.

In 1696, under King William III, the window tax was introduced. The idea was that opulent folk tend to have more windows; ergo, charge them a pretty penny for the sunlight. Englishmen boarded up their windows to dodge it, which produced stuffy ventilation, spread disease, and resulted in vitamin D deficiencies that stunted growth in entire generations. You might be a short king because a man with a ledger taxed heaven’s rays.

In the 1990s, Congress slapped a 10% tax on new boats over $100,000 to “soak the rich.” Turns out the middle and lower classes were the only ones in the splash zone, because the boat boys just stopped ordering new boats, bought used ones, or bought abroad. Booyah. Some 19,000 boatbuilding jobs were lost, yards ran dry, and the tax raised almost nothing. Progressivism once again, looking regressive in hindsight.

Bernie Sanders was alive for pretty much all of this history, so why does he continue to push a wealth tax that resembles these failed schemes?

Potentially because he has never held a real job a single day in his very long life, so he has legitimately no concept of how money works because he’s leeched off the ass of public society for his entire career and pays the mortgage on his three homes with our taxpayer dollars. Or, more simply, because envy is the engine that drives him.

The 5% annual billionaire tax he’s proposing stems directly from his coveting of what the ultra-rich have created for themselves. But even if the government completely liquidated and confiscated 100% of every U.S. billionaire’s assets, it would barely fund the government for a single year. America’s billionaires hold a combined net worth of about $8.42 trillion, while the U.S. government spends about $7.4 trillion annually. So the reality is that seizing every single penny from Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and every other U.S. Billionaire Bob would only keep the federal government running for maybe 12 months. Bring in the middle class!

The octogenarian’s billionaire tax would quickly creep onto the rest of us, just like the federal income tax did. It was first permanently established in 1913, sold to the public as a tax only on the ultra-wealthy, featuring a top tax rate of just 7% on the highest earners. A century later, the middle class — whom the Democratic Party has long ceased working for — bears a continuous, heavy share of that tax burden, handing over almost one-third of their income every year.

This is my very long way of saying that he should delete his X account, shut up, and retire.

Newsom’s similar wealth tax has dozens of California tech billionaires making plans to exit the state, presumably taking their companies, careers, and cash troughs with them. The ones who stay can simply move money out of equities and into real estate, which happens to be exempt. But less money flowing through the stock and bond markets leads to less innovation, less progress, and an overall dampening of societal and economic growth. Those mRNA cancer vaccines set to reach markets as soon as next year? Well, those aren’t possible without an overabundance of capital willing to absorb years of trial and error. I’m not saying the Left is prolonging cancer, but I’m not not saying it.

On the Eastern side of the country, New Yorkers aren’t boarding up their chimneys yet, but they are building stubbier buildings. Their hijab-donning, Handmaid’s Tale-loving feminist governor Kathy Hochul signed into law a program that mandates developers pay construction workers a ridiculously high wage if they are working on a building that has 100 or more units. Hence why developers are capping their blueprints at exactly 99 floors to dodge the wage hike. Fewer skyscrapers, less efficient use of space, fewer apartments, less happy New Yorkers.

New York’s terror-sympathizing, joker-looking, smarmball mayor (as we call him) is trying his own version of this stupidity, in trying to tax both second homes over $1 million and more broadly “the rich,” though his 9.5% city-wide property tax hike failed already due to reality hitting everyone in the face.

The pied-à-terre tax is in effect, and the surcharge doesn’t just apply to the global elite’s second penthouse. It applies to condos and co-ops valued at more than $1 million, and family homes valued at more than $4 million. Any unit without a full-time resident gets hit, which is precisely the pool of owners that pencil out new construction in the first place. Kill the demand at the top of the tower and the tower never breaks ground. It’s quite apparent that his degree in Africana studies did not adequately prepare him for the inner workings of Economics 101.

The rich are already being taxed. The top 10% of earners in this country already pay over 70% of the federal income tax revenue, and the bottom 50% pay just 3.3%. Even they don’t have enough money to pay for the unending supply of free promises and wishful thinking being spouted off by the Left ad nauseam. Their harebrained money-grabbing schemes will fall squarely on the shoulders of the working class, who will have gained nothing and lost their freedoms and their private property in the bargain.

The alternative is taking a chainsaw to regulations, slashing taxes, and driving economic growth and innovation, which will lead to unbounded prosperity and a rising economic tide for everyone.

Tax Elon Musk into oblivion and you get less investment in self-driving cars, satellite internet for people who’ve never had it, and research into restoring sight to the blind. Tax Larry Page and Sergey Brin dry and you get a dumber phone: worse search, worse Maps, no cheap Android for half the planet. Tax Jensen Huang until Nvidia can’t fund R&D, and you get fewer chips like the ones training the cancer models that could save grandma’s life.

The jealousy of the socialists is going to rupture the genius, innovation, and groundbreaking success our trailblazers see every day that benefit the entire world.

It would behoove us not to listen to them and send a few of them packing to the nursing home.