They call it a wealth tax – and to go further in, my email included a sub-stack article by Veronique de Rugy, that explains the idea came from three French economists before reaching Sacramento and becoming law in California. She’s a researcher at George Mason University, and seems to have a far better understanding of this topic than I.
She described the work that they have done with Berkley economists: ” This particular paper is a response to the Hoover Institution’s Joshua Rauh and coauthors showing that earlier revenue projections by Saez for the wealth tax are, well, bunk.
It’s worth noting that Piketty, Saez, and Zucman have been repeatedly caught by economists across the political spectrum, including Obama’s Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, inflating wealth-concentration figures, using nonstandard methods to manufacture desired, errors, and in at least one case quietly scrubbing prior data from the internet when new numbers told a more convenient story. Their work is less a research program than policy advocacy dressed up in academic clothing.”
That statement alone is pretty damning – but I’m a demographer. I’m accustomed to folks misrepresenting data – Paul Ehrlich’s book, the Population Bomb is, despite it’s inaccuracy, still available. At any rate, de Rugy calculates that California’s wealth tax will reduce the state receipts by “at least $25 billion.” She points out that France tried a wealth tax between 2000 and 2017 – years that saw 60,000 millionaires leave the country.
The whole article is posted at https://www.theunseenandtheunsaid.com/p/the-paris-to-sacramento-pipeline It’s worth reading.
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