00:00Today on Forbes, Mamdani doesn't think we should have billionaires. Here's why that will never
00:05happen. Fresh off his shellacking of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic
00:11primary for mayor, New York State Assembly member Zoran Mamdani has been the hottest guest on the
00:17press circuit. When asked on NBC if he thought billionaires have the right to exist, he chuckled
00:23and said, quote, I don't think that we should have billionaires because frankly, it is so much money
00:28in a moment of such inequality. The United States is a fiercely capitalist society based on the
00:34meritocratic idea that everyone has the opportunity to build their own futures and fortunes. Billionaires
00:41typically make their money by starting companies that are engines of innovation and which employ
00:45millions of their fellow citizens. Think Amazon, Nike, Walmart, Microsoft, Google. The only way to truly
00:53attack fortunes of this size, because most billionaires have little in the way of ordinary
00:57income, is by enacting a hyper-aggressive wealth and asset tax. There's also a practical roadblock.
01:04The U.S. is currently led by a billionaire president who has surrounded himself with a posse of
01:08billionaires, all of whom are likely to fight off wealth tax proposals. Not to mention that Congress
01:14just passed a megabill that protects billionaires' wealth more than ever before. But, just for kicks,
01:21say that America really decided it wanted to get rid of its billionaires. How could that be
01:25accomplished? The only possible answer is massive confiscatory taxes. It has been tried before. At the
01:33onset of World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt proposed capping Americans' post-tax income at
01:39$25,000, or $50,000 for couples, about $1 million today. Congress set the top marginal rate at 94% in 1944
01:48and 1945 and 1945 and required the paycheck withholding system still in use today. Today,
01:56taxes on wealth, as opposed to income, form the core of anti-billionaire crusaders' plans to
02:01eliminate the largest fortunes. When running for president in 2020, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders
02:07proposed a graduated tax on wealth over $32 million that capped out at a rate of 8% on anything over
02:13$10 billion, claiming that it would, quote, cut the wealth of billionaires in half over 15 years.
02:21Such a tax would cost the world's richest person, Elon Musk, over $30 billion in the first year and,
02:27even assuming zero growth in his fortune, would take nearly 20 years to just get his wealth below
02:32$100 billion. He would likely be forced to annually sell an enormous number of Tesla shares to cover the
02:39annual payments. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren's 2020 plan would have taxed wealth over
02:45$50 million at 2% and wealth over $1 billion at 6%. She, alongside Washington Representative Pramila
02:53Jayapal and Pennsylvania Representative Brendan Boyle, have reintroduced her so-called ultra-millionaire's
02:59tax, a similar policy that tops out at 3%, in Congress. Jayapal, who chairs the House Progressive
03:06Caucus, tells Forbes that she largely agrees with Mamdani's idea. She says, quote,
03:11I suppose if there was a scenario in which you could have a couple of billionaires, but everyone
03:15else was doing extremely well, that might be one thing. But it seems that the way our tax policies
03:20focus, billionaires become billionaires at the expense of everyone else. Of course, you need to
03:27put the IRS on steroids to make this sort of wealth tax work and police the wealthy from moving their
03:32money offshore. The U.S. would also have to implement an exit tax and negotiate complex tax treaties with
03:38other countries. Chuck Collins, who studies inequality at the left-wing Institute for Policy Studies
03:44and co-edits a website called inequality.org, says, quote, there would always be the Cook Islands and a few
03:50places like that that would try to be outside that system. But the reality is, most of those countries want
03:56to participate in a global economy. And so you can say, well, yeah, you need to sign on to a global tax
04:02regime. Mamdani, it seems, isn't looking to tax all the billionaires in New York to oblivion.
04:08His plans for revenue include increasing New York's top corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5%
04:15in line with New Jersey and adding a 2% surcharge to personal income over $1 million. That's hardly
04:22enough to vaporize anyone's wealth. But to get even that, he'll need New York Governor Kathy Hochul's
04:28buy-in, already a long shot. For full coverage, check out Kyle Kahn-Mullins and Lily Ogburn's piece
04:35on Forbes.com. This is Kieran Meadows from Forbes. Thanks for tuning in.
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