We all know that Democrats want to redistribute the ultra-wealthiest Americans' money through mass taxation. It seems everybody on the left who is running for the presidency thinks a "wealth tax" is a good idea. But, there is only one candidate who explains why this tax would never work. Andrew Yang, political outsider, is against a wealth tax more because it would be impossible to enforce, not necessarily that it would kill industry.
Here is what CNBC's John Harwood asked Andrew Yang:
The Republican economists I talked to who praise the efficiency of what you proposed contrasted it with the wealth tax that Sanders and Warren have talked about. They say it just won’t work, won’t raise the money, will trigger a lot of evasion. There are measurement problems. Do you think the wealth tax is a bad idea?
Here's what Yang responded with:
I think the wealth tax is an idea, in spirit, that makes sense, given the wealth distribution. But in practice it would have massive implementation problems. There would be capital flight, wealthy people would renounce their citizenship. And the bigger problem isn’t even the money. It’s the annual inventorying of their assets. The truly wealthy in this country have zero interest in submitting to an annual audit of all of their assets. They barely know what all their assets are. And the last thing they’re going to do is report them every year and then pay a toll. So you would have massive compliance problems. And to me there are better ways to make this economy fair, though I understand the spirit of it and the intent of it. But I agree that it would be somewhere between problematic and a disaster in practice.
To be clear, the government taking people's money to redistribute it amongst the masses is never a good idea "in spirit." In fact, it is called socialism and it kills the human spirit. But, at least Yang is realistic enough to understand a "wealth tax" could never actually work out.
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