pay for healthcare, childcare, climate change, bolstering Social Security, college debt, “free” college, jobs, infrastructure, etc.

It’s a start and helps, but doesn’t come close to paying for everything Warren is promising.

Add another consideration— Federal tax increases negatively impact local tax levies for local services.

Before long, she’s going to have to lay out all the taxes she’ll be levying to pay for her promises. It won’t fall on just the wealthy and high income folks like she pretends.

The numbers on public college, student debt and child care are straightforward. So to support your default setting on Warren, you immediately pivot to health care, where no one can agree on the numbers and which is not part of the wealth tax discussion. Typical.

It’s no wonder she isn’t talking about it.

Which, IIRC, is about 36 trillion. You Biden folks always seem to leave that part out.

If healthcare for everyone is just "too expensive", then why won't Biden tell the truth about who gets left out?

to increase?” Senator Warren response — “Look, we won’t pay anymore in total despite fact we will be insuring 40 million more people, there will be no co-insurance or deductibles, we will pick up dental care, etc.”

All that is great, and needed, but tell folks how much their taxes will increase by family size, income, etc.

Are younger people going to have to subsidize older people, how much will that dental care cost, oh you left out inflation over 10 years, are providers going to accept Medicare rates minus whatever it takes to meet budgetary constraints, and more? And be sure to include other promises requiring tax increases — childcare, college debt, bolstering Social Security, infrastructure, climate change, deficit and debt reduction, etc.

Just answer the question and quit ducking. She might fool folks in primaries, but she won’t get away with it in General Election.

BTW — I’ll definitely support Warren in General, but I think she’ll lose, putting us farther away from significant healthcare reform.

from Wapo
Here’s one way to think about it. Employers and households currently foot the bill for just under half of all national health-care spending — about $3.5 trillion in 2017. The government pays the rest, through programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. But under Medicare-for-all, the government would take on most of that spending.

“Shifting such a large amount of expenditures from private to public sources would significantly increase government spending and require substantial additional government resources,” the CBO wrote.

But the agency also acknowledged that total national health spending wouldn’t necessarily increase under Medicare-for-all — in fact, there's a possibility it might decrease depending on the services covered, provider payment rates and patient cost-sharing requirements (I discussed this question in this Health 202). It would almost certainly cost less to administer; the CBO noted that administrative costs average 6 percent of Medicare spending but 12 percent of private insurers’ spending.

3.5 x 10 = 35. Which is greater than 32

the Hill

Experts from Congress’s nonpartisan budget office testified Wednesday that a single-payer health care system would result in “many more” people with health insurance but would also be “potentially disruptive” and increase government control.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) experts made the remarks at the second hearing on a single-payer, “Medicare for All” system that House Democrats have held this year, this time at the House Budget Committee.

“Many more people would probably have health insurance as a result but the government would take much more control over the health care system,” said CBO deputy director Mark Hadley.

He noted that because health care represents around one-sixth of the economy, “those changes could significantly affect the overall U.S. economy” and be “potentially disruptive.”

If you want to read the full report from May 2019

https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-05/55150-singlepayer.pdf

They say the most important benefit is to prevent wealth accumulation so great that a small number can buy and control government

Do agree that is a worthy goal, just don’t think wealth tax will do much in that respect.

Tried elsewhere and in the majority of European countries abandoned due to high implementation, administrative and enforcement costs while bringing in a fraction of anticipated revenues. Yang mentioned that unfortunate news but so have many others. People need only to do the research and reading.

It talks about one reason why that didn't work.

... I should would appreciate a "why it will work for us when it failed in Europe" summary for dummies. I did sit up when someone mentioned that (I assume) fact in the debates and have been waiting to hear more. Note that I'm a Warren supporter.

was that the threshold for the wealth tax was set too low and did not put the burden where it truly belonged.

But that is the short answer. There is a lot more to it.

I reside in one of the three countries in Europe where a wealth tax has been part of the system for a long time. It's been working here just fine, but is also applied at a much lower threshold than what Elizabeth Warren is proposing.

and what the candidate stated in his debate response.

Zucman, who actually knows what he is talking about.

Has anyone shown how these plans are going to work better than the plans implemented by Sweden or France or any of the other countries that have ditched it?

Seems to me that Zucman and Saez are vastly underestimating how easy it will be for wealth to be moved around to escape this tax.

It just makes no sense to propose a whole new tax system that 1-hasn't been shown to work where it's been tried, 2-most likely will not get through congress, and 3-will be challenged in court and almost certainly be declared unconstitutional.

Act was passed during the Obama administration, with changes in international laws and computerization of the information age, that international cooperation developed surprisingly fast to track down and control hidden wealth.

Conservative-dominated governments as well as liberal have always had strong interests in collecting the taxes they impose, but it turns out that's a lot more possible now, not less. And now, in an age when planetary wealth has more than quadrupled in just a couple generations, every free nations are realizing that they must get control of wealth accumulation antithetical to democracy itself before it destroys them. Both create real impetus for action.

spreading the wealth around family members is one very simple way. Or as happened with Sweden and France - just relocating.

governments so controlling that there were not "myriad ways" to avoid, including the favorite, passionate "right" of many to share untaxed wealth with family, especially their children. Get too controlling with that one and society will rebel.

Free societies require some looseness. Successful laws regulating people's money achieve their goals without being felt as unacceptably oppressive. In this case we just need to strongly limit successful tax evasion to the point that will achieve needed ends, making it unreasonably difficult and legally risky for most to bother.

that they understand why it has failed elsewhere, and how they plan to counter it.

Please note I didn't even get into the nuts and bolts of it, as I'm no economist. Yang has a degree in economics and I expect he may start getting a little more wonky in future debates.

40 years ago weren't enough for me try to second-guess well-regarded economists even back then. And there're always a bunch of valid approaches to almost any, always incredibly complex problem, all with their own sets of costs and benefits, and unknowns. Far too much for me.

Anyway, of course any president we elect would have to convince congressional Democrats, where experts, including high-level staffers hired for economic expertise, will have been considering various liberalism-aligned solutions to problems for years, in conjunction with widely respected economists. Often the legislators do most of the convincing, with the president approving and getting his or her name on the final law. A check on any potential problems riding in on "and I will" campaign promises.

We just need proper income and capital gains tax rates. There is no need to have a wealth tax.

Since about 80% of the stocks are owned by the top 10%.

Fix capital gains tax, enact a financial transaction tax, and close estate tax loopholes.

I know Yang is for the capital gains and financial transaction tax, don't see that he's mentioned estate tax loopholes though.

We shouldn't be in the business of supporting dynasties. That's one of the things the pilgrims left behind in England.

Or better still, read the book.
Or read “Democracy in Chains” by Nancy MacLean.
Or just look at the oligarchic excesses in Russia (and China) right now.

You either understand that we didn’t get here overnight... that getting anywhere else is going to involve big, structural change... that democracy is NOT a spectator sport... or you don’t.

The people who want Dems to stick with safe and cautious and moderate are the ones who are taking 💰💰💰 from corporations (oil and gas, big health and big pharmaceutical). Or they’re defending Tulsi Gabbard’s right to be a Russian asset. Or both.

We definitely need to keep this discussion going. But we also need to secure our right — everyone’s right — to vote. We need to support the people who are on the front lines of this fight.

Stepping off my soapbox now...

I don't do Amazon.

that has already been shown not to be effective.

Thanks for your post!

wealth accumulation antithetical to democracy. Against the scorched-earth opposition of a Republican-dominated congress, of course. That was a big priority for Clinton also, but she declined to tip her hand on just how she'd do it. Of course our next Democratic president and congress will also have it as a top priority. Nancy reminded the nation of that at the opening of the 116th congress, quoting Justice Brandeis of FDR's era:

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

Reminds me that FDR initially ran on a very cautious platform, of necessity, and only after they were in office did Democrats unveil the scope of their wealth tax plan and pass the "soak the rich" laws of that era.

Only the specific details of Warren's particular plan to tax wealth are in any way "new," of course, and many people in and out of congress are debating how best to proceed, not whether to. Whether she becomes president or works from the senate or an important appointment, no doubt Warren will be encouraging public support for passage of bold action against this problem. A thought that makes me happy. Congress will need big support from the electorate to turn this around.

I enjoyed this very readable article, BlueM. Thanks.

Good start to answering the questions about "how are you going to pay for it" and "where is the magic money tree?"

You can't have a discussion about a wealth tax without addressing the tens of trillions hidden away in offshore tax dodge accounts and finally it looks like we have a candidate serious about cracking down.

Must read article. Thanks for posting.