Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

American billionaire Elon Musk, currently the planet's richest human with a net worth hovering around $800 billion, aspires to corral even more wealth and become the world's first trillionaire - and he appears to be on track to do so relatively soon.  The 54-year-old Musk has a life goal of accumulating $10 trillion in wealth.  As his grotesque levels of wealth grow, so too does his influence and power over the other inhabitants of Planet Earth.

Musk has also said that he expects to pay $500 billion in total taxes over his lifetime.  $500 billion is only five percent of $10 trillion, and that would have been spread out over a lifetime.  Clearly Musk does not see taxes as being a major drain on his lifetime financial situation.

One measure of Elon Musk's wealth that has been bandied about the internet for almost a year is the fact that he has more wealth than over 52% of American households combined - more than half of American households in total!   Another measure of Elon's wealth is that it is more than 65 million times that of the average American. (Or, as Senator Elizabeth Warren so dramatically expressed it, if the average American's wealth was represented by one grain of rice, Elon's wealth would be a 350-pound bag of rice!

But Elon Musk is just one pig-rich American, albeit he is the biggset hog in the lot.  Google AI says that the US leads thte world in billionaire population and that there are somewhere between 987 and 1,135 billionaires currently residing in the United States of America - with a collective wealth of over $5.7 trillion.

And you know what?  All of them could get by quite nicely on less.

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, one of the Senate's top financial watchdogs, is proposing a wealth tax on America's uber-rich.  Senator Warren's wealth tax proposal involves a 2% annual tax on the net worth of households and trusts with over $50 million in assets, and rising to 3% on fortunes of more than a billion dollars.   She believes her proposal will raise $3 trillion to $6 trillion over a decade to address societal issues like child care, health care, homelessness, and education.  

Senator Warren's proposal would effect ONLY households with a net worth of over $50 million, literally none of my friends and neighbors - and it will provide life-sustaining assistance when, in the very near future, Artificial Intelligence decimates the job market.

But that is a whole other blog posting.

The people of the United States are fortunate to have fighters like Elizabeth Warren on their side as they battle the greed of the oligarchs and rage against the machines.