Senator Warren’s proposed wealth tax would be much more difficult to enforce than existing federal taxes because of difficulties of valuation and the ways by which the wealthy can under-report their true wealth.
If successfully enforced, Senator Warren’s proposed wealth tax would substantially decrease the share of wealth going to the top 0.1% of wealth-holders after 20 years.
A public policy goal that could be accomplished with a well-enforced wealth tax could be equally accomplished with modifications to existing federal taxes – for example, revising the estate tax and/or capital gains tax.
Forcing Amazon to divest Whole Foods now would be in the public interest.
Acquisitions by large tech platforms where there are risks of anti-competitive effects like those posed by Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods should not be permitted.
Large tech platforms, such as Amazon Marketplace and Google Search, should be designated as ‘platform utilities' and broken apart from any participant on that platform.
‘Modern monetary theory’ (MMT) – the idea that a country that is able to borrow in its own currency need not worry about government deficits and debt – has been all over the economics and finance media in recent weeks. This approach to macroeconomics, which has been used to underpin calls for new public spending programs, has been debated widely in newspaper columns, blog posts and tweets – often in quite vitriolic ways.
