Don’t believe the hype: Wealth taxes are nothing new (Foreign Policy)

Foreign Policy published an article stating that this year, figures from one-time U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders to U.K. Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds have called for the exploration of a wealth tax, making it one of the most popular and seemingly new policy ideas on both sides of the Atlantic.  If there were a universal levy of, say, 2 percent on this wealth, it would raise $1.6 trillion a year. According to the IFPRI, it could cost as little as $7 billion (See the blog post, The multibillion-dollar question: How much will it cost to end hunger and undernutrition?) a year to eliminate world hunger.) In the United States alone, there was some $18 trillion in broad money in 2018, approximately 70 percent of which was held by the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans. Assuming only the rich were taxed at 2 percent, that could net the government $250 billion.