Elizabeth Warren in Vox Media
On Government Reform:
End corruption of government by corporations & billionaires
The main planks of Warren's updated anti-corruption plan includ[es] banning forced arbitration clauses and class action waivers for all employment, consumer protection, antitrust, and civil rights cases. "Widely popular policies are stymied because
giant corporations and billionaires who don't want to pay taxes or follow any rules use their money and influence to stand in the way of big, structural change," Warren writes. "We've got to call that out for what it is: corruption, plain and simple."
Source: Ella Nilsenella on Vox.com on 2019 Democratic primary
Sep 16, 2019
On Tax Reform:
Comparison of Trump wealth tax to Warren wealth tax
Sen. Elizabeth Warren wasn't the first major American politician to put the idea of a tax on large fortunes. Trump's plan, as articulated during a 1999 flirtation with a Reform Party presidential bid, differed from Warren's in three important respects:
- He wanted the tax to be a one-time levy that would reduce the national debt and therefore reduce interest service payments. Warren's plan would simply levy a smaller tax each year.
- He wanted a fairly hefty rate--14.5%. Warren's rate
structure is much lower than that.
- He set the threshold for his tax lower. While Warren wants to tax fortunes worth more than $50 million, Trump proposed taxing wealth starting at $10 million. This was in 1999; in inflation-adjusted dollars, that's
$15 million.
Warren has a progressive rate structure: Assets worth between $50 million and $1 billion would be taxed at 2%, and assets above $1 billion taxed at 3% tax. Trump's tax is flat but starts lower.
Source: Vox.com analysis of 2020 presidential hopefuls
Jan 31, 2019
On Tax Reform:
Curb inequality: 2% tax on assets over $50M; 3% over $1B
Warren wants to curb spiraling inequality and make the rich pay. Most Americans currently pay property taxes to their local government, a form of a wealth tax. The majority of middle class assets are property. Rich people of course own real estate, but
they tend to mostly own shares of stock and other financial assets that largely evade taxation.Warren's proposal is for a progressive wealth tax: a 2 percent levy on assets more than $50 million, and a 3 percent rate that only kicks in when you have
more than $1 billion.
The mere existence of the wealth tax would, on the margin, encourage wealthy individuals to dissipate their fortunes on charitable giving and lavish consumption. Wealth taxes, though once common in developed countries, have gone
out of style in recent years. While 12 OECD members had wealth taxes in 1990, just four--France, Norway, Spain, and Switzerland--do today. Warren's proposed rate would be slightly lower than Spain's but higher than the other three.
Source: Vox.com on 2020 Democratic primary contenders
Jan 24, 2019
On Welfare & Poverty:
Bankruptcy filers are squeezed by economy, not irresponsible
To Warren, bankruptcy filers generally aren't trying to get out of debts racked up irresponsibly. "Many people in bankruptcy were solid bill payers until something knocked their legs out from under them," she said while describing her research in 2000.
"For 2/3 of these people, it was loss of a job, for 40% it was a serious medical problem and for 20% it was the economic fallout of divorce."Warren, in her book "The Two-Income Trap", and on a blog called Warren Reports on the Middle Class, which she
wrote with some collaborators, pushed [that] view. Her argument was that structural shifts in American family and economic life had made middle-class finances more fragile, leading to a spike in bankruptcies induced by job losses or medical problems.
She castigated the [2005 Congressional bankruptcy] bill as exacerbating the middle-class squeeze and as being an example of a broken politics working for special interests rather than average Americans. In her book,
Source: Vox.com on Warren's "The Two Income Trap"
May 6, 2019
Page last updated: Dec 02, 2023