By Staff Writer Kira Bruce
Last Wednesday in an interview with the New York Times, Bill Gates sounded strangely similar to a Trump twitter rant regarding the proposed Warren tax bill. Gates said, “I’ve paid over $10 billion in taxes. I’ve paid more than anyone in taxes. If I had to pay $20 billion, it’s fine. But when you say I should pay $100 billion, then I’m starting to do a little math over what I have left over.”
Also in regard to whether he would meet with Warren to go over the tax reform he said, “I’m not sure how open-minded she is — or that she’d even be willing to sit down with somebody who has large amounts of money.”
After letting everyone who didn’t already know, Gates has ‘large amounts of money’ and bragged about the billions he’s paid in taxes over the years.
Warren responded on twitter perplexed as to why Bill Gates figured he would have to pay $100 billion in taxes under her tax bill. She offered to explain to him in person how much in taxes he would actually be paying under her tax reform.
Gates’ sentiment about a liberal tax reform is something that people need to understand is not factual. No one is expected to pay 95% of their wealth in taxes, that would be ridiculous.
On Warren’s website there’s an ‘Ultra-Millionaire Tax calculator”, there are options to input your wealth and it says how much you would pay under her tax bill. If you type in $107 billion (Bill Gates level of wealth) then you would pay an additional $6.38 billion in taxes.
$6 billion is a lot of money, an unimaginable amount to me. But, to Bill Gates, this is under a twentieth of his overall wealth. It leaves him still with over $100 billion.
“When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich“ – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
In 2017 to 2018 it’s estimated that Gates made approximately $4 billion. Under Warren’s tax bill he would be taxed at 37% owing $1.3 billion. Under Bernie’s Tax plan he would be taxed at 80% owing $3 billion.
To me, Warren’s tax bill is not aggressive enough on taxing extreme wealth. It makes no sense as to why someone should have $100 billion. They’re never going to use it all; they are essentially keeping all of that money out of the economy.
With Bill Gates extreme wealth tax alone we could make all of New York City’s five boroughs run off renewable energy and still have about $2 billion left over, which could go towards other efforts such as improving the lives of homeless people in the city, or improving public schools.
This money that would be taken away from extremely wealthy people won’t cause a detrimental change in their lives, yet, the benefits could be felt in our communities for years. I find extreme wealth taxing to be a necessary thing in America.
Many people would say that this could harm motivation or people would stop being innovative because what’s the point if your money is going to be taxed way.
But, the thing people aren’t understanding is that Bill Gates isn’t the one doing the innovation anymore. He doesn’t have to do anything his company is just quietly making him billions every year. Or, someone like Jeff Bezos, he doesn’t have to do any work anymore! He gets to sit back and enjoy the fruits or his employees labor.
I don’t necessarily think Bezos or Gates deserves the money from the labor their employees are generating. These men are so far removed from the origin of their wealth they really have nothing to do with it at this point.