By Townhall. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been one of the strongest supporters and advocates of Medicare for All. After all, he wrote the original bill for the system. While some of the other 2020 Democrats have said they wouldn’t raise taxes on average families, Sanders has been upfront and honest that taxes would need to be raised in order to pay for this new system. But he has argued those tax increases would actually cost Americans less in the long run. . .

“What we will do — what we will do is have a four percent tax on income exempting the first $29,000,” he told a cheering crowd. “All right, good. You — you’re better at arithmetic than I am. Because what that means is if you are that average family in the middle who makes $60,000 a year, that means we’re going to tax you on $31,000 at four percent.” . . .

Is the $29,000 exemption for couples then? What is the exemption, if any, for singles? Is it safe to assume that exemption would be $14,500 (half of what he proposed for families)?

Bernie has said this would be a tax increase, so everyone would pay four percent on everything they make over the threshold he established, although that isn’t even very clear. Even with that exemption, that raises taxes on the poor and middle class, the very people Sanders has said he aims to protect.

Not only that but this proposal runs counter intuitive to his $15/hour minimum wage proposal. If he wanted everyone to make, at a minimum, $15/hour or $31,200 a year, even the so-called “working poor” would have their taxes increased.

(Read more from “WATCH: This Is Who Bernie Sander’s Tax Plan Hurts the Worst” HERE)

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Why Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax is a lousy idea

By Market Watch. . .Democrats want to raise income taxes on the affluent and corporations, and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are pushing wealth taxes to pay for student-debt relief, free college tuition, infrastructure projects, and similar initiatives to lessen inequality.

Warren’s ultra-millionaires tax would impose a 2% levy on individual fortunes over $50 million and 3% on those over $1 billion to raise, she says, about $2.75 trillion over 10 years. In her Medicare for All plan, she even floated a 6% levy for billionaires. . .

Working-class men sidelined by the Great Recession, now attracted by higher wages, are re-entering the labor force. The real inequality problem appears concentrated in the middle class — too many college degrees have not added value as specialized professionals and technicians are more in demand than generalists.

About three-quarters of household wealth may be in liquid assets like stocks and bonds but their value fluctuates. If equities were up 20% in 2021, and the IRS took $1 million from a taxpayer owning $50 billion, would it give back the money if the market fell 20% the next year? Likely not.

Larry Summers — hardly an advocate for conservative causes — notes history indicates every 1 percentage point increase in income-tax rates produces a 0.6 percentage point decrease in taxable income. That implies Warren’s ultra millionaires tax would harvest only $1 trillion—broadly in line with the analyses of other liberal and conservative economists. (Read more from “Why Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax is a lousy idea” HERE)

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