Last night, Michigan Democratic Senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed and Fox host Jesse Watters had an intense interview covering a wide range of issues. In the interview, El-Sayed reaffirmed his support for wealth taxes to fund Medicare-for-All, reparations, roads, and other programs. He is only the latest to support such a plan, which would (in my opinion) be unconstitutional on the federal level and disastrous on a state level.
Earlier in the week, El-Sayed expressed full support for a wealth tax, including non-billionaires. He declared on a podcast: “I also think we got to start taxing wealth for people who now have over $100 million. I mean at that point like what are gonna even do with more money?”
Figures such as Rep. Ro Khanna have also called for a wealth tax on millionaires, not just billionaires. As some of us predicted, the use of billionaires was simply a strategic and political framing. Once politicians succeed in opening up this untapped wealth to taxation, they will gradually work down the tax rolls as they acquire a windfall in new revenue.
I discuss the tax in my book “Rage and the Republic” as an example of the “eat-the-rich” politics used by demagogues from ancient Athens to the French Revolution. Politicians seek to divide a population into “haves” and “have-nots” with the promise that citizens could have it all if only they are given back power. Much of what El-Sayed said is ripped from the pages of such figures like Huey Long and his “share our wealth” campaigns in the 1930s.
In his Fox interview, El-Sayed reaffirmed his call for a wealth tax, adding:
“The question ultimately is, ‘Do you want to drive on good roads, or would you rather have a billionaire make a second billion?’ That’s what Mike Rogers wants. That’s why Donald Trump wants. Apparently, that’s what you want. I think the people in Michigan want something different.”
While El-Sayed has reported $686,069 in income with his wife in 2025, they would not be subject to the wealth tax. It would currently apply to those with $100 million or more in property and other forms of wealth.
El-Sayed appears to conflate or confuse wealth taxes and income taxes in the interview. He told Hannity, “If we tax you at 7%, you’re still going to make what? A cool $30 million off your billion dollars? I think that’s okay, they’re going to be okay, Jesse.”
It’s unclear what he is referencing. Even if you are talking about a billion dollars in income taxes, 7% would be $70,000,000, with $930,000,000 left after taxes.
However, there is a great difference between a wealth tax and an income tax. The wealthy have already paid taxes on their wealth. Indeed, they pay income taxes when the money is earned and pay taxes on any profits from that money when it is invested in stock or property. A wealth tax is an additional tax on all that you own from homes to boats to art.
At a seven percent tax on wealth for those worth $100,000,000, the wealthy would pay an additional $7,000,000 every year in Michigan beyond their income taxes. In Michigan, the state tax of 4.25% (and the corporate tax on their businesses at 6%). If the wealth tax is added to an income tax, that would be in addition to the 37% top tax rate in the federal system.
Again, the wealth tax would continue to apply to what an individual owns in the form of cars, homes, and other property every year, regardless of whether income declines.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) drove this point home when she ran for president, taunting the wealthy that she was coming for “your Rembrandts, your stock portfolio, your diamonds and your yachts.”
While some states allow a wealth tax, many of us view it as unconstitutional under the federal system. The federal government secured the right to tax individuals in 1913, but the 16th Amendment only approved income taxes.
This is why many of these same politicians are promising a hostile takeover of the Supreme Court by either eliminating the Court or packing it with an instant liberal majority. Once packed, the Court could greenlight a variety of unconstitutional measures.
Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.
Even if states like Michigan are allowed to do this, it will result in the same exodus that is unfolding in California, where an estimated trillions in jobs and revenue have been lost due to the threat of wealth taxes. That is why figures like Khanna and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) are calling for a national wealth tax, leaving the wealthy nowhere to go but out of the country.
This is precisely what socialist governments like France under François Mitterrand attempted in the last century, with disastrous results that tanked their economy and forced a rapid retreat from such policies.
As Michigan struggles to secure new businesses and jobs, El-Sayed is embracing the same policies that would decapitate the top of its tax base. While repeating the mantra that the wealthy are “not paying their fair share,” the top 10 percent pays more taxes than the bottom 90 percent combined. In 2023, the top 1 percent paid an estimated 38.4 percent of all federal individual income taxes.
El-Sayed has proven himself a gifted politician. He juxtaposes concrete benefits like new roads with the image of unused wealth among top earners. The fact is that Michigan will have fewer roads if it chases away top earners with their businesses and jobs.
Promising free stuff and soaking the rich has always resonated with those frustrated by economic conditions. Like Long, who referred to “our wealth” being held by the rich, El-Sayed portrays the property of the wealthy as rightfully belonging to the people, promising that “if we put a tax on wealth it would return a lot of that money back into public use.”
El-Sayed has perfected the “eat-the-rich” pitch in portraying the wealthy as virtual Scrooge McDucks who accumulate unused wealth as a type of vanity project. He has struck out at “people who have accumulated so much wealth that your money makes money.” That is also called investments that power the economy—and when your “money makes money,” it is taxed as income.
Nevertheless, El-Sayed is waging the same class war as other rising figures in the Democratic Party, denouncing “extreme wealth” as “an existential threat to our economy and our democracy and it demands a crisis-level response.”
The real crisis is unfolding as candidates like El-Sayed are promising trillions in new programs while promising to make the rich pay for it. As with Warren, their property is being portrayed as rightfully belonging to the public.
The problem is that both wealth and the wealthy are mobile and few are likely to stick around for El-Sayed’s people’s paradise in Michigan.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Democrats and their wealth taxes. They have no concept of economics and where wealth resides. They seem to think it all resides in some massive vault somewhere where piles of coins and green backs sit doing nothing. I would suggest they start off with viewing the movie “it’s a Wonderful life”. When there is a run on the Savings and Loan and people panic George “the Owner” has to explain why all the money in the Savings and Loan does not sit there in that building but is instead invested in each others homes and businesses with only money residing in the building to cover emergency withdrawals. It’s a great little primer on American Economics. A recent published study of new millionaires reveals that most were people who showed discipline in their spending and used savings and prudent use of their cash to build wealth to the point where their money “invested” made more money”. If you wish a religious point of view, John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, as he walked the length and breadth of England, preached frugality in the early 1700’s and by the late 1700’s the Methodists were the most wealthy religious group in all of the UK.
If you cannot handle the costs, use frugality, it still works. It’s worked my entire life through all sorts of economic conditions.
And these wealth appropriators think the government can figure out the best use for their and our money. Have we not had enough examples of corruption and stupidity in government already
“They have no concept of economics and where wealth resides.” and you as a republican know where its all hidden. But the wealth the DA is targeting is income and that which appears on balance sheets. As for best use, once that money leaves a bank its the government’s; not yours to decide where to spend it. Since you’re not, or ever were, in government you don’t know the allocation policies and processes.
The math is wrong here – presumably their income is much less then $100 million. Assuming their income is, say $10 million, then the effective tax rate would be 111%- $10 million income and $11,1 million in taxes ($7 million wealth tax, $3.7 million in federal tax and $425k in state tax)
At a seven percent tax on wealth for those worth $100,000,000, the wealthy would pay an additional $7,000,000 every year in Michigan beyond their income taxes. In Michigan, the state tax of 4.25% (and the corporate tax on their businesses at 6%). If the wealth tax is added to an income tax, it would be a 11.25% individual tax burden in addition to the 37% top tax rate in the federal system. That is almost a 50% tax burden if some income and wealth taxes are imposed (absent deductions like a State and Local Tax or SALT deduction).
“The math is wrong here ..” So what, it’s just an example of the financial impact a rich person would encounter in MI.
The combining of the Islamic Jihad, the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) and the Democratic National Communist (DNC) is apparently the Plan to destroy the Republic of the United States. Be very careful with these people.
“The Plan”? Have you seen a hard copy of it? Where? Who has it?
The DSA strategy is simple, and we’ve seen it before. Books have been written about how Adolph Hitler, yes, that one, came to power by reminding the German people of how abused they were by the consortium of European nations that defeated them in WWI and then exacted “exorbitant” and unfair reparations that bankrupted the nation and made everyone poor. Keynes, the great British economist and influential figure in the post-war financial proceedings, actually predicted that the reparation payments imposed on Germany would create havoc and cause average Germans to suffer greatly. In retrospect, he was correct, but they did not listen to him. Fourteen years later, Hitler would rally the German people to elect him on the claim that the treatment of Germany after the war was excessive and humiliating and he would change this. We know the rest of the story.
Today, the DSA seems to be mimicking Hitler’s strategy by dividing us into rich and poor and pitting one against the other. Hitler succeeded in getting his followers to ignore reality, focus all problems on themselves, and believe that the cause of their plight was the greedy and evil conquerors.
Will the strategy work again? I don’t think so, but it will take one or two elections to put the feathers back in the pillow. In the meantime, the media will make heroes of our mini-Hitlers as they rail against the rich, the Jews, American culture, and the Constitution. These must be put down before what they offer can come to pass. But like all parasites, they eventually will kill their host – the Democratic Party – and then they themselves will perish. Why? Because America today is nothing like Germany in the early 1930s and the common ethos today is not “eat the rich,” but instead “become the rich,” and there’s only one party that can deliver that. Once again, the invisible hand is moving to make America great.
“DSA seems to be mimicking Hitler’s strategy ..” Not all all. That so called strategy has part n parcel of politics since Rome.
I’m guessing yo have a blazing hate about socialism. Ever live in a socialist country?
so who wants to be Cuba, where they TOOK all the people’s money?
TOOK? Got proof? NOPE?
Does MORON ANON ever shut up?? NOPE
Does MORON Dustoff ever shut up?? NOPE.
voting Democrat is EVIL!
Meanwhile Obamas, clintons, pelosi, Bernie, etc fly on private jets and EVERYTHING is paid for!
The Democrats Party needs to be Abolished!!!
All on private jets.? When I fly I use a private jet from Southwest or JetBlue, American etc… all private jets just owned by a corporation.
El Sleazeball
Go away Dustoff.
GO AWAY PSYCHO MORON ANON!! Everyone isn’t Dustoff or Estovir. I’ve been on this blog for 3 years. Keep up BOZO
Ok Dustoff, whatever you say.
“Unused wealth”? Money sitting in an financial account collecting interest?
The Affluent White Female Liberal, consumed with a blinding hatred of anything Trump combined with their absolute stupidity, will trade their incredible freedoms for genuine oppression and male patriarchy electing Muhammad El-Sayed Obama as US Senator.
Sharia law forbids abortion, requires women’s subjugation to every man, orders young girls to be forcibly removed of their genitalia and girls as young as 9 years old to be non-consentually married to men well in their old age.
Be careful for what you wish, ladies.
Hatred, stupidity, oppression, and female…. got a problem with females dude?
Apropos Harvard U., with a $56 B endowment, NP’s should be taxed too. Right?
The socialists want humans’ money, but not non-profits, who finance them, but aren’t corporations people too? Citizen United v FEC.
Communities, too, are representative of people. Umbrella corporations? Wicked. #HateLovesAbortion