Boosting taxes on America’s wealthiest people could bring in trillions of dollars to help the country solve its most pressing problems, according to Gabriela Sandoval, executive director of the non-profit Bay Area think tank Excessive Wealth Disorder Institute.
Sandoval, a former sociology professor at UC Santa Cruz, was hired in January at the San Francisco-based think tank founded last year and named after a concept coined by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. She previously worked at the Insight Center for Community Economic Development in Oakland and became steeped in issues around wealth inequality. “No one wanted to talk about decreasing wealth at the higher end,” says Sandoval.
The think tank promotes adding special surtaxes for ultra-wealthy people, imposing a “wealth tax” on assets such as real estate, yachts and luxury vehicles, and increasing IRS enforcement on the super-rich.
The institute takes aim at the richest .1% of Americans — people holding $50 million or more in wealth. Taxing them what the institute considers to be appropriately and effectively would generate up to $10 trillion over 10 years, Sandoval says.
Q: When you look at a $20-million house, what goes through your head?
A: Nobody needs this.
Q: Why shouldn’t people make a billion dollars if they have good ideas, work hard and make smart business decisions?
A: Most of the people that we are concerned about didn’t themselves work hard and make a billion dollars. A lot of that is intergenerational wealth. I live in California, so a lot of my neighbors are millionaires. They’re not who I’m concerned with. I’m concerned with the people who have hoarded … amounts of wealth that cannot be spent in a lifetime. They’ve taken our government hostage with their lobbyists and their attorneys. That’s where the disorder comes in, when you have people who have so much money that they’re controlling our democracy.
Q: Given the political power of the…
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