I spent my formative years on the internet between 1998 and 2004, so I know a thing or two about insulting people online for saying something stupid. In 2026, at age 40, I thought I was past that. Then I read an article in The Hill, and the nostalgia of my teenage years came flooding back. I decided, why not a quick takedown of someone who purports to be an expert in their field. You know, for old times’ sake.
The article in question is entitled, “Can a wealth tax actually solve our political and fiscal problems? The math says no.” It’s written by Dr. Jeff Hoopes, a professor at the University of North Carolina. I’ll briefly summarize his arguments and then explain why he is wrong.
He argues as follows:
1. The richest 400 Americans are worth roughly $8 trillion.
2. If you were to tax these people at 10% annually for 10 years, and the value of their assets continued to grow at current rates, you would not dilute their fortunes enough to prevent them from influencing elections or politics in general.
3. The collective worth of these 400 Americans is “only” about four times as much as the annual federal deficit, so even a 100% tax on these individuals would only cover the deficit for 3.8 years.
4. Taxing billionaires won’t solve our financial problems.
None of the numbers quoted by the author are wrong. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his calculations about how much wealth billionaires would lose to a 10% annual wealth tax. That’s not particularly important for this discussion anyway. I will concede his first three points, but his last point is wrong and misleading.
His first argument is that a 10% wealth tax wouldn’t be enough to reduce government capture by the rich. The problems with this argument are 1) dramatic reductions in the wealth of one person doesn’t only mean that this person has reduced political influence; it means that the political influence this person loses moves to other people, 2) the author notes that the tax would dramatically reduce wealth over time, but stops counting after 10 years; surely he knows this wealth would be further reduced if he ran the numbers out for 30 or 50 years, and 3) If anything, this argues that a 10% tax might not be significant enough; a 20% annual wealth tax would be much more effective than his hypothetical example. With the proper tax thresholds, and a long enough time horizon, a wealth tax would undoubtedly achieve the reduction in political capture that the author is referencing.
Dr. Hoopes’ second argument is that a wealth tax on the top 400 richest Americans would not solve the budget deficit. There are some unwritten implications here. First, the author is implying that the purpose of a wealth tax is to solve the budget deficit and/or national debt crisis. This is not necessarily true. A wealth tax is healthy for a capitalist social democracy like ours because is increases the speed of money in the economy. That is, when money is less concentrated, it tends to be spent more actively, economic demand grows, and more jobs are created. Additionally, as we just discussed, wealth taxes tend to dilute political power, which is exactly what you want in a democracy.
Second, the author implies that a wealth tax would only target the 400 richest people in the country. This would be a poorly designed tax indeed. While the net worth of the 400 richest Americans is “only” around $8 trillion, the net worth of the top 1% of American households is around $60 trillion dollars, which is way more money than we would need to completely eliminate our national debt (roughly $40 trillion at the time of writing), while allowing those who are taxed to retain so much of their wealth that neither they, nor their children, nor their grandchildren would ever have to work a day in their lives. A well-thought-out wealth tax would easily allow us to completely eliminate our national debt without significantly impacting the lives of those affected by the tax.
Given how misleading this article was, I can’t help but poke a stick in Dr. Hoopes’ eye. Come on man. You’re a university professor with a doctorate, and you’re a certified accountant. I know you know how to do math. I know you know this article was misleading.
Ironically, I think this article is an example of the very political capture that Dr. Hoopes implies that he opposes. He created a straw man, then threw a couple rocks at it, and knows that the average reader is going to see that he has a degree and assume he knows what he’s talking about. He knows he is making a bad argument. This is how think tanks work. You get someone with letters behind their name to write an article about how wealth taxes are bad, and some billionaire’s nonprofit pays them to sit on their board or give a guest lecture. This kind of behavior is disgraceful, and unbecoming of someone in academia. But this is what happens when billionaires get too much influence over the media.
Dr. Hoopes’ article, therefore, proves that we need wealth taxes.
Also, new episode on 10/8 so stay tuned.