And now there is more wealth to tax than ever before.īut that huge increase in wealth clearly wasn’t distributed in a way that met the needs of most nonwealthy people. That revenue could also help pay for investments in climate change mitigation or resiliency. Taxing wealth, supporters say, could allow for government to pay for the housing, the education, or the health care that is everyone’s right. All that money floating around somewhere has added urgency to calls for new wealth taxes. Last year’s bonanza of money creation was a combination of the Federal Reserve buying up a variety of assets (such as municipal bonds and other securities) and Congress spending unprecedented amounts of money into existence, all in response to the COVID-19 pandemic precipitating a temporary shutdown of the economy. Redistributing wealth or income isn’t a new idea, but what if redistribution wasn’t necessary at all? And, as The New York Times wrote in June 2021, “Even in a gilded age for executive pay, 2020 was a blowout year.” The stock market had a record year in 2021, boosting fortunes for the Bezos-Buffett-Gates-Zuckerberg class, whose net worth is primarily in stocks. Where did all those new dollars go? For one thing, a flood of cheap credit fueled a homebuying spree, pushing home prices up 14% nationally in 2020. financial system conjured up precisely $12 trillion out of thin air, on top of the $4 trillion already floating around the economy.
But as it happens, in just one month-April 2020 to be exact-the U.S. Where would $12 trillion even come from? It’s a fair question. student loan debt outstanding, and by some estimates as much as $12 trillion still owed in reparations to descendants of enslaved Black people in the United States. There is more money in existence today than there has ever been in the history of money.įor most of us, it certainly doesn’t feel that way, with millions of people behind on rent, more than $1.5 trillion in U.S.
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