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Dear Friend,
Senator Elizabeth Warren got it right in her tweet about Elon Musk this week:
“Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.”1
Musk may be Time’s Person of the Year, but he is also the United States’ biggest mooch, paying nearly no federal income taxes in 2018. Now his net worth has ballooned to nearly $300 billion.2 And the spotlight on him and his ridiculous hoard of money is helping to fuel public support for a tax on billionaires—which is where Demand Progress comes in.
Will you chip in $10 to Demand Progress and help pressure Congress to pass a wealth tax?
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Musk shot back at Sen. Warren on Twitter, calling her names and mocking her, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is worth a staggering ten times more than he was just 18 months ago, when the pandemic began.3
And it’s not just Elon Musk profiting off us while working families struggle with exploding inflation and skyrocketing food and childcare costs. Jeff Bezos saw his worth jump 66%. Mark Zuckerberg’s grew 136%. Overall, billionaires got an average of 62% richer—gaining $1.8 trillion—while barely paying taxes at all.4
The ultra wealthy are able to accumulate that money because of the U.S.’s infrastructure, workforce, and business-friendly legislation—but they aren’t paying the taxes you and I do to keep the country going.
A wealth tax won’t take any of those billionaires out of the 1%, but it can help support programs that will change the lives of millions of people. The current Build Back Better bill has paid family leave, childcare subsidies, universal pre-K, Medicare expansion, and climate action—and making billionaires pay their fair share should be part of the deal.5 We must ensure that a wealth tax is included in the Senate’s bill.
It’s time to stop letting billionaires avoid paying higher taxes. Demand Progress has mobilized people to send more than 240,000 messages to Congress in support of wealth taxes in 2021, and we’re using that power to make sure that Congress hears us in 2022.
Will you donate $10 to Demand Progress help pass a wealth tax?
Thanks for standing with us.
Robert Cruickshank,
Demand Progress
PS: Your contributions are what keep us nimble and prepared to take on important fights like these as they happen. Will you become a monthly donor to keep our work going?
Sources:
1. CNN, "Elon Musk calls Elizabeth Warren 'Senator Karen' in fight over taxes," December 15, 2021
2. ProPublica, "The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax," June 8, 2021
3. Forbes, "#2 Elon Musk," December 16, 2021
4. Institute for Policy Studies, "U.S. Billionaires Got 62 percent Richer During Pandemic. They’re Now Up $1.8 Trillion." August 24, 2021
5. Vox, "The state of the shrinking Build Back Better Act," December 13, 2021
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