Bernie Sanders is calling for America’s wealthiest to pay a 100% tax on income above $1 billion. In a 2023 interview on HBO, Sanders explained his stance: “You may disagree with me, but I think people can make it on $999 million. I think that they can survive just fine.”
This reflects his belief that the ultrarich should not exist in a society with such extreme economic inequality. On his Facebook page earlier this year, Sanders explained his position, saying, “We live in a nation today that has more income and wealth inequality than has ever existed in the history of the United States.” Bernie has long sought to bring attention to America’s income inequality, stating that while the billionaire class is “doing phenomenally well,” 60% of Americans are “living paycheck to paycheck.”
“What I believe is that we got to take on the greed of the billionaire class and say, yes, you know what, guys … you are going to start paying your fair share of taxes,” Sanders said.
Bernie doesn’t just want to target billionaires’ income – he’s also proposing a progressive wealth tax on households worth over $32 million, starting at 1% and climbing to 8% for billionaires. He’s also proposed an exit tax of 40–60% on assets for those renouncing U.S. citizenship to avoid taxes.
As part of his ongoing effort to hold oligarch’s accountable, Sen. Sanders is releasing a new campaign directed at the nation’s wealthiest individuals—including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg—who are among the most powerful oligarch’s in the world and waging a campaign to strip people worldwide of political agency while impoverishing working people across the world so that the rich can can gain even more wealth and power.
Announcing a new series that will detail how “billionaire oligarchs” in the U.S. “manipulate the global economy, purchase our elections, avoid paying taxes, and increasingly control our government,” Sanders said that it makes him laugh when mainstream pundits talk openly about the nefarious oligarchic structures in other places (say Russia), but refuse to acknowledge the issue exists here in the United States.