https://theintercept.com/2019/01/24/elizabeth-warren-proposes-annual-wealth-tax-on-ultra-millionaires/?menu=1

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN’S presidential campaign has rolled out a proposal for an annual tax on wealth, becoming the first major Democratic candidate to follow a recommendation outlined in Thomas Piketty’s blockbuster book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.”

The proposal, according to two University of California, Berkeley, economists who are leading experts on wealth and inequality, would shrink the wealth of the superrich by $2.75 trillion over a 10-year period, while only affecting around 75,000 U.S. households.

A paper distributed by Warren’s campaign announcing the proposal notes that the United States contains “an extreme concentration of wealth not seen in any other leading economy.” As UC Berkeley’s Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman have demonstrated, the top 0.1 percent has had their wealth share nearly triple between the late 1970s and 2016.

Warren actually endorsed the concept of a wealth tax five years ago, in an interview with Piketty and The Intercept’s Ryan Grim. Asked how a bill to tax wealth would sound after Piketty described it, Warren said, “Oh, I’m in, I’m in, I’m in — in on the notion that we have to rewrite our tax code.” She added that the tax code “has to reflect the importance of work and people who achieve and people who accomplish, over being born into wealth.”