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Friday, 30 April 2021
New top story from Time: America’s 1% Got Way Richer During the Pandemic. We Need a Onetime Wealth Tax to Help Rebuild the Country
The coronavirus has been nothing less than a calamity. But more than a year into the pandemic, it is distressingly clear that although the virus affects everyone, we are not all in this together. Instead, the disease highlights and worsens existing fault lines in American society, especially economic inequality.
The Biden Administration recognizes the problem. The American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act, signed into law in March, is the most economically progressive legislation in a generation. But for all that it does to fight poverty, the ARP will do distressingly little to reduce inequality.
The statute works almost entirely through public spending. But the economic inequality that separates the rich from the rest has become so great that spending alone can’t repair it or even reverse inequality’s increase over the course of the pandemic. The rich have too much money. We simply can’t spend our way back to equality.
Curing economic inequality requires redistribution, and redistribution means taxes. National solidarity in the face of a universal threat like the pandemic requires the rich to contribute to the relief effort. Income taxes can help, but the best way to reduce inequality and honor shared citizenship is to tax wealth.
The first wave of the pandemic hit the rich, who were exposed to the virus through travel and public appearances. But privilege quickly reasserted itself. COVID-19 infections soon became concentrated among low-paid workers, who cannot afford to leave their jobs and whose working conditions make social distancing difficult. In one study, the least economically privileged fifth of counties experienced COVID-19 death rates 67% higher than the most privileged fifth. Another study reports that Black Americans have died from COVID-19 at more than twice the rates of their white counterparts. Unemployment, and the lost income and dignity that follow, have also hit the worst off hardest.
Perhaps no facet of inequality has grown more dramatically than wealth. The 15 richest Americans have become over $400 billion richer since the markets bottomed out in March 2020. Meanwhile, a yearlong bull market—triggered by the CARES Act’s passage at the market trough and supported since then by a series of government rescues—has added roughly $4.8 trillion of wealth to the richest 1% of American households. More comprehensive measures, which include real estate and privately held companies, report that the richest 1% of Americans gained over $7 trillion of wealth from the end of March to the end of December 2020.
By comparison, the money in the ARP—$1.9 trillion over 10 years—sounds relatively modest, and truly is. The ARP’s spending is front-loaded, so that $1.2 trillion will be spent in 2021. On average, each percentile in the bottom 80% of the income distribution will get a little over 1% of this sum, or about $12 billion. That’s less than 1/500th of the increased wealth that the richest 1% have accumulated over the pandemic year—a drop in the ocean.
The only truly effective way to tackle wealth inequality this extreme is to meet it head-on, by taxing wealth itself. A levy on the super-rich figured prominently in the presidential campaigns of Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who have now teamed up on a joint proposal to impose an annual 2% tax on household wealth above $50 million, rising to 3% above $1 billion. I propose a simpler and broader onetime wealth tax with lower exemptions and higher rates, tied directly to a national response to pandemic emergency: a onetime tax starting at 5% on the richest 5% of households, that is, on wealth in excess of $2.5 million.
Americans agree that the extraordinary catastrophe caused by COVID-19 calls for an extraordinary response—one that draws not on the income used to fund everyday government expenditures, but rather on the stock of advantage that the most privileged have accumulated across decades of good times. When asked in a poll about the onetime tax, Democrats favored the plan by a ratio of 6:1, independents by nearly 3:1, and even Republicans favored the tax by 2:1.
Read More: It’s 2023. How We Fixed the World Economy
All the proposed wealth taxes have strengths and weaknesses. Ongoing taxes can have higher exemptions and lower rates and might raise more revenue over the long run. On the other hand, the complexity of the extreme fortunes (offshore trusts, private investments, art, etc.) on which ongoing taxes focus make them difficult to administer; the super-rich have many opportunities for tax avoidance; and the prospect of regular wealth-tax bills might discourage capital accumulation and reduce economic growth. A onetime tax can reach a broader tax base with a simpler structure and fewer unwanted side effects.
The richest 5% of American households own two-thirds of the country’s total wealth, much of it in forms (publicly traded securities, real estate property) for which data on valuations already exist. Using a past date—for example, the date on which the wealth-tax bill was introduced in Congress—to fix valuations makes tax avoidance much less of a problem. And a onetime tax will create no economic distortions on savings and investment going forward. A onetime tax can also raise more immediate revenue and reduce inequality more quickly than an ongoing tax, even as it leaves unresolved future battles over economic justice.
Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.” He should be taken literally. World history teaches that oligarchies are almost impossible to unwind except by war or violent revolution. Extreme wealth inequality confronts the U.S. with a civilizational threat. Wealth taxes answer the threat.
Markovits is the Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School and the author, most recently, of The Meritocracy Trap
New top story from Time: Pfizer-BioNTech Will Start to Ship Smaller Packs of Its COVID-19 Vaccine, In An Effort to Reach More People
Now that every American adult is eligible to get vaccinated, vaccine makers are shifting their priorities to meet the changing needs of people will need to be vaccinated in coming months.
On April 29, Pfizer-BioNTech announced that it will begin shipping smaller packages of its COVID-19 by the end of May. Currently, the companies’ vaccine comes in packs of 195 vials, each of which contains about six doses of vaccine, for a total of around 1,100 doses. That size is useful for the mass vaccination centers that have been the focus of the U.S. vaccination program so far, with their goal of immunizing hundreds or even thousands of people a day. But it’s actually prohibitive for smaller doctors’ offices and pharmacies, which might be able to only vaccinate a few dozen people a week, no matter how many doses they have on hand. The company’s new packs will contain three containers of 25 vials each, for a total of 450 doses. The outer shipping container, which can serve as a temporary ultra-cold freezer at temperatures of around -70°C for the vaccine as long as it is replenished with dry ice for up to 30 days, will remain the same.
“We’re hoping this solution will enable channels like doctor’s offices where 1,100 doses may be too much quantity, to have something they can use,” says Tanya Alcorn, vice president of the biopharma global supply chain at Pfizer.
The companies are working on other approached to making their vaccine more easily distributable. For example, they are hope that by the end of this year, they will have a version that won’t require mixing at the vaccination site. Currently, technicians have to mix the doses in the vials with a dilutant; a ready-to-use version of the vaccine could further expand the vaccine’s utility globally in places where such expertise isn’t available.
And like Moderna, which just recently reported it has begun testing a version of its vaccine that doesn’t need to be frozen (and could be stable at refrigerated temperatures for up to three months), Pfizer-BioNTech scientists are developing a version of their vaccine that can be shipped and stored at refrigerated temperatures. Alcorn says those studies are ongoing and if all goes well, the companies may have a vaccine by early next year for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to review.
Thursday, 29 April 2021
New top story from Time: More Than 100 Injured in Stampede at Israeli Religious Festival
(JERUSALEM) — More than 100 people were injured, dozens critically, in a stampede at a Jewish religious gathering in northern Israel attended by tens of thousands of people, Israel’s main rescue service said early Friday.
Magen David Adom tweeted that it was treating 103 people, including 38 in critical condition. Israeli media had earlier reported that a grandstand collapsed, but the rescue service said all the injuries happened in a stampede.
Israeli media reported that up to 38 people were killed, but the rescue service did not immediately respond to a request for confirmation. The Ynet news website was among those reporting the figure, and published a photo appearing to show several bodies.
The Israeli military said it had dispatched medics and search and rescue teams along with helicopters to assist with a “mass casualty incident” in the area. It did not provide details on the nature of the disaster.
The incident happened late at night and there were conflicting reports. Videos circulating on social media showed large numbers of ultra-Orthodox Jews packed together in tight spaces.
Tens of thousands of people, mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews, had gathered at the foot of Mount Meron to celebrate Lag BaOmer, a Jewish holiday honoring Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, a 2nd century sage and mystic who is buried there.
It was the first huge religious gathering of its kind to be held legally since Israel lifted nearly all restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic. The country has seen cases plummet since launching one of the world’s most successful vaccination campaigns late last year.
Health authorities had nevertheless warned against holding such a large gathering.
But when the celebrations started, the Public Security Minister Amir Ohana, police chief Yaakov Shabtai and other top officials visited the event and met with police, who had deployed 5,000 extra forces to maintain order.
Ohana, a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, thanked police for their hard work and dedication “for protecting the well-being and security for the many participants” as he wished the country a happy holiday.
Netanyahu is struggling to form a governing coalition ahead of a Tuesday deadline, and the national tragedy is sure to complicate those efforts.
