Where The Money Lives

In my last blog post I wrote about the wealth tax that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders want to enact to fund their socialist agenda.

Sanders wants to tax married couples with net worths of at least $32 million ($16 million) single. Warren would tax households with at least $50 million. Bear in mind this is a wealth tax in addition to an income tax on these people.

Some tax experts have suggested that since Warren's tax would be assessed per household that it might be advantageous for some couples to divorce and avoid the tax. For example, a couple with $90 million could split and each would only have $45 million and not be subject to the tax. At the tax rate of 2%, divorcing would save the couple $1.8 million per year. Love and marriage would be more expensive than ever under Warren.

This is just another example, as I wrote in my last blog, of why a wealth tax is subject to manipulation and gaming of the system and would prove to be unworkable.

I recently came across an interesting infographic that shows where the so-called ultra high net worth ($30+ million) individuals (UHNWIs) in the United States and the world live.

It provides some useful perspective on the entire subject of wealth in the world.

For starters, there are just 198,342 high net worth individuals out of 7.7 billion people in the entire world.

That is a pretty small group of people. Sanders and Warren argue that it is not fair that so few have so much. It needs to be redistributed. However, why do they have so much? They produced. They created. They innovated. How many jobs are they responsible for? How many others are already living well because of these people? What happens if they decide it is not worth doing what they do any more? What happens if Atlas Shrugs?

There are 3,378 UHNWIs in New York City and 1,075 in Los Angeles.

I was surprised that there are more UHNWIs in Mexico City (1,256) than in LA.

London has more UHNWIs than New York City, LA and Miami combined.

Mumbai has more than Montreal, Madrid or Milan. It is also the city that is forecast to have the most growth in UNHWIs over the next five years (+38%)

Tiny Taipei has more than Shanghai, Zurich or Munich.

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The Virtual Capitalist also had another infographic of the universities in the world with the most Ultra High Net Worth graduates.

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20 of the top 25 universities are in the United States, led by Harvard and Stanford.

Harvard has 13,650 UHNW graduates. Combined they are worth $4.7 trillion. That means that Warren is planning to take in excess of $100 billion in wealth taxes per year from the graduates of the school she taught at. Do you think contributions to Harvard might come under some pressure because of that?

Stanford has 5,580 UHNW graduates. Penn has 5,575 (including President Trump).

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If you do the math based on the numbers above, Harvard and Stanford graduates account for 10% of all the UHNWIs in the world.

Why isn't this unfair or unjust if you follow the logic of Warren and Sanders?

To solve this injustice it seems they should be trying to breakup these two schools and redistribute the students to other schools.

Why don't we require some of those Stanford students to go to Chico State or Sonoma State?

How about a few Harvard students being redistributed to Framingham State or Fitchburg State?

It used to be called injustice if someone who did nothing took something away from the person who worked for and earned it.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren want you to believe that this should now be the other way around?