A Wealth Tax Is the Logical Way to Support Coronavirus Relief – The New York Times

The virus does not respect social boundaries, and (especially because there are no miracle cures) it strikes people in every class. Tom Hanks and Prince Charles both caught Covid-19 early, and the news includes daily reports of other rich and famous people who are sick or who have died from the disease.

But the social and economic effects of the coronavirus vary markedly by class. The rich retreat to comfortable homes with private gardens, or even to second houses in the country. The rest remain cooped up, often in small apartments in dense neighborhoods, and struggle to find daily necessities. Even in the face of social distancing, the economic essentials of elite life can continue unabated. The rich tend to do jobs that allow for remote work and provide employment security.

Americans with college degrees are three times more likely to be able to work from home than those with no education past high school, while those who earn more than $80,000 per year are over four times as likely to be able to work from home as those who earn less than $33,000. Small wonder, then, that cellphone location data reveal that residents of rich neighborhoods isolated themselves sooner, and have remained isolated longer, than residents of poor ones.

The inequalities among children are especially awful and will reach deep into our future. Rich private schools move online with great success, while public schools, especially in poorer districts, find remote learning much more challenging. Long summer holidays already segregate the rich, whose achievement test scores continue to rise, from the poor, whose reading and math skills fade each summer. Just imagine the unequal effects of a lost semester or, God forbid, two.

An effective, really robust relief package, unconstrained by cost, is in everyones interest. The Cares Acts direct cash payments phase out once households make $150,000 per year and are eliminated for households that earn more than $198,000 per year, but the relief efforts indirect effects extend more widely and reach the rich nonetheless. These programs protect everyones health by making social distancing financially possible for ordinary Americans. They save jobs, prevent bankruptcies and keep the economy afloat, which helps investors. The initial stock-market bump triggered by the Cares Acts passage added more than $4 trillion to the value of equities in the United States, and the richest 10 percent of households, holding 84 percent of American-owned stocks, benefited from this bump to the tune of roughly $2 trillion.

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A Wealth Tax Is the Logical Way to Support Coronavirus Relief - The New York Times