Wealth Taxes, Court Packing, and Revolution

Written by Oliver Perry

Fox News reported that presidential candidate Kamala Harris affirmed her support of a federal wealth tax.

It’s meant to hit only the “super wealthy”:

“The proposal would impose a minimum tax of 25% on total income, generally inclusive of unrealized capital gains, for all taxpayers with wealth (that is, the difference obtained by subtracting liabilities from assets) greater than $100 million,” the Treasury Department stated in its FY25 revenue proposals. The same proposal was also put forth by the Biden-Harris administration in fiscal year 2024 and in fiscal year 2023, but the minimum taxable amount was 20%.

However, the Income Tax Amendment was also supposed to hit only the super wealthy. Look what happened with that:

In 1908, the Democratic Party included a proposal for a graduated income tax in its 1908 presidential election campaign platform. Viewing it as a tax mainly on the wealthy, the majority of Americans supported enactment of an income tax.

But implementing a wealth tax isn’t the real game here. Sure, a wealth tax that eats your savings would be plenty bad. But the process that implements that tax will lever a socialist society onto America. As I’ve written before, this would be an anti-Christian evil.

What is a wealth tax?

A wealth tax is a tax on what you already own, not on new income. An annual wealth tax means you get to pay it over and over again. Keep this going long enough and all of your wealth is taxed away. The government, bite-by-bite, dispossesses you.

What would a wealth tax cover?

• Personal bank accounts, stocks, bonds, and other sorts of financial instruments.

• Personal property. Artwork, cars, and even your wedding band have taxable value.

• Real estate, starting with your house. If you’ve a farm then tax its land and improvements. Even the vacation retreat, or time share, gets taxed.

• Businesses and corporations have much that can be taxed. For example, buildings, machine tools, inventory, and the value of intellectual property like inventions and copyrights.

In short, you’ll be taxed for owning anything possibly valuable. And once profligate government spending (inflation) lifts the dollar value of your things you’ll pay for “unrealized capital gains.” You’ll be forced to sell your stuff for having had the privilege of owning it.

The wealth tax concept is sold to us as being a tax on someone else. But why don’t we learn that all taxes eventually expand to being universal, affecting everybody?

It’s not a sin to be wealthy

Many politicians and activists say that it is wrong to be rich:

• U.S. Senator Sanders said: “There should be no billionaires. We are going to tax their extreme wealth and invest in working people.”

• Business Insider quotes U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that a society that “allows billionaires to exist” while some Americans live in abject poverty is “immoral.”

• Columnist A.Q. Smith says: “Here is a simple statement of principle that doesn’t get repeated enough: if you possess billions of dollars, in a world where many people struggle because they do not have much money, you are an immoral person. The same is true if you possess hundreds of millions of dollars, or even millions of dollars. Being extremely wealthy is impossible to justify in a world containing deprivation.”

But the Bible has no problem with wealth as such. We frequently see that having great wealth is a measure of God’s approval:

• God rewarded Abraham with great wealth, with so much of it that he essentially needed an army to take care of it. That private army is how Abraham had men ready to defeat the kings that captured his relative Lot (Genesis 14:14).

• In the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30), Jesus approves the man who was faithful with much. That man was rewarded with even more wealth.

The biblical problems with wealth come when people let their money rule them (Matthew 19:16-27; I Timothy 6:6-12). And the Bible shows that with wealth comes responsibilities:

• Rulers and judges must not accept bribes, and so be unjust in their rulings (Isaiah 5:23; Ezekiel 22:12). It also isn’t be right to offer a bribe and so tempt them into sin (Luke 17:1-2).

• Don’t use your position to cheat those you do business with (Deuteronomy 24:10-15). Pay your bills in full, and on time.

• Be generous with your wealth, and help the poor (Deuteronomy 15:10; Hebrews 13:16; etc.). Generosity towards the poor comes highly recommended. But the Bible never tells rulers that they must, or can, enforce generosity. God deals with the ungenerous in His own time (Luke 16:19-31).

To read more about capitalism and monetary rewards, see my article Is Capitalism Immoral? 

Wealth taxes are legislated envy

That perennial candidate for president, the socialist Bernie Sanders, wants a federal wealth tax to fix claimed economic inequalities:

While Warren has touted the tax to fund her agenda, the primary purpose of Sanders’s proposal is to correct what his campaign called the “outrageous level of inequality that exists in America today and to rebuild the disappearing middle class.”

Calling wealth ownership “outrageous inequality” amounts to envy. This GotQuestions article does a good job of describing envy and its effects. The goal of a wealth tax is to impoverish people just because they are rich and you aren’t. A wealth tax is legislated envy.

The Bible has this to say about wealth taxes:

• The government is Gods’ minister of righteousness (Romans 13:1-4). The rulers are answerable to God for their actions (Luke 12:42-48; 1 Corinthians 4:2).

• The Bible says that our rulers and judges are to be impartial, not favoring the rich or the poor (Exodus 23:1-3; Leviticus 19:15).

The Bible makes it clear that stealing through use of a wealth tax isn’t right, even if the people vote to make it law. It’s being partial against the rich, and encourages our rulers to be partial in the future.

Wealth taxes make all of us poor very quickly

The Biden wealth tax plan, which Harris has endorsed, proposes taxing between 20% to 25% of “unrealized capital gains” on investments. But most wealth tax proposals tax the entire estimated value of property. Because that form of tax would be easier to administer, expect that any wealth tax plan morphs into that form.

The wealth tax advocate Thomas Piketty says that wealth taxes are meant to beggar you:

We are not going to wait until Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg reach the age of 90 before they begin to pay taxes. With the 3 percent annual rate proposed by Warren, a static estate worth $100 billion would return to the community in 30 years. This is a good beginning but, given the average rate of progression of the highest financial assets, the aim should undoubtedly be higher (5 to 10 percent or more).

“Return to the community” means “taxed to death.” You read it correctly, wealth taxes are meant to make people poor. Do some simple math, where you are the target:

• 2% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 30 years.

• 3% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 22 years.

• 7% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 10 years.

• 12% annual wealth tax: One-half of your wealth taxed away in 5 years.

The great economist Ludwig von Mises had this to say about punitive taxation:

More and more the policy of taxation evolves into a policy of confiscation. The aim on which it concentrates is to tax out of existence every kind of fortune and income from property, in which process property invested in trade and industry, in shares and in bonds, is generally treated more ruthlessly than property in land. . .

Nothing is more calculated to make a demagogue popular than a constantly reiterated demand for heavy taxation on the rich. Capital levies and high income taxes on larger incomes are extraordinarily popular with the masses, who do not have to pay them. . .

The destructionist policy of taxation culminates in capital levies. Property is expropriated and then consumed. Capital is transformed into goods for use and consumption. The effect of all this should be plain to see. Yet the whole popular theory of taxation today leads to the same result.

A wealth tax removes from us our retirement savings, our “rainy day” funds, and our children’s inheritances. We all become poor, and dependent on government largess. Socialist candidates tout the wealth tax because it fulfills an old communist dream. As Karl Marx said:

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

The Constitution blocks wealth taxes – for now

A federal wealth tax would be a boon for socialism. However, the U.S. Supreme Court previously ruled that the Constitution forbids wealth taxes because they’re a form of “direct tax.” This phrase appears only twice in the Constitution, in Article I:

• Within Section 2: Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.

• Within Section 9: No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on direct taxes only twice: 

• Hylton v United States (1796)

• Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. (1895)

For details on these cases, please read my prior article about the wealth tax.

Because of the Court’s rulings, the federal government is banned from taxing property, and banned from taxing income made from property. The Sixteenth Amendment (Income Tax Amendment) came along later, and modified the effects of the Pollock decision.

However, the Pollock interpretation of “direct tax” still holds, and prevents the federal government from implementing wealth taxes that target stocks, bonds, and real estate.

But time marches on, and justices come and go. How might a future Court take a different view of direct taxes? After all, the “separate but equal” argument ran through the Court a couple of times.

Want no limits on government? Pack the SCOTUS!

In their New York Times article law professors Ryan Doerfler and Samuel Moyn argue that the U.S. Constitution is beyond repair, and that America must be freed from it:

When liberals lose in the Supreme Court — as they increasingly have over the past half-century — they usually say that the justices got the Constitution wrong. But struggling over the Constitution has proved a dead end. The real need is not to reclaim the Constitution, as many would have it, but instead to reclaim America from constitutionalism.

The authors dive into fabulist schemes about how Congress could essentially ignore Constitutional restraints. In her New York Times article their book critic Jennifer Szalai argues that the U.S. Constitution is a threat to American politics:

The prospect of secession sounds extreme, but in suggesting that the Constitution could hasten the end of American democracy, Chemerinsky is far from alone. The argument that what ails the country’s politics isn’t simply the president, or Congress, or the Supreme Court, but the founding document that presides over all three, has been gaining traction, especially among liberals. Books and op-eds critiquing the Constitution have proliferated. Scholars are arguing that the Constitution has incentivized what Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt call a “Tyranny of the Minority.”

The anguish is, in some sense, a flip side of veneration. Americans have long assumed that the Constitution could save us; a growing chorus now wonders whether we need to be saved from it.

American politics and government have prospered under the Constitution for 235 years. But suddenly we’re called to replace the Constitution because socialists can’t get their ambitions past its restrictions on government overreach. It turns out that there is a simpler way to get around such restrictions.

This is to “pack the Supreme Court” with partisan judges.

Packing the U.S. Supreme Court isn’t a new idea. In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to add justices that would ensure that his spending policies wouldn’t keep getting knocked down. What saved us then was basically embarrassment over the overtly political action.

But nowadays, even if they had only slim majorities in Congress, would Democrats hesitate to expand the Court?

The result of overflowing the Court with partisan judges would be a toothless “living Constitution.” The justices would ignore what the Constitution actually says, rubber stamping whatever the government proclaims.

We’d get the wealth tax just because the judges say so. We’d get a lot worse things as well. I already wrote an article about the possibility of a crooked Supreme Court.

Is revolution on the ballot this November?

Any attempt to pack the U.S. Supreme Court begins by passing an enabling law. This means getting presidential approval. The upcoming election has only two realistic candidates – Trump and Harris.

One of those two will become our next President.

Trump isn’t interested in court packing, but what about Harris? She has been cagey about stating her policies, but insists that her values have never changed. What can we deduce about her values?

Harris doesn’t support the First Amendment. She said so in 2019 and in 2024. Her administration would persecute “misinformation,” which means stories not approved by the government:

We will hold social media platforms accountable for the hate, infiltrating their platforms because they have a responsibility to help fight against this threat to our democracy. And if you profit off of hate, if you act as a megaphone for misinformation or cyber warfare, if you don’t police your platforms, we are going to hold you accountable as a community.”

Supporting free speech rights means permitting the speech of people who disagree with you. But Harris says that she’ll censor speech she doesn’t like. Harris doesn’t support free speech, or the First Amendment.

Harris supports having different laws for different races. In a 2019 interview, Harris is quoted in conversation with another activist:

Man: We’re talking about things that specifically happened to black people. So we have to be specifically targeting those people … America you did this to THESE (black) people. You should write laws for THESE people. Don’t group us in with everybody … Let’s be fair, we’re playing from behind the 8 ball, we’re way back there. 400 years back there …

Kamala: That’s right. That’s right.

Although this sounds vaguely like affirmative action, it actually originates with Marxism. My article on Critical Race Theory shows that this is a Marxist policy meant to break up American society into a lot of little combative affinity groups. Illinois public school standards actually require teaching critical race theory to public school students.

Harris’ support for “don’t group us in with everybody” shows me that her values include fragmenting American society.

Harris believes that the same law should be applied differently, depending on race. Rather than “equality before the law,” Harris says that she is for “equity, ” meaning equal outcomes:

A mandate to foster equity, though, would give the government power to violate these rights in order to achieve identical social results for all people. In accordance with this thinking, the authorities might be justified in giving some people more rights than others. Indeed, this would arguably be strictly necessary, in order to create a society where everyone ends up in the exact same situation.

Harris’ failing to support “equal justice for all” reinforces the view of her dividing American society.

Based on Harris’ expressed values, I conclude that her values really haven’t changed. She learned Marxism from her father, a prominent Marxist economist. She’s not straying from that.

Harris believes in Marxist themes and policies, and says she wants to see them implemented. Given the opportunity – becoming President and controlling both houses of Congress – what stops her from packing the U.S. Supreme Court? We fear all sorts of forced changes to American society.

Changes resulting from packing the U.S. Supreme Court don’t come through national consensus, but rather by sleight of hand. This amounts to a de facto revolution. And we know that revolutions always result in considerable drama and violence.

It would be much better to avoid revolution in the first place. The most comprehensive way of avoiding socialism and revolution is national repentance, evangelizing obedience to God. The most expedient immediate avoidance is to not elect Harris as President.