My Two Cents

Last week Lorna and I attended our first Elizabeth Warren rally with about 8,500 others in San Diego. What was most striking about it was how good the lady is at public speaking. Whether she’s grown in to it on the campaign trail or was always good at it, I’m not entirely sure, though her years as a popular professor at Harvard would suggest she’s been comfortable on stage for some time. And the video that went viral in 2012 of her speaking to a small living room gathering that put her firmly on the national map showed that she was capable of memorable rhetorical flashes. Lorna had a long career in public speaking, and having listened to her often and observed other successful speakers I know that one of the hallmarks of an outstanding presenter is the ability to weave the personal with the impersonal…be it philosophy, policy or politics. I had heard bits and pieces of Warren’s stump speech in various media before the rally, but watching her seamlessly segue from her story about “that dress” to the current economy, from her story of being fired for a pregnancy to the need for structural change in the system is to witness nearly flawless political narrative. It is clear that this gift for communication…personalizing the impersonal…is largely responsible for her steady rise in the presidential polls as more people get to experience her live, and the caricature that the media and the moneyed class created of her crumbles.I have one quibble. A key part of one of her most famous plans is a 2% wealth tax on those making more than $50 million to fund many of her most ambitious programs. She rightly and rather effectively frames this as a tax of 2 cents on each dollar the super rich make after their 50 millionth dollar. As she blithely says, that first 50 million is theirs…which may get her sliding onto “if you like your insurance you can keep it” thin ice. That first 50 million gets taxed too, but separately and differently from her new wealth tax. That’s a quibble, too, I guess, but not my main one. I love the whole 2 cents meme that she builds to a crowd chant at the end of her rally, but I believe it needs some tweaking because it puts her in danger of being accused of magical thinking. The details of the plan are spelled out on her website, as follows:       Married couple with household net worth of $100,000—the median level in the United States·       Pays zero tax because they are below the $50 million thresholdMarried couple with a primary and vacation residence and substantial retirement savings for a household net worth of $20 million·       Pays zero tax because they are below the $50 million thresholdExtremely successful small business owner of a $30 million business as well as additional assets for a household net worth of $40 million·       Pays zero tax because they are below the $50 million thresholdHedge fund manager with a net worth of $500 million·       Pays a 2% tax on the $450 million in net worth above the $50 million threshold, producing a total annual liability of $9 millionHeir with a net worth of $20 billion·       Pays a 2% tax on the $950 million between $50 million and $1 billion, and a 3% tax on the remaining $19 billion, for a total annual liability of $589 million.
(Here, too, she should make clearer that all those people making less than $50 million will still be paying their normal taxes, but zero of the new Wealth Tax.)The potential problem, I believe comes in trying to deliver all that as succinctly and vividly as possible before a large, live audience. In John Allen Paulos’s invaluable book Innumeracy, he discusses at length Americans’ phobia, suspicion and incomprehension in the face of large numbers. I don’t know that even the most dedicated Warren supporter can easily conceive of how that 2 cents eventually becomes the 3 trillion dollars she says it will. There seems to be a plank missing in the bridge she's building, but Paulos may be able to provide it. In his book he writes:

I once wrote to a significant minority of the Forbes 400, a list of the four hundred richest Americans, asking for $25,000 in support of a project I was working on at the time. Since the average wealth of the people I contacted was approximately $400 million…and I was asking for only 1/16,000th of that wealth, I hoped that linear proportionality would hold, reasoning that if some stranger wrote to me asking for support for a worthy project of his and asked me for $25, more than 1/16000th of my own net worth, I would probably comply with his request. Alas, though I received a number of kind responses, I didn’t receive any money.

I think Warren should put her supporters in the position of the super rich in just this way. Ask them to imagine--not as an actual policy, but as a thought experiment--giving up 2 cents for every dollar they make over a thousand, for instance. Take them through how that would add up to $20 if they're making 2000...and then think of multiply that $20 for every additional thousand. That makes their calculation easier and more comprehensible rather than discussing the plan in terms of unimaginable millions and billions. It also makes their buy-in of the idea more tangible and rational than some inchoate desire to just tax the rich. Not to be too classist about this, but I’d bet that people of less lofty incomes would, like Paulos says, express more willingness to give up 2 cents on each of their dollars over a certain amount if it came with the promise to commit it to some worthy cause such as homelessness or health care or gun safety or education.
Perhaps this tweak of mine is not all that necessary. Warren’s Wealth Tax has pretty startling public support, even among Republicans. The enlightened rich have also virtually endorsed it. As for the moral high ground…it doesn’t get much higher. 
So, far be it from me to tell the Ma'm with a Plan how to run for president. She’s doing quite splendidly...as will the country, at long last, if she's elected president in 2020 in the greatest, most sorely needed do-over in world history.



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