Sanders proposed a lower starting point—a 1 percent annual tax on fortunes greater than $32 million, with increases reaching to 8 percent for those whose wealth exceeded $10 billion. Both candidates relied on the advice of a now-famous pair of French economists at the University of California, Berkeley, Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez. They estimated that Sanders’s proposal could raise $4.35 trillion over a decade, giving the government the ability to furnish universal health care and childcare, while expanding affordable housing.
