{"id":47452,"date":"2026-04-01T11:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T18:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=47452"},"modified":"2026-04-01T11:39:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T18:39:13","slug":"let-me-clear-things-up-bernie-sanders-explains-wealth-tax-to-wall-street-overlord-jamie-dimon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2026\/04\/01\/let-me-clear-things-up-bernie-sanders-explains-wealth-tax-to-wall-street-overlord-jamie-dimon\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Let Me Clear Things Up\u2019: Bernie Sanders Explains Wealth Tax to Wall Street Overlord Jamie Dimon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Bernie<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) holds a \u201cTax the Rich\u201d rally at Lehman College to press New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to raise taxes on millionaires in New York City on March 29, 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0(Photo by Selcuk Acar\/Anadolu via Getty Images)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf my 5% wealth tax on billionaires was enacted, you\u2019d owe $135 million more in taxes, and a family of four making $150,000 or less would receive a $12,000 payment. Oh, and you\u2019d still be worth more than $2.5 billion.\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Stephen Prager<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mar 31, 2026 (CommonDreams.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As billionaires nationwide rally to stop tax increases on the wealthy, US Sen. Bernie Sanders<\/a> stepped in to \u201cclear things up\u201d for one of Wall Street\u2019s top power brokers after he railed against the proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following in the footsteps of California, where a popular ballot initiative<\/a> to impose a one-time 5% tax on the state\u2019s 200 billionaires has gained steam, Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna<\/a> (D-Calif.) introduced<\/a> their own federal proposal earlier this month to tax those with net worths of more than $1 billion 5% of their annual household wealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The proposal is projected to raise $4.4 trillion over the next decade to provide direct payments to lower-income Americans, reverse Republicans<\/a>\u2019 cuts to Medicaid<\/a> and Affordable Care Act<\/a> spending, expand Medicare<\/a>, and build millions of affordable housing<\/a> units, among many other expenditures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jamie Dimon<\/a>, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase<\/a>, who is worth about $2.8 billion according to Forbes<\/a>, appeared on Fox News on Tuesday and was asked by anchor Brian Kilmeade about Sanders\u2019 frequent accusations that billionaires \u201cdon\u2019t pay their fair share\u201d in taxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what he means by fair share,\u201d Dimon said. \u201cI\u2019ve listened to that my whole life, and I don\u2019t know what he means.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two did not address the facts that may have led Sanders to draw such a conclusion. For instance, the senator often notes that fewer than 1,000 billionaires own more wealth<\/a> than the bottom half of the US, around 175 million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those billionaires also manage to pay a lower effective tax rate than the average American by wielding loopholes<\/a> that allow them to exempt large chunks of their fortunes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanders took to social media<\/a> to respond to Dimon\u2019s incredulity about his idea of \u201cfairness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOk, Jamie: Let me clear things up for you,\u201d the senator wrote<\/a>. \u201cIf my 5% wealth tax on billionaires was enacted, you\u2019d owe $135 million more in taxes, and a family of four making $150,000 or less would receive a $12,000 payment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, and you\u2019d still be worth more than $2.5 billion,\u201d Sanders added. \u201cSeems pretty fair to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

X post: https:\/\/x.com\/BernieSanders\/status\/2039023988148421096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2039023988148421096%7Ctwgr%5E0ef46f37d4ba41d8b15b87ffa9671427a6a5c12a%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.commondreams.org%2Fnews%2Fsanders-dimon-wealth-tax<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dimon\u2019s remarks came as billionaires are in a full-blown panic<\/a> over the proposal for a one-time 5% tax in California, which is projected to raise about $100 billion, mostly to cover the Medicaid funding shortfall caused by the massive cuts in last year\u2019s GOP<\/a> budget<\/a> law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A poll earlier this month showed<\/a> that the measure, which will be put to voters in November, has about 2-1 approval, despite a more than $80 million effort by the state\u2019s elite\u2014most notably Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page\u2014to stop it in its tracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dimon himself is not known to have contributed to the effort. But during his Tuesday appearance on Fox, he echoed one of the movement\u2019s oft-used talking points: that raising taxes on the rich leads to an \u201cexodus\u201d of wealth from financial hubs like New York and California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Forbes senior contributor Teresa Ghilarducci explained<\/a> late last year, \u201cDecades of economic research show that billionaire \u2018flight\u2019 is rare, exaggerated, and often confused with tax avoidance through accounting maneuvers rather than physical relocation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christopher Marquis and Nick Romeo similarly said last month in a\u00a0piece<\/a>\u00a0for TIME that \u201cdespite\u00a0multiple<\/a>\u00a0debunkings,\u00a0<\/a>the \u2018millionaire exodus\u2019 panic remains a popular narrative,\u201d even though it is \u201cfrequently based on biased or sloppy arguments where anecdote replaces systematic evidence, correlation poses as causation, and every modest redistributive proposal is framed as an existential threat to prosperity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen Prager<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen Prager is a staff writer for Common Dreams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Full Bio ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) holds a \u201cTax the Rich\u201d rally at Lehman College to press New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to raise taxes on millionaires in New York City on March 29, 2026. \u00a0(Photo by Selcuk Acar\/Anadolu via Getty Images) \u201cIf my 5% wealth tax on billionaires was enacted, you\u2019d… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47452"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47453,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47452\/revisions\/47453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}