For what feels like forever, the Patriotic Millionaires have been talking about the need to tax unrealized capital gains. We’ve been talking about the need to uplift workers affected by the job loss and union decline brought on by deindustrialization. And last, but certainly not least, we’ve been talking about the looming expiration of many provisions of the 2017 GOP Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the opportunity it provides to right the tax wrongs of the past and fundamentally reshape our tax code to serve the needs of working people.

Now, The New York Times has entered all these conversations, and we’re feeling some considerable validation because of it.

For this week’s Closer Look, we’d like to highlight three articles that the Times has published over the last week that plug into these topics. We’ll give a brief summary of each hit and then share our own takeaways.

Donors Quietly Push Harris to Drop Tax on Ultrawealthy by Andrew Duehren and Theodore Schleifer

Two weeks ago, Vice President Harris publicly voiced her campaign’s support for President Biden’s Billionaire Minimum Income Tax proposal, which would require households worth over $100 million to pay a minimum 25% tax on their full income, including their unrealized capital gains. Now, the Times is reporting that, behind the scenes, some of Harris’ top Wall Street and Silicon Valley donors are pushing her to drop the tax from her agenda over concerns that it will stifle innovation.

Suffice it is to say, we were not pleased by this news. Our Chair, Morris Pearl, released a statement last Friday to this effect: “Claiming that making a billionaire pay taxes on their second billion will reduce innovation is as absurd as the rooster claiming the sun won’t rise without his crowing…The only thing at stake here is the remarkably fragile egos of billionaires who are on the verge of realizing they might not be saving civilization for anyone, including themselves.”

If you remember, only a few weeks ago, we devoted an entire Closer Look to defending the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax, which you can revisit HERE. As we said, it is disingenuous to suggest that such a tax will stifle innovation, as people will not be subject to the tax if more than 80% of their wealth consists of illiquid assets like shares in private start-ups. What the tax will do is correct the perverse investment incentives that our tax code currently perpetuates by encouraging wealthy investors to hold onto assets for as long as possible to avoid paying taxes on their capital gains. More importantly, by requiring wealthy investors to pay tax regularly on their income like working people do, the proposal will introduce a modicum of fairness to our tax code that has been lacking for too long.

Can Democrats Stop the ‘Tax Doom Loop’? by Andrew Duehren

For more than two decades, America has suffered from what Senator Elizabeth Warren calls the “tax doom loop.” Duehren spells out the “tax doom loop” the following way: “It goes like this: Republicans pass huge tax cuts that are, at first, only temporary. By the time the tax cuts are set to end, Americans have become used to owing less to the government. Hesitant to raise taxes, Democrats join with Republicans to continue many of the cuts indefinitely.”

We’ve seen this in action: in 2010 and 2012, Democrats went along with Republicans in extending many of the Bush tax cuts, with the result being that roughly 82% of those cuts became permanent law. But next year, when many of the individual provisions of the 2017 GOP Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) are scheduled to expire, they will have a chance to prove that they’ve learned from their mistakes and end the “tax doom loop” once and for all.

To be clear, we think that the tax relief for low- and middle-income earners that the TCJA introduced – like the doubling of the standard deduction and the Child Tax Credit – should stay. That’s not “tax doom” in the slightest. What is tax doom, and what should be dropped, are all of the unnecessary giveaways that the TCJA showered on the wealthy and corporations.

How NAFTA Broke American Politics by Dan Kaufman

In a piece for The New York Times Magazine, author Dan Kaufman uses the closure of a Milwaukee Master Lock plant as a microcosm to highlight the damage that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has wreaked on the American economy, particularly in Rust Belt states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

NAFTA was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in December 1993 and eliminated all tariffs on trade between the United States, Canada, and Mexico. While NAFTA has certainly allowed for cheaper goods for consumers and higher payouts for investors, it has absolutely decimated the industrial base that America once boasted. Between 1997 and 2020, over 90,000 factories closed as a result of NAFTA and similar trade agreements. Such closures have translated into massive job losses for thousands of Americans, which in turn has weakened the bargaining power of workers and unions.

Trump gives a good talk about hating NAFTA, but as always, his actions speak louder than his words. Despite his promises that empty factories would “come back” during his presidency, they did anything but, as more than 300,000 jobs were lost to offshoring under his watch.

For anyone keeping score, President Biden has created 765,000 manufacturing jobs during his time in the White House. We share the hope that Mike Bink – a former Master Lock employee and former president of United Auto Workers Local 469 – has for Vice President Harris with regard to NAFTA: “I think about three-quarters of the country would like to hear her speak out against NAFTA. What’s it done? The movement of wealth from the middle class to the already wealthy hasn’t done anything for our society.”

Conclusion

If elected president, Vice President Harris has a chance to revitalize the American Dream and create, as she calls it, an “opportunity economy.” There are many ways that she can and should do this, but she can start by sticking to her guns on the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax, using the opportunity afforded by the 2025 expiration of TCJA provisions to fundamentally transform the tax code, and looking out for workers left behind by unfair trade deals like NAFTA.

It’s nice to see things that we’ve been talking about for ages be validated by reporting in the mainstream media. It will be even nicer to see Harris as president continue the work that President Biden has charted to undo the damage that President Trump inflicted on the American economy.