Sept. 17, 2026 5:30 AM PT <\/p>\n
To the editor: To buttress his argument for a federal wealth tax (which, despite any allusion to the contrary, is constitutionally questionable), guest contributor Enrico Moretti tells us, \u201cThe wealthiest Americans can and should contribute more to financing public services\u201d (\u201cRaise taxes on billionaires federally, not state by state,\u201d<\/a> Sept. 16).<\/p>\n What Moretti does not tell readers is that the top 1% already pay 24%<\/a> of all federal and state taxes, including more than 40%<\/a> of federal income taxes (yes, just that 1%).<\/p>\n Moretti also doesn\u2019t tell us just how much more progressive the modern income tax has become<\/a> since its implementation more than 110 years ago \u2014 perhaps for fear of losing his ability to always say they never pay enough.<\/p>\n Note that the 1% pay approximately 40%<\/a> of California income taxes and 12%<\/a> of all California taxes of any type. And all that disparity has done is create a society of the rich and their professional advisers, and turned the rest of the population into serfs (with high unemployment, staggering homelessness and one of the most expensive and poorest-performing<\/a> education systems in the U.S.).<\/p>\n Moretti wants to export that to the entire country.<\/p>\n Kip Dellinger, Santa Monica
This writer is the former tax policy and practice columnist for Tax Notes magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sept. 17, 2026 5:30 AM PT To the editor: To buttress his argument for a federal wealth tax…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[13573,7,9,183852,8,2072,75524,183851,183854,75523,1838,183850,5967,75525,8267,183853,225,18672],"class_list":["post-466775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-billionaire","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-income-taxis","tag-california-news","tag-editor","tag-former-tax-policy","tag-high-taxis","tag-high-unemployment","tag-kip-dellinger","tag-letter","tag-moretti","tag-population","tag-practice-columnist","tag-santa-monica","tag-serfs","tag-state","tag-writer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}