Covid relief programs and easy Fed policy inflated the value of assets such as stocks and real estate.
New York’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani scored a hat trick on June 24 when all three of his endorsed candidates won Democratic House primaries. More than 30 candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America have won primaries this election cycle. A Democratic socialist captured the Democratic nomination for mayor of Washington, and another advanced to a runoff in Los Angeles. A Gallup survey last fall found that 66% of Democrats view socialism favorably and only 42% say the same of capitalism.
In my home state, Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for Ohio governor, has promised to forgive Ohioans’ medical debt on her first day in office. She also calls for new child-care subsidies and other expenditures that would add at least $20 billion, by our calculations, to the state’s annual budget, which Republican state legislators say would require doubling the state income tax.
Democrats nationwide are genuflecting before the DSA. A day after California’s proposed 5% wealth tax on billionaires qualified for the November ballot, Gov. Gavin Newsom, who opposes the measure, published an essay calling for a national “billionaires’ tax” on Americans worth more than $100 million.
American wealth is concentrated at the top. On this narrow point, the socialists are correct. The top 1% now holds roughly 30% of the nation’s net worth, and the bottom half holds about 2.5%. But the greatest driver of inequality over the past five years was exactly what the socialists now demand more of: large-scale government spending.
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