Michael Bloomberg may have found another brand: scourge of democratic socialists.
Asked about a wealth tax proposed by Massachusetts Democrat and presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the very wealthy former New York City mayor said the idea was probably unconstitutional, definitely counterproductive, and something to be avoided at all costs.
Anyone favoring radical redistribution, Bloomberg said according to Dave Weigel of the Washington Post, should look south for an example to avoid: “It’s called Venezuela.”
The occasion for the remark was a trip to New Hampshire as Bloomberg mulls a 2020 bid.
The policy on the table: a 2 percent wealth tax that Warren would levy on the total assets of individuals worth more than $50 million and 3 percent on individuals with more than $1 billion. Per a Forbes analysis, this means that Jeff Bezos, whose $137 billion fortune makes him the richest man in the world, would owe the IRS an additional $4.1 billion each year. The relevant political context: the lawlessness, political violence, and dire scarcity that now rocks the once prosperous South American nation.
Venezuela was placed on a socialist track by former President Hugo Chavez, who monopolized industry and taxed the rich to pay for an expanding list of welfare programs ranging from subsidized grocery stores to state-run healthcare. Two decades later, the country is locked in a power struggle between Chavez’s successor, President Nicolas Maduro, and the U.S. backed interim-president, Juan Guaido.
For now, Bloomberg has made that Latin American crisis a backdrop to the Democratic primary. Critics in the Democratic Party will complain that it is heavy-handed, as the Warren wealth tax pales in comparison to the wealth redistribution of the Chavez-Maduro regime. But what registers as a glancing blow against Warren could leave a deeper mark on a different candidate.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is further left than the declared field and has a history with Venezuela. A self-described democratic socialist himself, he has endorsed policies not so different than those that bankrupted the Venezuelan regime.
Bloomberg could make this a liability. He might, for instance, press Sanders on the “must read” editorial he posted on his official Senate website in declaring the American dream more achievable in Venezuela than the United States.
“These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger,” reads a 2011 piece written by the Valley News editorial board. “Who’s the banana republic now?”
Bloomberg could ask Sanders the same question from the debate stage or the campaign stump. Mileage may vary for the Republican-turned-Democrat, of course. But Bloomberg can differentiate himself from the rest of the pack as a comparably fiscally conservative candidate who turned New York City’s $6 billion deficit into a $3 billion surplus.
More than anything, the Bloomberg barb shows one of the countless approaches Democrats will take to knifing each other.
