Elizabeth Warren Is Done Playing It Safe

After a slow start, the presidential candidate is gaining momentum by pushing her party to embrace bold, left-wing ideas that could beat Trump at his own game— or cost Democrats everything.

- Joshua Green

Last fall, Elizabeth Warren got an email from Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, inviting her to speak at the group’s annual meeting in Davos in late January. He was taken with Warren’s sweeping moral critique of winnertake-all capitalism and looking to jolt the heads of state and global financial titans at his glittering conference in the Swiss Alps. Would she come to Davos and address them?

The Massachusetts senator, who was then preparing to run for president, understood immediately the attention such a showdown would bring and thought she needed an idea big enough for the moment. A few weeks later, she settled on one: an annual “wealth tax” of 2% on fortunes over $50 million, slightly higher on billionaires. Working with Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the eminent University of California at Berkeley economists, Warren’s staff calculated that her tax would hit the richest 75,000 people in the U.S. while raising $2.75 trillion in a 10-year period.

It was a characteristically big, bold idea that would revolutionize how government taxes the rich, shifting the basis from income to the much broader category of wealth. These “ultra millionaires,” as she calls them, would no longer pay only on what they earn, which clever accountants can minimize, but on the entirety of what they have. This massive infusion of revenue would fund even the most zealous package of liberal programs with billions to spare.

But the proposal’s principal attraction, in the moment, would be the sheer spectacle of Warren’s unveiling it at a gathering of Davos plutocrats—one imagines horrified gasps and a Champagne flute shattering on the floor. At a time when U.S. politics and electoral fundraising are increasingly driven by viral media moments, here was one guaranteed to make everyone sit up and notice. Schwab thought so, too.