Elizabeth Warren released a new attack ad this week targeting billionaires for … being billionaires, and one of the subjects of the ad, Lloyd Blankfein, fired back at the Massachusetts senator in a big way — by hitting her over her previous claims of Native American ancestry.
Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs from 2006 to 2018, landed a haymaker that surely had President Donald Trump, who often refers to Warren as “Pocahontas,” smiling.
Surprised to be featured in Sen Warren’s campaign ad, given the many severe critics she has out there. Not my candidate, but we align on many issues. Vilification of people as a member of a group may be good for her campaign, not the country. Maybe tribalism is just in her DNA.
— Lloyd Blankfein (@lloydblankfein) November 14, 2019
Blankfein’s tweet was a direct response to a Warren ad that aired on CNBC for the first time Thursday, calling on the country’s richest to share in their great wealth, which is a bit hypocritical considering Warren herself is worth $12 million, making her one of the one-percenters she so often targets.
Warren again touched on her “two cents” mantra, where she says the rich shouldn’t have a problem chipping in just two cents, which on the surface doesn’t sound like much.
“You built a great fortune; good for you,” Warren says in the ad. “I guarantee, you built it at least in part with workers all of us helped pay to educate; getting your goods to market on roads and bridges all of us helped pay to build. We’re Americans, we want to make these investments. All we’re saying is, when you make it big, pitch in two cents so everybody else gets a chance to make it!”
Of course, it makes for a nice campaign slogan for her crowds to chant, but it’s far from the truth when you do the actual math.
Analysis shows that if Congress were to enact Warren’s 2% wealth tax on assets above $50 million and 3% tax on assets above $1 billion — every year — it would cut billionaires’ fortunes in half in just 15 years.
That sure sounds like a bit more than two cents and more like outright government confiscation to pay for Warren’s plethora of social welfare programs and giveaways.
In fact, here’s a breakdown of how Warren’s plan would affect some of today’s most wealthy businessmen if it was dated back to 1982:
- Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ $160 billion fortune would would fall to $95.3 billion
- Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ $97 billion fortune would fall to $42.2 billion
- Berkshire Hathaway founder Warren Buffett’s $88.3 billion fortune would fall to $34.9 billion
- Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s $61 billion fortune would fall to $46.5 billion
- Koch Industries founder Charles Koch’s $53.5 billion fortune would fall to $22.1 billion
Bezos and Zuckerberg would have the luxury of their fortunes being made much more recently, which makes it look like they’d lose less money overall than say Buffett.
Yes, it’s still a ton of money to have, but it’s obviously far, far more than Warren’s “two cents” sham.
