Column: Billionaire objects, profanely, to Elizabeth Warren’s plan to tax billionaires

Leon Cooperman, one of America’s outstanding billionaire crybabies, has launched a public fight with Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren over her proposal for a wealth tax, thus gifting those who follow the normally dull and dreary debate over fiscal policy with a momentary voyeuristic thrill. It turns out that my deja vu was warranted, because Cooperman had written it all in a letter he sent to President Barack Obama in 2011, chiding Obama for “your and your minions’ role in setting the tenor of the rancorous debate now roiling us that smacks of what so many have characterized as ‘class warfare.’” Cooperman asked, “Is the tone of the current debate really constructive?” This resembles Cooperman’s objection, in the new letter, to Warren’s “vilification of the rich.” Elizabeth Warren responded via tweet to Leon Cooperman’s complaint about her wealth tax. As Isabel V. Sawhill and Christopher Pulliam of the Brookings Institution have reported, America’s top 20% held 77% of total household wealth in 2016, more than three times the holdings of the middle class, defined as households in the 20%-80% economic segments Another factor Cooperman ignores — and perhaps the most important factor — is that tax rates on the rich have come sharply down over time. Cooperman glides over this fact — indeed, in his letter to Warren he doesn’t mention even once the 2017 tax cut, which was aimed chiefly at wealthy taxpayers like himself. Despite Cooperman’s closing plea to Warren — “Let’s elevate the dialogue and find ways to keep this a land of opportunity where hard work, talent and luck are rewarded and everyone gets a fair shot at realizing the American dream” — that’s the issue he never gets around to facing.