JONATHAN TURLEY: Abdul El-Sayed’s wealth-tax fantasy could wreck the Michigan economy
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is tackling a new national crisis: the excess of money held by some tragically wealthy citizens.
In his interview this week with Fox News’ Jesse Watters, the Michigan Democratic Senate candidate not only reaffirmed his call for a wealth tax but suggested that wealthy people really do not have much use for money that would be better left to the public.
El-Sayed needs money. A lot of money. He has called for massive new programs to fund Medicare-for-All, reparations, roads and other programs promised to Michigan voters. He is only the latest Democratic leader to support a wealth tax, which would, in my opinion, be unconstitutional at the federal level and disastrous at the state level.
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Earlier in the week, El-Sayed expressed full support for a wealth tax, including on non-billionaires. He declared on a podcast: "I also think we got to start taxing wealth for people who now have over $100 million. I mean at that point like what are gonna even do with more money?"
Figures such as Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., have also called for a wealth tax on millionaires, not just billionaires. As some of us predicted, the use of billionaires was simply a strategic and political framing. Once politicians succeed in opening up this untapped wealth to taxation, they will gradually work down the tax rolls as they acquire a windfall in new revenue.
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I discuss the tax in my book, "Rage and the Republic," as an example of the "eat-the-rich" politics used by demagogues from ancient Athens to the French Revolution. Politicians seek to divide a population into "haves" and "have-nots" with the promise that citizens can have it all. Much of what El-Sayed said is ripped from the pages of figures such as Huey Long and his "Share Our Wealth" campaigns of the 1930s.
In his Fox News interview, El-Sayed reaffirmed his call for a wealth tax, adding:
"The question ultimately is, ‘Do you want to drive on good roads, or would you rather have a billionaire make a second billion?’ That’s what Mike Rogers wants. That’s why Donald Trump wants. Apparently, that’s what you want. I think the people in Michigan want something different."
While El-Sayed and his wife reported $686,069 in income in 2025, they would not be subject to the wealth tax. It would apply to those with $100 million or more in property and other forms of wealth.
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El-Sayed appears to conflate or confuse wealth taxes and income taxes in the interview. He told Watters, "If we tax you at 7%, you’re still going to make what? A cool $30 million off your billion dollars? I think that’s OK, they’re going to be OK, Jesse."
El-Sayed did not explain his assumptions. He may have been assuming that a $1 billion fortune generates a 10% annual return: $100 million in gains, less a hypothetical 7% wealth tax of $70 million, leaving $30 million. Whether such a return, tax rate and tax base are realistic is a separate question.
There is a great difference between a wealth tax and an income tax. The wealthy have already paid taxes on much of their wealth. Indeed, they pay income taxes when the money is earned and pay taxes on any profits from that money when it is invested in stock or property. A wealth tax is an additional tax on all that you own, from homes to boats to art.
At a 7% tax on wealth for those worth $100,000,000, the wealthy would pay an additional $7,000,000 every year in Michigan beyond their income taxes.
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If a government imposed a 7% annual tax on $100 million in net wealth, the annual liability would be $7 million—though El-Sayed has not released a detailed proposal establishing that rate or threshold. In Michigan, they would also face the state income tax of 4.25% and a 6% corporate tax on their businesses. If the wealth tax is added to an income tax, that would be in addition to the 37% top federal income tax rate.
Again, the wealth tax would continue to apply each year to what an individual owns in the form of cars, homes and other property, regardless of whether income declines.
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., drove this point home when she ran for president in 2020, taunting the wealthy that she was coming for "your Rembrandts, your stock portfolio, your diamonds and your yachts."
While some states are actively considering a wealth tax, many of us view it as unconstitutional under the federal system. The federal government secured the right to tax individuals in 1913, but the 16th Amendment only approved income taxes.
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This is why many of these same politicians are promising a hostile takeover of the Supreme Court by either eliminating the Court or packing it with an instant liberal majority. Once packed, the Court could greenlight a variety of unconstitutional measures.
Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans will never win another election. However, he warned that "the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described." Therefore, the Court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.
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Even if states like Michigan are allowed to do this, it will result in the same exodus that is currently unfolding in California, where possibly trillions of dollars in jobs and revenue have already been lost due to the mere threat of wealth taxes. That is why figures like Khanna and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are calling for a national wealth tax, leaving the wealthy nowhere to go but out of the country.
This is precisely what socialist governments like France under François Mitterrand attempted in the last century, with disastrous results that tanked the economy and forced a rapid retreat from such policies.
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As Michigan struggles to secure new businesses and jobs, El-Sayed is embracing the same policies that would decapitate the top of its tax base. While repeating the mantra that the wealthy are "not paying their fair share," the top 10% pays more in federal income taxes than the bottom 90% combined. In 2023, the top 1% paid an estimated 38.4% of all federal individual income taxes.
El-Sayed has proven himself a gifted politician. He juxtaposes concrete benefits like new roads with the image of unused wealth among top earners. The fact is that Michigan will have fewer roads if it chases away top earners with their businesses and jobs.
Like Long, who referred to "our wealth" being held by the rich, El-Sayed portrays the property of the wealthy as rightfully belonging to the people, promising that if we "put a tax on wealth it would return a lot of that money back into public use."
El-Sayed has perfected the "eat-the-rich" pitch by portraying the wealthy as virtual Scrooge McDucks who accumulate unused wealth as a type of vanity project. He has struck out at "people who have accumulated so much wealth that your money makes money." That is also called investments that power the economy—and when your "money makes money," it is taxed as income.
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Nevertheless, El-Sayed is waging the same class war as other rising figures in the Democratic Party, denouncing "extreme wealth" as "an existential threat to our economy and our democracy and it demands a crisis-level response."
The real crisis is unfolding as candidates like El-Sayed are promising trillions in new programs while promising to make the rich pay for them. As with Warren, their property is being portrayed as rightfully belonging to the public.
The problem is that both wealth and the wealthy are mobile, and few are likely to stick around for El-Sayed’s people’s paradise in Michigan.