I don't know whether it's true that Mayor Pete drives a Chevy Cruze, but after typing into Google "Pete Buttigieg car" I landed on this article, which includes such information as that his monthly mortgage payment is about $450. Since his is a DINK household—double income, no kids—he could afford more, especially considering that his salary as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is $112,300 annually. What kind of hovel do the mayor and his partner live in? Turns out it might be a fairly grand home in South Bend, where the average home price is about $80,000. If you borrow $80,000 at 4.5 percent over 30 years, the monthly payment is only $405.35. Hmmm. There are things to do in South Bend, thanks mainly to the University of Notre Dame, and affordable housing, too—seems like it could be a below-the-radar magnet for pensioners. Weather isn't worse than Minnesota's.
The mayor's reference to his automobile was no doubt pre-planned—the debate was in Ohio, where GM made Cruzes at its Lordstown assembly plant before idling it last spring, putting more than a thousand people out of work there.
Cory Booker has frequently made a connection between his housing arrangement, a townhome in inner-city Newark, New Jersey, and his views on criminal justice reform and gun control. I didn't hear him say anything along this line the other night, though he did claim to be a vegan. I think he probably is, because it seems doubtful veganism will help him with Rust Belt ham-and-eggers, and therefore the claim has the probative value associated with a statement against interest. Also, he looks kind of thin for a former D-1 football player. (Booker played tight end at Stanford.)
It's similarly hard to verify Elizabeth Warren's claim that if the government collected 2 cents on every dollar of your wealth, with the significant detail that the first $50 million is exempt, it would raise enough money to pay for her ambitious to-do list. For one thing, it's hard to say how many would be subject to her "wealth tax," and how much they'd owe, since if a guy might be worth $50 million you can't just add to the value of his home—minus, of course, the outstanding principal on the mortgage!—the balances of his various accounts. For example, this guy Sondland, who bought an ambassadorship for a million dollars, has quite the art collection. How much is it worth? Who can say?
Nevertheless, the distribution of wealth in our country is so top-heavy as to render Warren's claim plausible. The combined net worth of the bottom half of all Americans is about $250 billion, and the net worth of the three richest Americans (Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet) is about $350 billion. Warren's tax, applied only to Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is estimated at $160 billion, would raise $3.2 billion—oh, wait, I forgot that only the portion north of $50 million is subject to the tax, so it would raise a mere $3.199 billion. That $50 million exemption would mean everything to me but not much to Bezos!
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