Don’t Believe the Hype. Wealth Taxes Are Nothing New.
IN JULY, A GROUP OF 83 OF THE WORLD’S RICHEST PEOPLE calling itself Millionaires for Humanity urged governments to increase taxes on them to help deal with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Their idea, the latest version of a wealth tax—where the rich are taxed on the assets they already own rather than their earnings—was received as almost revolutionary. This year, figures such as onetime U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and U.K. Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds have likewise called for the exploration of a wealth tax, making it one of the most popular and seemingly new policy ideas on both sides of the Atlantic.
Although wealth taxes may seem bold and innovative, the concept is almost as old as money itself. The first known currency was created by King Alyattes in Lydia, modern-day Turkey, in 600 B.C. The ancient Greeks implemented a wealth tax just a century later. Since then, there have
