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Part One:
We speak with Lou Jacobson, senior correspondent with PolitiFact and former deputy editor at Roll Call. We discuss the evolution of the modern primary process, and the reasons for the unprecedented number of Democratic presidential candidates this year. We consider the potentially deleterious effects of this plethora of choices, including the possibility of a brokered convention.
We also discuss the current condition of the media, including the Times-Picayune firing its entire workforce. We note the release of two Reuters reporters from jail in Myanmar, after serving 500 days of their 7-year sentence. The reporters were jailed because of their thorough investigation of the Myanmar military’s actions to terrorize the country’s Muslim Rohingya population, forcing them to leave their country and flee to refugee camps.
Part Two:
We talk to Will Wilkinson, vice president for research at the Niskanen Center, about his article challenging the feasibility of Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax. Such a tax may be difficult to enforce in the best of circumstances. But especially when the Republican administration has drastically slashed the enforcement budget for the IRS, a more realistic plan would be first to ramp up funding for IRS *enforcement* of all tax laws (including the current ones), and only then enact something like the wealth tax.
Wilkinson does, however, agree that a tax on wealth — especially at the time it is inherited — would be an economically efficient tax. It would not diminish incentives for people to work hard and be productive, and it would apply only to a very small percentage of Americans with assets worth millions of dollars – not the average family.
