In a recent interview, Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Donald Trump, expressed his divergence from Elon Musk on a critical policy issue - tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy.
Bannon, who has been barred from Spotify and YouTube for disseminating misinformation, is fundamentally against tax breaks for billionaires, a policy that President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to implement.
According to Newsweek, Bannon warned the affluent, "Unless this changes, you're going to have a French Revolution in this country." This statement was made during an interview with a British newspaper. Bannon's stance on tax cuts starkly contrasts with that of Elon Musk, a new and notable ally of Trump who has previously criticized taxes on the billionaire class.
Bannon's opposition to tax breaks for the ultra-rich is noteworthy, given his recent four-month stint in the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. He was found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress in 2022 for failing to respond to a subpoena issued by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Trump has announced that Musk will collaborate with Vivek Ramaswamy to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). This partnership follows Musk's previous public denouncement of taxes on the billionaire class. In a 2021 Twitter post, Musk stated, "Eventually, they run out of other people's money and then they come for you." This comment was made in response to engineer and blockchain worker Rick McCraken's criticism of the plan to tax unrealized capital gains.
McCraken warned that such changes would "slowly make their way down to middle class retirement investments over the next several years." He added, "It will start with billionaires, then eventually millionaires, then the modest investments will get hit possibly within a decade."
Trump's proposed tax cuts include a reduction in the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 15 percent for companies that do not "outsource, offshore or replace American workers." He also plans to extend his 2017 tax cuts, which remained in effect throughout the Biden administration but are set to expire in 2025. His new tax cuts include his well-known "no tax on tips" policy and the elimination of taxes on Social Security benefits.
However, President Joe Biden has accused Trump of promising wealthy donors tax cuts by extending his 2017 program. Bannon, on the other hand, has called for "massive tax increases on billionaires," thereby distinguishing the ultra-rich from the MAGA movement. He stated, "Let's have massive tax increases on billionaires. The 499 of them are not MAGA, right, not MAGA at all. In fact, the large proportion are radical progressives. They made this mess...why shouldn't they pay for it?"
Bannon's comments came after Biden's announcement that he would seek a 25 percent minimum tax on billionaires, including taxes on the rising value of assets. Bannon also insisted in 2021 that the government needed "to start increasing the marginal tax increases for the wealthy."
Bannon criticized the current tax system, stating, "This is absurd. This is a scam. You're being scammed, just like you were being scammed on free trade." This was in response to ProPublica's report that found many of the country's wealthiest individuals paid little or no income tax at times over the previous decade.
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the left-of-center economic think tank Groundwork Action, wrote in an op-ed earlier this month that Trump's return to power would bring "even bigger handouts to the ultra-wealthy," including individual tax cuts to the richest Americans, "further slashing the corporate tax rate ... reducing taxes on capital gains, and more." Bannon's stance on tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy, however, remains firmly opposed, marking a clear divergence from the policies of his former ally, Trump, and his new ally, Musk.
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