Billionaire Tom Perkins: If You Pay $1M In Taxes, You Should Get A Million Votes

Billionaire tech mogul Tom Perkins, who compared the treatment of the one percent to the Holocaust, says the Americans who pay the highest taxes should get the most votes in elections.

“The Tom Perkins system is: You don’t get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes," Perkins announced during a meeting at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco Thursday. "But what I really think is it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How’s that?”

The audience laughed at the idea. Perkins later said the statement was meant to be ridiculous.

ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website

“I intended to be outrageous, and it was,” he said.

He repeatedly told the audience, however, that the one percent is severely underrated.

"I don't think people have any idea what the 1 percent is actually contributing to America," he said.

One thing they definitely contribute to is political campaigns. In 2012, one percent of the one percent contributed more than 40 percent of all the money spent in the elections. In 1980, they gave only 15 percent, according to ThinkProgress.

In a Wall Street Journal piece last month, Perkins alleged there is a war on the one percent of Amerians who control 35.6 percent of the nation’s total wealth.

ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website

ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website

“I would call attention to the parallels of Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘one percent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich,” he wrote.

From 1979 to 2007, the top one percent of families had a 278 percent increase in their after-tax income. Middle-class families saw an increase of less than 40 percent, according to White House Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Alan B. Krueger.

Sources: Mother Jones, ThinkProgress

undefined