Michigan will have fewer roads if it chases away top earners with their businesses and jobs.

Responding to: JONATHAN TURLEY: Abdul El-Sayed’s wealth-tax fantasy could wreck the Michigan economy — Jonathan Turley · 2026-08-26

What the Piece Argues

The Turley column argues that Abdul El-Sayed’s proposal for a Michigan wealth tax on households with over $100 million in net assets would be economically catastrophic — framed as unconstitutional at the federal level and harmful at the state level — and leans on California’s recent wealth-flight experience and France’s Mitterrand-era wealth-tax reversal as proof that such taxes decimate state tax bases by driving out the wealthy. Turley characterizes El-Sayed’s rhetoric as “eat-the-rich” demagoguery in the tradition of Huey Long, argues the wealthy already pay “their fair share” (the top 10% paying more in federal income tax than the bottom 90% combined, and the top 1% paying an estimated 38.4% of all federal individual income taxes in 2023), and warns the policy would “decapitate the top” of Michigan’s tax base just as the state struggles to attract new businesses. The column closes by suggesting the policy would only succeed if the Supreme Court were first packed to permit it.

Receipts

The framing wants you to believe that asking a handful of households with over $100 million to pay a small additional wealth tax is the radical position, and that protecting those households is what protects Michigan’s roads.

• Framing: Wealth taxes drive the wealthy away — California has already lost “possibly trillions” because of the threat.

  • Reality: California’s structural budget pressures trace to decades of low top-bracket rates and chronic underfunding of public goods — the exact regime the column is endorsing for Michigan. If the column’s theory were right, the states that have actually run its playbook for forty years would be boomtowns. Kentucky and West Virginia are not.

• Framing: The wealthy already pay their “fair share” because the top 10% pays more in federal income tax than the bottom 90% combined.

  • Reality: That figure compares only federal income tax liability. It omits payroll taxes (the Social Security wage base caps payroll tax at roughly $168,600 in 2024, so a household earning $30 million pays the same payroll tax as a household earning $200,000). And per Saez and Zucman’s 2018 analysis, the top 400 richest American households paid an effective federal tax rate of roughly 23% — slightly lower than the roughly 24% paid by the bottom half of households — for the first time in a century. Most billionaire wealth sits in unrealized capital gains that have never been taxed at all (about 54% of billionaire wealth in 2020, per Saez/Yagan/Zucman).

• Framing: A 7% wealth tax on $100M would generate only $30M net on a $1B fortune.

  • Reality: That is the column’s own back-of-envelope — and it concedes the point. Yes, the household still has $30M in annual gains. Yes, that’s the argument against the policy: that leaving a billionaire with $30M a year is being framed as confiscatory.

• Framing: Wealth taxes are radicalism in the tradition of Huey Long.

  • Reality: Long was a working-class hero crushed by an oligarchy that didn’t want to share; invoking him as a slur against a candidate asking why Flint doesn’t have clean water is a confession. The U.S. had federal estate-tax structures for most of the twentieth century and roughly a dozen OECD countries have net wealth taxes today; “radicalism” is the column’s word, not the policy’s.

• Framing: France’s Mitterrand-era wealth tax was a disaster.

  • Reality: The French wealth tax (ISF) was introduced in 1981 under Mitterrand, reformed but not repealed in the Juppé reforms of the late 1990s, and fully replaced in 2018 under Macron with the IFI — a real-estate-only tax. Since then, the French economy has continued to grow roughly at the EU average, hardly the vindication the column is reaching for.

• Anchor citation: “the top 10% pays more in federal income taxes than the bottom 90% combined. In 2023, the top 1% paid an estimated 38.4% of all federal individual income taxes.”

The Response Ladder

Polite Reframe

When to use: A measured civic reply — newsroom email, town-hall Q&A, formal op-ed exchange — that should land without raising the temperature.

I share the column’s concern about Michigan’s tax base — that is precisely why I want to push back on its central framing, which equates protecting households with over $100 million in net assets with protecting Michigan’s roads. The column rightly notes that in 2023 the top 1% paid an estimated 38.4% of all federal individual income taxes, but that figure compares only federal income tax liability. It excludes the payroll tax, which falls almost entirely on the bottom 90% up to the wage cap (the Social Security wage base caps payroll tax at roughly $168,600 in 2024, so a household earning $30 million pays the same payroll tax as a household earning $200,000), and it ignores effective federal tax rates — per Saez and Zucman’s 2018 analysis, the top 400 richest American households paid roughly 23%, slightly lower than the roughly 24% paid by the bottom half of households, for the first time in a century. Most billionaire wealth sits in unrealized capital gains that have never been taxed at all (about 54% of billionaire wealth in 2020). The “California exodus” framing attributes recent budget stress to the mere threat of wealth taxes, but California’s structural shortfalls trace to decades of low top-bracket rates and chronic underfunding of public goods — the same regime the column is endorsing for Michigan. The Mitterrand comparison cuts the other way too: France’s ISF was introduced in 1981, reformed but not repealed in the late 1990s, and fully replaced in 2018 by a real-estate-only IFI; the French economy has continued to grow roughly at the EU average since. Finally, invoking Huey Long as a slur against a candidate who asked why Flint still cannot safely drink its water is a rhetorical tell — Long was a working-class hero crushed by an oligarchy that did not want to share. El-Sayed’s question deserves an answer rather than a dismissal, and the column does not provide one.

Mockery and Ridicule

When to use: A pointed social-post or op-ed reply that should draw a laugh while drawing blood.

Bless the columnist’s heart — he has spent an entire column clutching his pearls because a Senate candidate had the indecency to ask why someone with $100 million needs even more money. The man’s worried that if Michigan dares tax households who can afford a third yacht, the whole state will turn into a tundra overnight, like California but with worse weather and fewer billionaires to complain about. His evidence? The top 1% already pays 38.4% of federal income taxes — which is true the way it’s true that a fox pays most of the chicken-coop taxes after he’s eaten most of the chickens. Of course the top 1% pays most of the income tax — the top 1% has most of the income. The column compares what the top 10% pays in income tax to what the bottom 90% pays in income tax, declares victory, and pointedly does not mention that the bottom 90% pays almost all of the payroll tax (capped at roughly $168,600 in 2024, so the household pulling $30 million a year pays the same payroll tax as the household pulling $200,000), that per Saez and Zucman’s 2018 analysis the top 400 richest Americans actually pay a slightly lower effective federal tax rate than the bottom half of households, and that most billionaire wealth sits in unrealized gains that have never been taxed at all. The Huey Long comparison is the column’s best card and it isn’t a card — Long was assassinated for the sin of suggesting the wealth of the few should be shared with the many, and the column invokes him as a slur, which tells you exactly who the columnist is writing for. The whole piece is a velvet-gloved appeal to keep things exactly as they are: roads bad, schools worse, top earners comfortable, and God forbid we ask whether the people who own half the state should pay for the privilege.

Nuclear Satire

When to use: A full-spectrum satirical demolition — podcast monologue, viral thread, or counter op-ed that should leave nothing standing.

Imagine writing an entire column warning that taxing people with over $100 million would wreck Michigan’s economy. Just sit with that. Picture a state where Detroit’s population has shrunk by more than two-thirds since 1950 (a roughly 66% decline, per the Census), where Flint still cannot safely drink its water more than a decade after the lead crisis, where governors have spent years begging businesses to relocate north of the Ohio border — and the columnist’s chief worry is that scaring off the billionaires might cause additional damage. The column cites the 38.4% top-1% income-tax share as though it were a rebuttal to wealth inequality rather than its symptom: of course the top 1% pays most of the income tax, because the top 1% has most of the income. That statistic is the receipt for the disease being treated, not a verdict against the treatment. Saez and Zucman have already shown, in their 2018 analysis, that the top 400 richest American households pay a slightly lower effective federal tax rate than the bottom half of households — for the first time in a century. The “California exodus” comparison ignores that California has the world’s fourth- or fifth-largest economy (depending on the year) and a budget stressed by the same low-top-rate structure the column wants to lock in for Michigan; meanwhile the states that have actually run this playbook for forty years are Kentucky and West Virginia, not boomtowns. The Huey Long comparison is the giveaway: Long was killed by an assassin’s bullet for the sin of suggesting that the wealth of the few should be shared with the many; the column invokes him as a slur, which tells you exactly who the columnist is writing for. The France argument is even better — France imposed a wealth tax in 1981, reformed it in 1996, replaced it in 2018 with a real-estate-only version, and the French economy has been growing roughly at the EU average ever since, a thrilling vindication of nothing. El-Sayed’s sin, in the column’s telling, is that he pointed at the 1% who own more than the bottom 90% combined and said “you can pay a little more so people in Flint have clean water.” If that is Huey Long-style demagoguery, we need more of it. Michigan’s economy will not be wrecked by taxing wealth; Michigan’s economy has been getting wrecked for forty years by not taxing it, and the column is asking us to keep going.

Profane Scorched-Earth

When to use: The last post in a thread that’s gone toxic, a private group chat where restraint has demonstrably failed, or any moment when only catharsis will do.

Look at what this op-ed actually defends. It defends a system where a guy worth a billion dollars pays an effective federal tax rate that, per Saez and Zucman’s 2018 analysis, runs slightly below what his fucking secretary pays because most of his money is unrealized gains and the IRS only taxes wages. It defends a system where payroll taxes cap out at roughly $168,600 in 2024, so the household pulling $30 million a year pays the same goddamn Social Security tax as the household pulling $200,000. It defends a system where the heirs of people who never paid an estate tax now own more than the bottom half of the country combined. It defends a system where the source himself admits the wealth tax wouldn’t touch a guy making $686,000 a year — that’s the political class the candidate belongs to — and then calls it a threat to Michigan’s “tax base,” as if the tax base were the yacht club instead of the working people who actually drive on the roads. The op-ed invokes Huey Long as a warning. Huey Long proposed a maximum fortune and a minimum income. The opposition to that proposal is what gave us the modern oligarchy. Every argument in this piece — constitutional, economic, eat-the-rich — is the same goddamn argument: don’t you fucking dare touch the money. Don’t you dare tax the stocks. Don’t you dare ask what a billionaire does with a second billion when teachers are buying their own fucking supplies. The wealth tax isn’t a fantasy. The fantasy is that forty years of cutting taxes on the rich and raising them on everyone else has produced anything but the country we live in now. The fantasy is that we can keep doing this and the roads will keep getting paved and the schools will keep getting funded and the fucking billionaires will graciously allow the rest of us to exist. The wealth tax is the only honest proposal on the table, and the reason every billionaire-funded think tank in Washington is writing op-eds about how it would wreck the economy is that it fucking works. And the bullshit legal-scholar costume doesn’t change a goddamn thing: the 16th Amendment is not scripture, France’s wealth tax was replaced in 2018 with a real-estate-only version and the French economy has grown roughly at the EU average since, and the California billionaires threatening to leave are full of shit. They are not going to leave. They are going to sit in their mansions and write op-eds and buy senators until the next fucking election cycle, and the only thing that stops any of it is a wealth tax that makes dynastic wealth fucking expensive to maintain. So no — this op-ed is not a warning. It’s a fucking confession.