The billionaire venture capitalist who thinks liberals are waging a “Kristallnacht”-level war on the the wealthy also believes the “one percent” deserves more of a say in politics by virtue of its tax bracket.
Speaking Thursday night at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Tom Perkins was asked to name an idea that would “change the world.”
“The Tom Perkins system is: You don’t get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes,” he responded, as quoted by CNNMoney. “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?”
According to CNN Money, Perkins seemed to be deliberately provocative in his remarks:
The audience at the Commonwealth Club reacted with laughter. But Perkins offered no immediate indication that he was joking. Asked offstage if the proposal was serious, Perkins said: “I intended to be outrageous, and it was.”
Perkins seemed to be aware that he was courting controversy, saying that his voting proposal would “make you more angry than my letter to the Wall Street Journal.”
Perkins’ letter to the Journal sparked outrage for invoking the Holocaust to describe liberals’ effort to fight gross income inequality. He continues to stand by his overall message while acknowledging that choosing the phrase “progressive Kristallnacht” was a mistake.
The venture capitalist argued Thursday that the rich have increasingly come under attack during the tenure of President Barack Obama, whom he called an “amateur.”
“The fear is wealth tax, higher taxes, higher death taxes — just more taxes until there is no more 1%,” he said, as quoted by CNN Money. “And that that will creep down to the 5% and then the 10%.”
