translated from Spanish: AMERICAN billionaires call for more tax

A group of 18 American supermillionaires, including Abigal Disney and George Soros, on Monday issued an open letter asking presidential candidates to support a wealth tax .
“America has a moral, ethical, and economic responsibility to further tax our wealth,” the supermillionaires noted in their letter.
The reasons signers point to a wealth tax include financing environmental initiatives and responses to climate change, promoting economic growth, and financing public health.
According to the letter, a wealth tax is “fair, patriotic and would strengthen democracy in the country by reducing inequality.”
Those who signed the letter target “all candidates, whether Democrats or Republicans,” and don’t mention any in particular.
For the Democratic Party, there are just over 20 hopefuls vying for the presidential nomination in the November 2020 election, while in the GOP for now the only candidate with chances is President Donald Trump, who will seek re-election.
However, the letter focuses on the tax plan submitted by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is in the top five in the opinion polls on Democratic would-be.
The plan taxes the first $50 million in assets, but provides for a 2% tax on fortunes in more than $50 million, and raises the 3% rate on assets of more than $1 billion.
According to the public letter, this would affect some 75,000 families in a country of more than 327 million inhabitants.
The Hill newspaper, which mainly covers congressional news, found in a poll that 74 percent of Americans support a plan like the one Warren proposes and also supported by investor Warren Buffett.
Buffett is not counted among the signatories of this letter but as far back as 2011 he wrote a comment in The New York Times in which he claimed to support the idea of raising taxes on the wealthiest.
“We, who are one in ten among the richest 1% in the country, should be proud to pay a little more of our fortune for America’s future,” the signatories of the letter published today point out.
“We are well and accepting this tax is the least we can do to strengthen the country we love,” they add.
The Supermillionaires’ initiative is not novel: in November 2017, more than 400 millionaires signed a letter to Congress asking lawmakers not to reduce their taxes.
Congress, then with a Republican majority in both chambers, was discussing a proposal by President Trump to cut taxes.

Original source in Spanish