Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez invited to Paris for Gabriel Zucman’s tax-the-rich summit – POLITICO

PARIS — Gabriel Zucman, an economist who became a household name in France last year thanks to his proposed wealth tax, is organizing a major summit on fiscal justice in Paris on Nov. 21 and has invited U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“The explosion in extreme wealth and the accompanying concentration of power are disrupting our societies. It is this imbalance that the Paris summit aims to tackle,” Zucman said in an interview. “The aim is to provide an objective assessment of this new reality and to help forge the international partnerships that will ultimately enable democratic forces to prevail.”

Zucman, who teaches at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley, is one of the world’s highest-profile advocates of taxing the ultra-wealthy. In recent months, he has campaigned for a California ballot initiative to levy a one-time state tax on billionaires equal to 5% of their net worth. Zucman and two fellow economists estimated the measure, Proposition 40, could bring in about $100 million in revenue.