The Sanders plan is also a good case study of how universities and foundations are feeding left-wing ideas into the political system. Sanders acknowledges that he got the idea from two law professors, Jeremy Bearer-Friend of George Washington University Law School and Sarah Polcz of UC Davis School of Law. Bearer-Friend is a former aide to Warren, who herself is a former law professor. He’s also written for the Roosevelt Institute, a think tank funded by the Hewlett Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and the Ford Foundation that published a Bearer-Friend paperproposing a $1 trillion tax to fund racial reparations. (”As with any new trillion-dollar tax, we should expect litigation. But the power to tax has been a part of our Constitution since our founding and is not on its face legally dubious.”)
Bearer-Friend and Polcz published their article on December 30, 2025, in the Columbia Journal of Tax Law, proposing, “a unique in-kind tax payment structure that would require firms with ownership of AI to remit equity shares to the public.” Their article doesn’t specify a rate. “The actual rate to be adopted will largely be a political question,” it concedes. It does say the ideal rate “will provide the adequate level of public voice in corporate decisions to address public harms of AI” and “will provide a sufficient profit interest to compensate injured workers and creators,” while only “minimally” crowding out private investment.
In April, Polcz posted to social media a version of the law journal article that was adopted for The Hill, a Capitol Hill publication that’s a frequent fallback resort for opinion pieces written by academics that have been rejected by higher-profile outlets. “Know any lawmakers looking to tax AI? We’ve got a proposal for them,” she said, with remarkable candor about the motivation of the legislators.
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An Oligarchy of Old People
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“Seize the means of production”? What would the Middle Eastern Studies graduate do if she got hold of a semiconductor fab? Could she and Ayatollah Mamdani run an oil refinery after reading Chemical Engineering for Dummies? How many New York City progressives could keep even the simplest modern factory in operation?