As
we count down toward the 2024 general election,
we should expect to hear from media pundits
about candidates and their viability, swing
states and the electoral college, likely voters
and poll results, and much more. Occasionally we
may hear about some issues of importance. Most
likely, we will hear little about the urgent
need for wealth redistribution in the United
States. Extreme inequality remains an invisible
scourge underlying so much of what ails society
and, even when discussed, is touted as an
unavoidable and inevitable outcome of our
economy.
However,
there is abundant evidence that wealth
inequality is the product of intentional design
and the idea that what is good for billionaires
is good for society. Nothing could be further
from the truth.
The
Switzerland-based global bank UBS just released
its 2023
Billionaire Ambitions report and
concluded, “For the first time in nine editions
of the report, billionaires have accumulated
more wealth through inheritance than
entrepreneurship.” Benjamin Cavalli, Head of
Strategic Clients at UBS Global Wealth
Management said, “This is a theme we expect to
see more of over the next 20 years, as more than
1,000 billionaires pass an estimated [$5.2
trillion] to their children.”
That’s more
than the economy of
the entire United Kingdom. It’s more than the
economies of Canada and Mexico combined.
The
UBS report was not a critical one and hardly
blinked an eye about the obscenity of wealth
being hoarded in dynasties. About half of all
billionaires around the world use
UBS’s banking services,
so the bank merely analyzed the investment
habits of its most important clients. It did so
candidly, referring to “the great wealth
transfer” from one generation to the next,
avoiding mention of the wealth transfer from the
majority of the public to an elite minority.
The
report also declared with pride that intent on
“continuing the current family legacy, 60% of
heirs want to enable future generations to
benefit from their wealth.” Of course, they
meant future generations of their own families,
not in general.
But
this wealth transfer is directly the result of
tax codes written to benefit the uber-rich.
ProPublica’s 2021 analysis
of the tax returns of
the richest Americans found that they paid an
average of 3.4% in taxes, employing armies of
lawyers to exploit every loophole carved out to
offer special advantages to wealthy elites.
Meanwhile, middle-class and working-class
Americans pay double-digit tax rates. What this
amounts to is collective theft from government
revenues.
It’s
time to reverse this trend by resorting to a
concerted project of wealth redistribution. It’s
time to wrest billions, if not trillions, out of
the hands of billionaires and their heirs and
pour it back where it belongs: to the rest of
us.
Call
it socialism—which is what the pro-rich
rightwing GOP does—or call it progressive
taxation, or economic justice. It doesn’t
matter; the nation’s fiscal conservatives will
demonize any ideas of wealth redistribution
and will attempt to instill baseless fears of
creeping communism, no matter what specific
language we use around fairness. So, we might
as well start spelling it out instead of
trying to appease the right. After all,
there’s a reason why conservatives and wealthy
elites want the public to be afraid of
socialism: they’re terrified that Americans
might be thrilled to embrace policies such as
wealth redistribution through taxation.
And
if we need any more reasons to put a bullseye on
billionaire wealth, it turns out they are
vicious, dangerous fascists, whose children are
an even more callous lot than their parents.
Billionaires
don’t need the protections that democracy
offers: earned benefits like Social Security or
Medicare, access to free or affordable health
care including abortion, labor and wage
protections, and due process (they can buy the
best legal help when they get in trouble).
In
fact, democracy is a threat to
their wealth hoarding, which is why they are
backing the most dangerous demagogue to have
ever occupied the White House: Donald Trump.
Economic analyst and former U.S. Labor Secretary
Robert Reich lists
the numerous billionaires backing
Trump for a second term and cites Trump’s
promise to wealthy elites, that he plans to
“root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and
the radical-left thugs that live like vermin
within the confines of our country.” Wealthy
elites helped bring us Trump’s
first term,
and they’re itching for a second.
Why
wouldn’t billionaires back fascism? It benefits
them in ways democracy doesn’t. Indeed,
billionaires exist as a design flaw in
democracy. The greater the number of
billionaires and the greater the wealth they
hoard, the weaker the democracy that binds them.
Legislation
like Senator Ron Wyden’s Billionaire
Income Tax is
what they fear if democracy trumps fascism.
Wyden’s bill is so modest that it doesn’t target
wealth, only income, and would affect fewer than
1,000 Americans, trimming off tiny slivers of
their unprecedented hoardings, leaving them as
fabulously wealthy as before. After all, is
there a real difference between being worth $10
billion versus $9.9 billion?
As
to the children of billionaires being worse than
their parents, there is a small mention in
the UBS
report of
how heirs of billionaires are far less
philanthropic than first-generation
billionaires: “while more than [two-thirds]
(68%) of first-generation billionaires stated
that following their philanthropic goals and
making an impact on the world was a main
objective of their legacy, less than a third
(32%) of the inheriting generations did so.” One
could conclude that empathy among children of
the ultra-wealthy drops by half each generation.
This
could be a generation even more determined to
fund and fuel fascism in order to protect their
riches compared to their parents.
The
wealthy are so secure in the protections they
have from democratic curbs on their financial
power that their biggest worries, as per
the UBS
report,
include “geopolitical tensions,” inflation,
recession, and higher interest rates. Fears
around a “tight jobs market” and “stricter
sustainability rules,” fall low on their list.
In other words, they feel secure against threats
of wage rebellions and government regulations.
And
so, as we hurtle toward authoritarian
aristocracy,
we must normalize the idea
of
wealth redistribution. There is no good
reason
against it, not a single one. We
can
have either billionaires or democracy,
not
both.
This
commentary
was
produced by Economy
for All,
a project of the Independent Media
Institute.
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