As billionaires become a popular political target, a new book urges Washington not to lose sight of a much larger, quieter group of wealthy business owners. Other than Donald Trump, who is worth nine figures, billionaires are perhaps the most common foil for Democrats running for office this year. Whether winning a safe blue seat or a competitive red one, Democrats invoke billionaires as the root cause of the country's political and economic malaise.
James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, told a crowd last month that the American dream has become an American nightmare. People are working hard every day playing by the rules, but those rules weren't written for them. They were written for billionaires.
It is hard to dispute this political logic. Several of the world's wealthiest people have aligned themselves with Mr. Trump, at times literally. Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos were among those seated close behind the president at his inauguration.
Elon Musk, briefly the world's first trillionaire, was a fixture in the Oval Office for a few months last year. Billionaires are astronomically rich, arguably lightly taxed, often allied with Republicans and provide a unified theory of societal decline. When it comes to turning this animosity into policy, the solution is usually tax increases.
Several Democratic candidates, including Troy Jackson in Maine and Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, have pledged to raise taxes on them. In California, voters this fall will decide whether to impose a one-time, 5 percent tax on the net worth of the state's billionaires. Senator Bernie Sanders has said this first-of-its-kind wealth tax would check the power of tech titans who now resemble the oligarchs of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing