November Election Will Pit Greedy Wealth Against Very Angry Voters
Headline, Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2026:
“Top-Paid CEOs Smash the $200 Million Payday.”
Headline, Forbes Magazine web site:
“Another year, another set of records for the world's billionaire class.”
Headline, NY Times, March 15, 2026:
“Wealthy, but less charitable these days. A philanthropic project started in 2010 emerges as a punchline amid its struggle for big donors.”
“Elon Musk has said that his businesses are philanthropy.”
It’s not news that extraordinary wealth creation for those already extraordinarily wealthy is out of control. What is news is how quickly the wealth gap is accelerating and how willing many billionaires now are to use their economic power to increase their political power.
The Billionaire Boom and the Expanding Wealth Gap
How extraordinary is the current wealth gap?
Since Donald Trump first took office, the wealth of the richest Americans has more than doubled. According to a recent New York Times analysis, the top 1% now control $55.8 trillion in assets, more than the G.D.P. of the U.S. and China combined.
Elon Musk now holds assets worth a trillion dollars.
Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of the private equity firm, BlackStone, saw his net worth increase from $19 billion in 2019 to $47.8 billion now, according to Bloomberg’s list of billionaires.
Within five years, Google founder Sergei Brin’s net worth grew from $150 billion to $250 billion.
The combined net worth of America’s billionaires, even without including Musk, is about $20 trillion. For comparison, that’s more than twice this year’s $7.4 trillion annual U.S. budget.
Jealous? Who wouldn’t want to be a billionaire? Or even just a millionaire, or just quickly grow your annual salary from $50,000 to $100,000, or your hourly wage from $20 to $40? These are the levels of growth the wealthy are racking up.
But don’t beat yourself up because you weren’t born into an already wealthy family, as the Waltons and so many others on the billionaires list were, heirs benefitting from unprecedented public policy that allows so much unearned wealth to pass from one generation to another.
And because you work for wages, you aren’t eligible to use, and abuse, all the wealth favoring loopholes and special benefits built into the tax code by your elected lawmakers.
For decades, the majority of those lawmakers have bought into the pixie dust theory of economics that posits that if you let the rich pay lower taxes they will invest more in job creating activity. That theory has worked so well that tens of millions of Americans increasingly are trying to make do with stagnant incomes, soaring medical costs, unaffordable housing, and diminished lifestyle.
Gallup regularly asks Americans whether they’re satisfied with how things are in the U.S. In 2000, that level of satisfaction was 70%. Last month it was 21%. A large majority of voters are dissatisfied with the major political parties, too. Why not? The parties’ candidates and leaders have been entrusted by voters to make things better, not worse.
Angry Voters Are Preparing to Fight Back
The public has been remarkably passive about all this as the wealth gap has grown. But not this year. At least 10 states are exploring, actively debating, or advancing some form of wealth tax to target ultra-high net worth individuals. Why now? Because many states are struggling to meet the need for essential services. Because of recognition that most Americans have not received a fair share of the wealth from U.S. progress. Because so many of America’s richest people are behaving like undeserving jackasses.
Since 2000, despite the 2007 bank failures and Covid disruptions, the American economy has enjoyed enormous growth. Here’s how that wealth has been distributed on a per capita basis: $2.3 million a person to those in the top 10%; $60,00 a person to those in the bottom 50%.
And many of the ultra-wealthy have essentially placed targets on their own backs.
Elon Musk along with many other multi-billionaires have been campaigning against charitable giving.
Jeff Bezos flaunted us with a $50 million wedding.
The “tech bros” collectively are putting hundreds of millions into Trump’s pocket for his ballroom and who-knows-what-else.
Sergei Brin, America’s third richest person, with an estimated $250+ billion net worth, has spent $50 million trying to derail a California ballot initiative for public health and schools that might cost him as little of 5% of that wealth.
And let’s not discount the political effects of unwanted data centers that host potentially job killing artificial intelligence, with all its other scary possibilities. The consequences of even more public policy control by big money will be on the November ballot as well as the candidates who bend to it.
For years, “tax the rich” has been a poison pill political issue for many candidates. This year is shaping up to be different, a year when a bottomless pit of billionaire money will be spent in elections designed to increase its political power—met by a growing resistance of angry voters organized to turn that display of wealth against them.
Comments? Criticism? Contact Joe Rothstein at jrothstein@rothstein.net
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What happens when a fun-loving, charismatic, reform-minded Mexican-American billionairess becomes president of the United States and strikes fear in the pocketbooks of a cabal of the rich and powerful?