We’ve Got to Tax the Rich
Of all the ills afflicting our democracy, the failure to rein in the power of money remains the most egregious.
It would take a novelist with the gifts of Honoré de Balzac to do justice to the temper tantrums we’ve witnessed over the past few weeks by America’s donor class. After failing to bully the University of Pennsylvania into canceling the Palestine Writes Literature Festival in September, Marc Rowan, the head of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management and a lavish Penn donor, succeeded in forcing the resignation of the university’s president, Liz Magill. Magill, who gave an inept, cloth-eared performance under the hot lights of a congressional hearing regarding antisemitism on campus, was (badly) advised by the same white-shoe law firm behind Harvard president Claudine Gay’s mealymouthed testimony at the hearing. Harvard initially backed its beleaguered leader. But when the hedge fund activist William Ackman shifted his focus from the clearly specious charge of antisemitism to more plausible charges of plagiarism, Gay, too, was quickly gone.
Ackman, as Michael Massing has noted on TheNation.com, may well be America’s most entitled donor: a high-rolling gambler who has wagered billions of other people’s dollars on often-doomed crusades against his fellow plutocrats yet has won enough of them to pay for his many extravagant properties. He shares these with his wife, Neri Oxman, a former MIT professor whose own failures of citation came to light in the fallout from her husband’s unhinged crusade against Gay. Apart from Rowan’s and Ackman’s so-called philanthropy—often directed at gatekeeping institutions that privilege donors and their relatives—it would be hard to detect any benefit to humanity from either man’s career. As Maureen Tkacik revealed in a recent profile for The American Prospect, the vulture capitalists at Apollo—whose founder, Leon Black, left after it emerged that he’d paid $188 million to the sex trafficker (and Harvard donor) Jeffrey Epstein—make their fortunes picking over the bones of the businesses they buy and run into the ground, leaving the hapless employees to face the consequences.
Once you’ve read Amitav Ghosh’s masterful deep dive into just how many of the great American fortunes can be traced back to the opium trade, this is bound to seem like déjà vu all over again. Just as today’s Sackler family still profits handsomely from the opioid epidemic they created and fed, the Cabots, Forbeses, Girards, Peabodys, Delanos, Browns, and other clans hoarded their wealth, laundered their ill-gotten gains through philanthropy, and sent their children to Ivy League schools. They prospered sufficiently that by the time a fresh wave of parvenu wealth arrived through railroads (Harriman), oil (the Rockefellers), and automobile manufacturing (Ford), the old opium traders had become the arbiters of respectability.
Balzac, sadly, seems to have never actually said that “behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” But the observation retains its force—and its challenge to our complacency. According to Americans for Tax Fairness, the wealth held by the richest 748 Americans exceeds $5 trillion—up by a staggering $2.2 trillion since Donald Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and the rich were passed in 2017. The largest single beneficiary was that great humanitarian Elon Musk, whose fortune grew more than 1,200 percent; Amazon founder (and union foe) Jeff Bezos had to be content with merely doubling his wealth over the same period.
The conflict between democracy and plutocracy in America is as old as the republic itself, and ever since Alexander Hamilton put his thumb on the scales, the rich have never lacked for apologists in Washington. But of all the ills afflicting our democracy—including those exposed by Joe Biden’s masochistic devotion to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—the failure to rein in the power of money remains the most egregious. Especially since the remedy has never been mysterious: The rich must pay their fair share. After opposing Elizabeth Warren’s call for a wealth tax during the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden proposed a “billionaire tax” last year. Denounced in Forbes as “Biden’s War on Billionaires,” the proposal was DOA. But with so many wealthy bullies polluting the public discourse, it’s an idea whose time has surely come—again.
D.D. Guttenplan
Editor
Support independent journalism that does not fall in line
Even before February 28, the reasons for Donald Trump’s imploding approval rating were abundantly clear: untrammeled corruption and personal enrichment to the tune of billions of dollars during an affordability crisis, a foreign policy guided only by his own derelict sense of morality, and the deployment of a murderous campaign of occupation, detention, and deportation on American streets.
Now an undeclared, unauthorized, unpopular, and unconstitutional war of aggression against Iran has spread like wildfire through the region and into Europe. A new “forever war”—with an ever-increasing likelihood of American troops on the ground—may very well be upon us.
As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war.
In these dark times, independent journalism is uniquely able to uncover the falsehoods that threaten our republic—and civilians around the world—and shine a bright light on the truth.
The Nation’s experienced team of writers, editors, and fact-checkers understands the scale of what we’re up against and the urgency with which we have to act. That’s why we’re publishing critical reporting and analysis of the war on Iran, ICE violence at home, new forms of voter suppression emerging in the courts, and much more.
But this journalism is possible only with your support.
This March, The Nation needs to raise $50,000 to ensure that we have the resources for reporting and analysis that sets the record straight and empowers people of conscience to organize. Will you donate today?
