So you’ve probably been seeing stories these last few weeks about how billionaires across the U.S. are discovering a vibrant new class consciousness, as the possibility grows that Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders might be the next president of the United States. It’s a sort of grotesque parody of the #MeToo movement, in which the wealthiest people in literally all of human history use their privileged status to confess personal trauma due to taxation that has not even happened yet.
At the surface level, of course, it’s easy to see this is a straightforward phenomenon: people for whom money (and the power that attends it) is the most precious thing in the world are yowling because some of their most precious thing might be taken away (see: Gollum). They got rich because they wanted to be rich, and the way they stay rich is to swat away any and all attempts at taxation; and so the big billionaire pushback currently underway can be viewed as the most self-interested and predictable thing imaginable.
But even as it’s easy to make fun of all the solipsistic whingeing and whining, not all the specific arguments these fired-up plutocrats are making are equally specious, even as they’re tainted and rendered various degrees of insincere by their obvious self-interest in keeping every last penny. In fact, the power of some of their counterpoints can be seen in the fact that the ideas behind them have held sway in our society for decades now. For instance, in recent weeks we’ve seen Great Men such as Bill Gates claim that a wealth tax would drain needed investment capital out of the economic system; that such a tax would destroy people’s incentive to work hard to make money; that the government would never invest the money as efficiently as they do; and that a wealth tax would obliterate innovation.
These aren’t claims that are on their face dismissible, and anyone interested in the cause of equality and a healthy economy should try to understand and evaluate the powerful arguments against these points for themselves. But beyond the fact that reality is not on the billionaires‘ side regarding their specific beefs with higher taxation on the wealthy, we shouldn’t miss our unbelievable good luck that the least sympathetic proponents in America are so clearly articulating these ideas so that they can be soundly refuted. The fact that the billionaires have been drawn into presenting arguments in their favor, rather than simply proclaiming from on high that greed is good, is progress.
And taking another step back, we can see that their specific arguments against paying higher taxes all have a unifying theme: that the size of the economy, abstracted from any human values, is the ultimate accurate measure of things. Even on the economic level, this makes no sense: for example, they defend how important it is that vast sums of money be available for “innovation” and “investment” at their wise discretion, while failing to note what a lack of money at the bottom of the income scale is doing to both the economy and to the life prospects of citizens who are being screwed out of their fair share of their labors. The Washington Post notes that “the richest 400 Americans now control more wealth than the bottom 60 percent of the wealth distribution,” and that “the poorest 60 percent of America has seen its share of the national wealth fall from 5.7 percent in 1987 to 2.1 percent in 2014.” What’s the point of creating all this wealth if only the upper reaches are getting it?
There is also the small point that their arguments entirely ignore social needs like health care, education, and protection of the environment.
I’m running through this high-level overview of how weak these pro-billionaire arguments really are because they’re only going to grow more strident as the 2020 election approaches, and so more in need of refutation. The fact that billionaires themselves are entering the public debate also portends a darker development, in which the wealthy go all-in on keeping Donald Trump in the White House for the sake of protecting their bottom lines. The Democrats will then face not only a united right-wing opposition, but one supported by more or less limitless amounts of cash, as the GOP attempts to convince middle- and working-class voters that the only way to prevent economic armageddon is to embrace the failing status quo of billionaire hegemony. This seems to be a credible path to Donald Trump retaining power: an alliance with the ultra-wealthy to protect their mutual interests, in which voters are urged to choose fear over forward progress.
In such a scenario, it becomes more important than ever that Democrats make this race as much about the unaccountable power and economy-subverting concentration of great wealth as about the president’s corruption, in order to counter Donald Trump’s strategy of racist demagoguery and denouncing the Democrats as socialists. Forced to choose between paying higher taxes and ceding some of their privilege, and backing the proto-fascist in the White House, I fear that many of the nation’s business leaders and wealthy will find themselves torn. For the Democrats, winning will necessarily involve taking apart and discrediting their self-serving arguments.