The Case for Blaming Billionaires

Criticizing the billionaire class may lack nuance, but the ultrawealthy are robbing us of our voice and vote, trashing our environment and blocking our path to a livable future.

By Chuck Collins, Inside Philanthropy

“I can’t help but roll my eyes when people bash the rich as a class, blaming them for nearly everything that’s wrong in U.S. society,” IP Editor-in-Chief David Callahan recently wrote in a column, “What ‘Blame the Billionaires’ Misses.” He points to Texas Democrat James Talarico, who recently said that the “only minority destroying this country is the billionaires.”

David acknowledges that blaming billionaires makes for good political messaging with a “potent narrative” and “clear villains.” He also raises legitimate concerns about billionaire bashing and whether alienating wealthy allies might undercut forming a “durable majority for a fairer America.” “The affluent,” he correctly notes, “are now integral to the left-of-center coalition.”

I took notice of David’s plea for nuance as I have my own concerns about thoughtless rhetoric, outlined in my otherwise “billionaire-blaming” book, “Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet.”

Are all billionaires monolithically bad people? No. Are there members of the billionaire class engaged in life-improving philanthropy? Yes. David points out that “there are more wealthy people giving to create a just society than ever before,” and recounts the inspiring history of donors like Charles Garland, who funded groundbreaking programs to build power for the working class. I have also written about the Mink Brigades and other exceptional defectors from the wealth-holding classes. Within most social movements are wealthy donors and individuals, many anonymous or behind the scenes. Michael Gast’s terrific blog, “Organize the Rich,” is the contemporary chronicling of these trends.

What unites these genuine wealthy allies and donors with organizing movements is a visceral understanding of the harms of extreme inequality on people and society — and the legitimate basis for populist anger. As Patriotic Millionaires like Morris Pearl and Abigail Disney often say, they have a clear sense that our entire society is imperiled by extreme wealth-hoarding. They redefine self-interest as broader wellbeing, not the expansion of their personal wealth.

I was born on third base, so I know that billionaires are people, too. I also know that as a human species, we are literally and metaphorically “thin-skinned.” I understand how a language of blame and elimination is not lost on the wealthy, some of whom might be potential allies in building a better world.

But billionaires seeking sympathy from the wider public may be out of luck this election cycle and probably for the next decade. The billionaire disruption to our democracy, economy and ecology is not a fleeting trend. In the political sphere, the same party the liberal wealthy have supported because of concerns about rising authoritarianism or social issues needs to be willing to meaningfully address the harms caused by billionaires to our economy, including through a program to tax extreme wealth.

The problem isn’t wealth, per se, but the corrosive power of excessive wealth in our economic system and our suffering democracy. And many exert that power before the billionaire threshold. I argue that at about the $50 million mark, or the top 0.1 percent, wealthy people are no longer just buying another mansion or boat: They’re buying a senator, a media outlet, and exercising political clout to block popular reforms.

They’re likely also concentrating wealth and power tax free through philanthropy. In this realm, I doubt David and I have many disagreements. While it’s encouraging that billionaires like MacKenzie Scott are giving significant funds to community organizing projects, I lament the larger drift toward “top-heavy philanthropy”: The charity infrastructure has become a taxpayer-subsidized system of private power for the billionaire class.

The important words absent from David’s column, though, are “tax the rich.” Philanthropy will never be a substitute for a functioning, fair tax system that makes democratically allocated investments in public goods. It is not surprising that most rich people, even our liberal friends, would rather give to charity than pay more taxes. Avoidance and workarounds are legal, after all.

If we’re waiting for the billionaire class to summon their urgency to step up and solve the pressing problems of our day, we are in trouble. As our research on the Giving Pledge at 15 has documented, even the better billionaires — the almost 300 who have pledged to give away at least half their wealth in their lifetimes or upon their deaths — are slow-walking the process while their assets multiply.

Based on what we can observe from the Giving Pledge’s first 15 years, most pledges will not be fulfilled (assuming they’re fulfilled at all) by an aggressive MacKenzie Scott-style “emptying of the safe,” but by endowing family megafoundations where the unborn great-grandchildren of today’s billionaires will still be dribbling funds out the door a century from now.

I worked with the late Bill Gates Sr., the father of the founder of Microsoft, on a decade-long campaign to defend the federal estate tax from repeal. He used to muse out loud: “Isn’t there something wrong that my son can put $100 billion dollars of Microsoft wealth into his private charity and never pay a nickel of taxes?” His big idea was to impose a lifetime cap on the charitable tax deduction at a half-billion dollars. Under the Gates Sr. plan, if you put $10 billion in your legacy foundation, you would still pay some form of taxes on $9.5 billion.

Of course, proposing a cap on the charitable deduction would cause a freakout from charity lobby groups like the Council on Foundations and Philanthropy Roundtable. They long ago lost that wall poster of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. saying, “Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary.”

And ditto for the DAF industry. Donor-advised funds have been hijacked by the financial industry and marketed for their design flaws: immediate tax breaks, no payout requirements, total secrecy. One centimillionaire I know called me a “DAF hater” (funny, considering I have one!) because I think our charity laws should be revamped to minimize tax avoidance, increase transparency and ensure money flows to working charities in a timely way. Warehousing charitable tax dollars is good for the wealth management class, but bad for society.

Today, promising political movements are coming together, shining a light on the myriad of ways we are being “burned by billionaires.” The concentrated wealth and power of the top 0.1% is disrupting every corner of our lives. Criticizing the billionaire class may lack nuance, but the ultrawealthy are robbing us of our voice and vote, trashing our environment and blocking our path to a livable future, making us sick by looting the healthcare sector, turbocharging racial divides and other societal divisions, worsening the housing crisis and plundering the wealth of our communities. The few billionaires who actually take issue with this culture of disruption could do well to direct their ire toward their fellow billionaires giving them a bad name.

Blackstone Chairman Stephen Schwarzman (soon to sit atop one of the largest foundations in the country) once compared efforts to increase taxes on private equity firms to Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland. This is absurd. Critics of the billionaire class aren’t rolling out the guillotine or proposing mass executions: We are simply advocating for changes in tax, wage and campaign finance laws. But my personal experience is that some wealthy people will always feel under personal attack, even with the mere mention of the basic facts of inequality. Some would rather steer the discussion toward the pathologies of the poor than talk about the antisocial pathology of hoarding vastly more wealth than they need.

Our movements shouldn’t alter their rhetoric because of a handful of billionaire snowflakes. The undemocratic exercise of power by the wealthiest people in our society is literally shortening people’s lives. And if the public gets angry or lashes out, or it gets personal — our regrets.

I want to join David’s invitation to build a “durable majority for a fairer America.” In this political moment, as the sleeping giant of American public opinion awakens to the harms of excessive wealth inequality, it’s time to vocally and unflinchingly blame the billionaires. And we could use all the wealthy allies and funders out there willing to join this movement on its own (sometimes) unnuanced terms.

In the important words of singer Billie Eilish: “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hating but give your money away, shorties.” Oh, and pay your fair share of taxes, too. And send a campaign contribution to James Talarico, who just introduced legislation to eliminate billionaire loopholes, like the tax break for private jets. No hating here.

Chuck Collins is director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies where he coedits Inequality.org. He is author of Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet. The views he expresses are his own.