In fact, the Founders were deeply worried that concentrations of wealth would corrode self-governance and hollow out the republic from within. In their study of history, they saw how wealth inequality fueled political division, class conflict, and social unrest, eroding governance and ultimately contributing to failed states like the Roman Empire.
Thomas Jefferson was even more full-throated in his warnings about concentrated economic power. Jefferson worried powerful employers could coerce workers’ votes, thus limiting their democratic power. In an 1816 letter, Jefferson wrote, “I hope we shall take warning from the example [of England] and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
Today, the Founding Fathers’ worst fears are playing out in front of our eyes.
The American dream of working hard to get ahead looks very different for billionaires. Sure, there is an element of hard work, but it’s the system created by and for the ultrawealthy that underpins this financial success. Take Musk as an example. His companies have benefited from at least $38 billion in government contracts, subsidies, and tax breaks, with billions more guaranteed in the years ahead.
That’s because under our current system, billionaires like Musk are able to pay very little—and sometimes nothing at all—in federal income taxes, while ordinary workers pay tax on every paycheck. Our current tax system largely shields wealth held in assets like stock from taxation, transferring the cost of running our society onto you and me while empowering Musk to accumulate the kind of wealth and political power that corrupts democracy itself.
That same year, 150 billionaires collectively spent a record-breaking $2 billion on federal races, and many have been rewarded with positions of real power in the government. Trump empowered Musk to gut essential workers and services through DOGE while securing new federal contracts and ending regulatory actions that threatened $2.3 billion in potential liabilities for his companies. Trump selected Cabinet members from the top 0.0001 percent of America, and his signature tax law will reward the richest 1 percent of Americans with $121 billion in net tax cuts in 2026 alone. Is it a surprise then, that in the first 16 months since Trump was reelected, the collective fortune of America’s 974 billionaires grew by $1.96 trillion, or 30.6 percent?
A crisis of this scale calls on us to reflect the courage that the Founders displayed in declaring independence from the entrenched power of the British Empire. We must stop pretending that merely calling for the ultrawealthy to pay their “fair share” in order to meet certain revenue targets is sufficient within a tax system that is itself so unfair and unjust.
Reining in billionaire control is incredibly popular: 77 percent of voters support raising taxes on the ultrawealthy, including 65 percent of Republicans and 75 percent of independents. Three in five (62 percent) prefer a candidate who supports raising taxes on billionaires, versus just 12 percent who prefer one who opposes it—a 50-point gap. Among Democratic primary voters, that gap widens to 79 points (83–4). This is because voters are living the consequences the Founders warned of—they cannot afford housing, health care, childcare, or other basic needs. They yearn for the upward mobility of previous generations. The American dream isn’t just fading—it is being erased by billionaires who are actively enriching themselves at the expense of the rest of us. They wield their extreme wealth as weapons, bending our democracy to their own agenda like kings—and as the Founders foretold.
Using the tax code to break up this concentrated wealth and power isn’t radical, it’s actually our founding-era orthodoxy. It’s time for our leaders to tax greed.
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