Getting Serious About Combatting The Very Real Existential Threat Of Severe Wealth Concentration?

Democracies Can't Afford To Have Billionaires

Bob Lord is an old friend dating back to Blue America endorsing his congressional campaign in 2008 when he challenged Republican extremist John Shadegg in Arizona’s 3rd congressional district (an R+6 district that included northern Phoenix plus Paradise Valley and communities like Cave Creek and Carefree). Today he’s the Senior Vice President for Tax Policy for Patriotic Millionaires. Last week Rolling Stone published an article he wrote, Yes, America Is An Oligarchy. He agreed with Bernie— rather than conservative Democrat Elissa Slorkin— that the term “oligarchy” has plenty of resonance across America because Americans aren’t idiots and they sense, as Lord explains, that “about half of the wealth-share increase of the top 0.01 percent since 2012 has been concentrated in the top 0.00001 percent— the top one-thousandth of the top one-hundredth of the top one percent. Nineteen households total.” 

Lord is a tax wonk and he makes his case in the statistics of minute fractions. But he begins with a quote by Lee Drutman who earlier pointed out that we are looking at an oligarchy “when a ‘handful of very wealthy individuals use their riches to shape and influence the government on their own financial behalf.’ He goes on to note the many examples of mega—billionaires using their wealth to shape government policy, including the nine-figure political contributions of Elon Musk, Timothy Mellon, and Miriam Adelson in the 2024 election. On tax and policy issues where the interests of all billionaires align, Drutman concludes, policy making has consistently favored their shared interests. In a recent New Yorker essay, Evan Osnos fills in the gory details about how the ultra-rich are also using their influence to benefit themselves personally. He mentions, for instance, the pardon Trump bestowed on billionaire Trevor Milton after Milton and his wife contributed $1.8 million to Trump’s campaign. He also outlines the benefits Musk and his businesses are receiving from Team Trump. Most troubling of all, Osnos details how Trump— our ‘oligarch in chief’— has used his presidential power to benefit himself... [T]he data on America’s wealth concentration over the past four decades point us clearly in only one direction: oligarchy.”

The wealth share of the top 0.1 percent has stunningly increased over the past 45 years, from 8.1 percent in 1980 to 21.9 percent today. In the first 26 years of that period, the next 0.9 percent saw only a slight increase in their wealth share, from 16.7 to 18 percent, with no share increase at all since then.  

Which means that since 2006, the concentration in our country’s wealth has been limited to just the top 0.1 percent. The next 0.9 percent have essentially only been treading water.

… The bottom line: Since 2012, the concentration in our country’s wealth has almost entirely been limited to just our richest 0.01 percent. Our country’s wealth is not just continuing to concentrate. The beneficiaries of that concentration have become an ever smaller group. 

How small? The economist Gabriel Zucman has recently shared with the Wall Street Journal estimates on the share of U.S. wealth held by our richest 0.00001 percent, an elite just 19 households strong. The wealth share of this tiny group has hit 1.8 percent of total U.S. wealth, a share that represents over a ten-fold increase from the top 0.00001 percent’s share in 1982.

We can determine, using a combination of the Forbes 400 list from 2012 and Zucman’s data for total American wealth at that time, some even more striking numbers. About half of the wealth-share increase of the top 0.01 percent since 2012 has been concentrated in the top 0.00001 percent— the top one-thousandth of the top one-hundredth of the top one percent. Nineteen households total. 

To recap, the concentration of American wealth has been, over the past dozen or so years, largely limited to the top 0.01 percent of American households, and half that concentration has benefited just 19 households. 

That’s oligarchy.

It’s hardly breaking news today that the Republican Party is a fully-owned-and-operated subsidiary of the oligarchy now all but owned by billionaires. What should be, though, is the Democratic Party establishment’s chronic unwillingness to do more than nibble around the edges of this grotesque concentration of wealth and power. It’s not enough to occasionally grumble about taxing the rich or to offer watered-down proposals designed to appease both the donor class and the general public. The problem is structural, urgent and, literally, existential for our democracy—and it demands a political party willing to fight like it. The Democratic Party helmed in Congress by Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer is not that party, any more than the New Labour Party is in Britain.

We need a Democratic Party that treats oligarchy as the emergency it is— not just a talking point for progressive backbenchers. That means backing wealth taxes with teeth. That means rewriting corporate tax codes to end the massive stock buybacks and executive pay schemes that further fuel billionaire accumulation. That means ending the carried interest loophole and closing off every avenue that allows dynastic fortunes to escape taxation. And it means confronting the political power that extreme wealth buys— head on. The post-FDR Democratic Party ruined by Bill Clinton doesn’t have what it takes to do that even if individual Democrats in Congress and Democrats running for Congress do.

A serious Democratic Party would stop pretending that tech moguls and hedge fund managers are benevolent visionaries instead of what many of them are: predators hollowing out democracy for sport and profit. If the Democrats don't break their hold on policy, no one will be able to address climate change, healthcare, housing or any of the crises we face as a nation— because the richest few will always find a way to make sure their profits come first.

We don’t have to accept oligarchy as our national fate. But reversing course will require something the current Democratic leadership too often avoids: courage. Courage to name the enemy. Courage to refuse their money. Courage to build power from the bottom up— not the donor list down. The future of democracy may depend on whether the party of FDR can remember what it once was… and find the spine to become that party again. Yesterday we announced Blue America endorsed Chicagoland state Senator Robert Peters for Congress. He’s someone very serious about addressing these inequities. So is Detroit area state Rep. Donavan McKinney, also running for Congress. Another Blue America-endorsed candidate, Randy Villegas in California’s Central Valley, summed up the problem in one sentence: “We cannot claim to champion the working class … if we are receiving money from the same corporate PACs that Republicans are receiving money from.” His opponents campaigns are financed by corporate PACs and lobbyists. He's eschewed corporate contributions entirely.

Saikat Chakrabati is running for Congres in San Francisco. The incumbent is Nancy Pelosi, once again fighting progressive, now the epitome of the establishment and long past her prime. “Over the last several 50 years,” Chakrabarti told us, “$79 trillion have been transferred from the working class to the richest in our society, according to a study by RAND. This didn't happen by accident— it was the result of deliberate policy choices, from tax cuts for the rich, to printing money to keep asset bubbles inflated, to bailing out Wall Street instead of homeowners during the Great Recession. The result is an oligarchy that controls our economy and our politics. We cannot save our democracy if we don't tackle this gross inequality head on. I believe we must have a wealth tax for ultra millionaires and billionaires— the top 0.05% of wealth holders. This is the least we can do to rectify this transfer of wealth that has happened and continues to happen. 

“My opponent, Nancy Pelosi,” he said, “believes we cannot talk about taxes for the rich for fear of scaring off the big donors who control the Democratic Party. I believe we cannot let our country die because we are afraid of upsetting an extremely powerful tiny minority of our population.The choice right now is clear: either we ask the richest in our society to pay a little more in taxes— an amount that will make no meaningful difference in their lives— or we continue making it harder and harder for working people in this country to make a living, slashing our social safety net, and feeding the forces destabilizing our democracy. The choice, to me, is obvious.”

If you agree with him, please consider contributing to his campaign here.