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oligarchy
US Plutocrats $276 Billion Richer Since Trump Win—And GOP Wants to Give Them Even More
"The tax fight is starting now," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "Will we sign our names to more giveaways to President-elect Trump's billionaire buddies, or will we fight for tax fairness for the American people?"
Nov 21, 2024
An analysis released Wednesday showed that the United States' 815 billionaires have seen their combined wealth surge by roughly $280 billion since Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election earlier this month, a finding that came as Republicans continued to lay the groundwork for another massive tax giveaway for the rich.
Citing Forbes data, Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) noted that the collective net worth of the nation's billionaires jumped $276 billion between November 4—the day before Election Day—and November 12. Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest man and a Trump confidant, accounted for 20% of the total billionaire wealth surge, with his net worth growing by $57 billion in just a week.
ATF found that U.S. billionaire wealth is now at an all-time high of $6.7 trillion—a fact that hasn't deterred Republican lawmakers from pursuing additional tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which they want to pay for in part by slashing Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance.
"Among the tax handouts the GOP hopes to offer America's plutocrats is a weakening or elimination of the estate tax, the federal government's only curb on dynastic wealth," ATF noted. "As proof of the party's intent, the new Republican majority in the U.S. Senate has chosen as its next leader the chamber's main champion of estate-tax repeal, John Thune (R-S.D.)."
The group observed that scrapping the estate tax would save billionaire households an estimated $2.7 trillion while depriving "working Americans of the exact same amount of funding for vital public services like Medicare, childcare, education, and housing."
Since the highly regressive 2017 Trump-GOP tax cut that Republicans are looking to extend and expand, U.S. billionaire wealth has risen by $3.8 trillion—over 131%—according to ATF.
"Instead of addressing the nation's growing economic inequality and the growing shortfall in federal revenue, President Trump and congressional Republicans plan to make the situation even worse by enacting a new tax cut package that gives billionaires tax breaks on the backs of working people," the group said Wednesday. "This Republican tax plan will start with extending all the expiring provisions in the 2017 Trump law—which alone will balloon the federal debt by $5 trillion over the next decade—but will likely include new handouts to the very wealthy, such as elimination of the estate tax."
During a hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) voiced similar concerns about the Trump-GOP tax agenda, which also includes cutting the statutory corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%.
"President-elect Trump has proposed making every single 2017 tax cut for the wealthy permanent," Warren said during the Senate hearing. "In fact, he plans to go further by cutting the corporate tax rate even more, so that giant corporations making record profits off struggling Americans can shovel even more cash to their rich executives and shareholders."
"The tax fight is starting now, and every person in the United States, every person in the Senate, needs to show the American people what side we stand on," said Warren. "Will we sign our names to more giveaways to President-elect Trump's billionaire buddies, or will we fight for tax fairness for the American people?"
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Trump Is Creating a Government of Billionaires, by Billionaires, for Billionaires
With his cabinet appointments, Trump wants to deflect our attention while he and his fellow moguls loot America.
Nov 19, 2024
What do card sharks, magicians, pickpockets, and tyrants do to hide their tricks? They deflect your attention. “Look over here!” they say, as they create a commotion that preoccupies your mind while they bamboozle you.
At first, I thought U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s gonzo nominations were intended to flood the zone—overwhelm us, demoralize us, cause us to lose our minds.
Alternatively, I thought, they had a strategic purpose: Smoke out Senate Republicans who might stand in Trump’s way on other issues—such as allying with Russian President Vladimir Putin and destroying NATO—so Trump could purge the holdouts through primary challengers and angry MAGAs.
Musk has vowed to cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget. The richest man in the world explains that “we have to reduce spending to live within our means. And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship.”
But while flooding the zone and purging recalcitrant Senate Republicans may be part of it, I’ve come to think there’s a larger plan at work.
Trump wants to deflect our attention while he and his fellow billionaires loot America.
As he consolidates power, Trump is on his way to creating a government of billionaires, by billionaires, for billionaires.
Trump intuitively knows that the most powerful and insidious of all alliances is between rich oligarchs and authoritarian strongmen.
Two billionaires are leading his transition team. The richest person in the world and another billionaire will run a new department of “efficiency.” Other billionaires are waiting in the wings to be anointed to various positions.
America is now home to 813 billionaires whose cumulative wealth has grown a staggering 50% since before the pandemic.
Apologists for these mind-boggling amounts argue they’re not a zero-sum game where the rest of us must lose ground in order for billionaires to prosper. Quite the contrary, they say: The billionaires’ achievements expand the economic pie for everyone.
But the apologists overlook one important thing. Power is a zero-sum game. The more power in billionaire hands, the less power in everyone else’s. And power cannot be separated from wealth, or wealth from power.
The shameless feeding frenzy that has already begun at the troughs of Trump—planning for more tax cuts for the wealthy, regulatory rollbacks to make the wealthy and their corporations even wealthier, subsidies for the wealthy and their enterprises—constitute a zero-sum power game that will hurt average Americans.
The pending tax cuts will explode the national debt. As a result, the rest of America will have to pay more in interest payments to the holders of that debt—who, not incidentally, are wealthy Americans.
This will require that the middle and working classes either pay higher taxes or sacrifice some benefits they rely on (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act).
Meanwhile, regulatory rollbacks will make workplaces less safe, products more dangerous, our air and water more polluted, national parks less welcoming, travel more hazardous, and financial transactions riskier for average people.
Trump has tapped Elon Musk, who invested some $130 million to get Trump elected (not to mention in-kind gifts of support from X and a swing-state operation to register right-leaning voters) and former pharmaceutical executive Vivek Ramaswamy, to run a “Department of Government Efficiency.”
Musk calls it DOGE, named after Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency—whose value, not incidentally, has soared since Musk began using its name for his incipient department.
It now appears that DOGE won’t be an actual “Department” but a powerful advisory group outside the official government yet inside the Trump White House. It will announce—presumably posted with great fanfare on X—what Musk allies describe as “slash-and-burn business ideologies to the U.S. government.”
Musk has vowed to cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget. The richest man in the world explains that “we have to reduce spending to live within our means. And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship.”
Hardship for whom? Not for Musk. Not for Trump. Not for the billionaires heading Trump’s transition team. Not for all the billionaires who will profit from the planned tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.
And not for people responding to Musk’s recent X post calling for “super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting. If that’s you, DM this account…. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
Musk says we have to reduce spending “to live within our means?” Whose means?
Since Trump’s election victory on November 5, Musk himself has become $70 billion richer due to the rising value of his enterprises.
Why have Musk’s companies—Tesla, SpaceX, and X—risen so much in value? Because investors expect some or all of the 19 known ongoing federal investigations and lawsuits against Musk’s companies to wind down. (Lawsuits involving alleged securities law violations, workplace safety, labor and civil rights violations, violations of environmental laws, consumer fraud, and vehicle safety defects.)
Investors also expect SpaceX to become more profitable from more multibillion-dollar contracts. Musk’s xAI could also reap vast rewards as the new administration considers AI regulations.
Other billionaires who invested in Trump have also been raking it in.
Oracle founder Larry Ellison, the world’s second-richest person—a close friend of Musk’s and a former Tesla board member—is a longtime Republican donor who’s enjoying his own Trump bump. Since the election, Oracle’s share value has increased 10%, increasing Ellison’s own wealth by some $20 billion.
Venture capital billionaire Marc Andreessen, who donated at least $4.5 million to a super PAC that supported Trump, expects to cash in by having Trump ease the antitrust crackdown on Big Tech, in which Andreessen has invested heavily. Andreessen’s wish has already been partly monetized: Big Tech has reaped most of the stock market gains since Election Day.
There’s also crypto. Since the election, the price of bitcoin has surged to record levels. The crypto exchange Coinbase, a major contributor to candidates friendly to crypto, expects regulators to keep their hands off it. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has become about $4.5 billion richer since Trump’s victory, as Coinbase shares soared 67%.
Oh, there are also the private prison corporations. George Zoley, a top executive at GEO Group and another major donor to Trump, expects Trump’s reelection to drive up demand for empty beds at detention centers the company runs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since the election, GEO Group has had the largest surge in its stock price since 2016, after Trump was elected the first time.
GEO Group executives told Wall Street analysts on a recent earnings call that Trump’s election could help GEO Group fill as many as 18,000 empty beds at its facilities, which would generate as much as $400 million in annual business.
Venture capitalists and investors in new military technologies are now swarming around the Defense Department like bees over a vast flower bed. They also donated to Trump and expect a big quid pro quo.
The fossil fuels CEOs who plunked down millions of dollars for Trump in the expectation they’d get a fat return in the form of rollbacks of environmental regulations are also celebrating.
The list of wealthy beneficiaries from Trump’s election goes on and on.
So who will suffer the “hardship” Musk predicts?
I doubt that Musk will recommend cutting the billions of dollars in government contracts Musk’s corporations receive, or the GEO Group’s contracts for private prison space, or the military budget. Quite the contrary: Government spending on all these will increase.
If history is any guide, there is no limit to how greedy the greedy will get when the guardrails are lifted.
Instead, Musk will want to cut the enforcement of antitrust laws, securities laws, workplace safety laws, labor laws, civil rights laws, laws against consumer fraud, laws mandating vehicle safety, tax laws, and environmental laws.
And because there’s no other place to find anything close to the $2 trillion he’s promising to cut from the federal budget, I expect Musk will turn to cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Here’s where the trick comes in. We’ll all be so distracted by what Gaetz is doing at the Justice Department, Gabbard to national intelligence, and RFK Jr. to public health, that we may not notice.
After all, the next months will be filled with Trump theatrics—a major fight in the Senate over the Gaetz nomination, another fight over recess appointments, another over RFK Jr. and his plans for destroying public health.
Meanwhile, Musk and company will be recommending all sorts budget cuts that cause hardship for hardworking Americans but almost no one will notice because of the distractions.
I prefer to end this post on a hopeful note, so here goes.
There has always been a close relationship in America between wealth and power, but it has usually been thought slightly shameful—something to be hidden or elided—because it contradicts the basic tenets of democracy.
Recall the admonition credited to Justice Louis Brandeis that America has a choice: either great wealth in the hands of a few, or democracy—but we cannot have both.
Hence, American politicians typically play up their humble origins. CEOs and bankers minimize their political clout. The wealthy refrain from overt displays of power.
But in Gilded Ages—such as the one that dominated the turn of the 20th century and the one we’re now in—the ultra-rich abandon such humility. The linkages between wealth and power becomes apparent for all to see. Conspicuous consumption becomes the handmaiden of conspicuous clout.
In such times, the wealthy brag about their access to politicians, talk openly about how many tens of millions of dollars they’ve donated to campaigns and about the “return” on these “investments,” and want everyone to know how they’ve turned their affluence into influence and their influence into even more affluence.
Ultimately, these insults to democracy—delivered by the new oligarchs shamelessly, openly, and arrogantly—go too far. They invite a backlash.
If history is any guide, at some point the public will become revolted by the stench of legalized bribery. It will not abide the quid pro quos of billionaire campaign donations for tax cuts and regulatory rollbacks.
The public will also become fed up with brazen billionaire propaganda delivered through billionaire ownership of key media, such as Musk’s X, right-wing radio, and Murdoch’s Fox News, New York Post, and editorial pages of the The Wall Street Journal.
More than a century ago, this sort of revulsion generated what historians refer to as the “Progressive Era.” It was responsible for pushing Teddy Roosevelt to break up the monopolies, institute the nation’s first income tax, stop corporations from funding candidates for president and Congress, and create the Food and Drug Administration.
And when the excesses finally caused the economy to collapse, another upsurge in progressivism prompted Teddy’s fifth cousin, Franklin D., to raise taxes even further on the affluent, create the 40-hour workweek with time-and-a-half for overtime, force corporations to negotiate with unions, institute unemployment insurance, create a minimum wage, and establish Social Security.
If history is any guide, there is no limit to how greedy the greedy will get when the guardrails are lifted. So Gilded Age excesses are almost guaranteed.
And when the corruption and ensuing hardship become so blatant that they offend the values of the majority of Americans, that majority will once again demand systematic reforms that bring us closer to those values.
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To Fight Billionaire-Backed Fascism, We Need Grit and Solidarity—Not Hope
This deeply perilous time requires realism—but not fatalism. In the worst of times, solidarity is most needed.
Nov 14, 2024
When some leading thinkers at the London School of Economics saw fascism take hold in the 1930s, Oxford history professor Ben Jackson said in a recent BBC interview, they “argued that in those circumstances the people with economic power in society, the property owners, are willing to cancel democracy, cancel civil liberties, and make deals with political organizations like the Nazis if it guarantees their economic interest.”
That analysis has an ominous ring to it now as many tech industrialists swing behind President-elect Trump. They can hardly be unaware that Gen. Mark Milley, who served as the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman under Trump, described him as “fascist to the core.”
“Big congratulations to our 45th and now 47th President on an extraordinary political comeback and decisive victory,” Amazon founder Jeff Bezos tweeted the morning after the election. Weeks earlier, as the owner of the Washington Post, Bezos had blocked an endorsement of Kamala Harris by the newspaper’s editorial board.
Bezos could lose billions of dollars in antitrust cases, but now stands a better chance of winning thanks to a second Trump administration. During the last decade, Amazon Web Services gained huge contracts with the federal government, including a $10 billion deal with the National Security Agency.
We’re alive. Let’s make the most of it, no matter how much hope we have.
No wonder Bezos’ post-election tweet laid it on thick—“wishing @realDonaldTrump all success in leading and uniting the America we all love.”
Not to be left behind at the starting gun in the tech industry’s suck-up-to-Trump derby, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote: “Congratulations to President Trump on a decisive victory. We have great opportunities ahead of us as a country. Looking forward to working with you and your administration.”
As a nine-figure donor and leading purveyor of online lies for the 2024 Trump campaign, Elon Musk has been working closely with Trump. The Tesla magnate, X (formerly Twitter) owner and SpaceX mogul is well-positioned to help shape policies of the incoming administration. A week after the election, news broke that Musk has been chosen by Trump to co-lead an ill-defined “Department of Government Efficiency” with an evident mission to slash the public sector.
Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg rank first, third and fourth respectively on the Forbes list of the world’s richest individuals. The three of them have combined wealth of around $740 billion.
“In recent years, many tech eliteshave shrugged off the idealism once central to Silicon Valley’s self-image, in favor of a more corporate and transactional approach to politics,” the Washington Post gingerly reported after the election. The newspaper added: “A growing contingent of right-wing tech figures argue that Trump can usher in a new era of American dominance by removing red tape.”
For amoral gazillionaires like Bezos and Musk, ingratiating themselves with Trump is a wise investment that’s calculated to yield windfall returns. Evidently, the consequences in human terms are of no real concern. In fact, social injustice and the divisions it breeds create the conditions for still more lucrative political demagoguery, with the richest investors at the front of the line to benefit from corporate tax cuts and regressive changes in individual tax brackets.
After Election Day, the fascism scholar Jason Stanley offered a grim appraisal: “People who feel slighted (materially or socially) come to accept pathologies—racism, homophobia, misogyny, ethnic nationalism, and religious bigotry—which, under conditions of greater equality, they would reject. And it is precisely those material conditions for a healthy, stable democracy that the United States lacks today. If anything, America has come to be singularly defined by its massive wealth inequality, a phenomenon that cannot but undermine social cohesion and breed resentment.”
The threat of fascism in the United States is no longer conjectural. It is swiftly gathering momentum, fueled by the extremism of the party set to soon control both the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government as well as most of the federal court system.
It’s not only that, as Stanley notes, “the Republican Party’s domination of all branches of government would render the U.S. a one-party state.” Already set in motion are cascading toxic effects on social discourse and political dynamics, marked by widening acceptance and promotion of overt bigotries and brandished hatreds.
The successful relaunch of Trump’s political quest has again rocketed him into the stratosphere of power. Corporate profits for the few will reach new heights. Only humanity will suffer.
This deeply perilous time requires realism—but not fatalism. In the worst of times, solidarity is most needed.
And what about hope?
Consider what Fred Branfman had to say.
In the late 1960s, Fred was a humanitarian-aid volunteer in Laos when he discovered that his country was taking the lives of peasants there by the thousands. He assembled Voices from the Plain of Jars, a book with the subtitle “Life Under an Air War,” published in 1972. It included essays by Laotian people living under long-term U.S. bombardment along with drawings by children who depicted the horrors all around them.
When I asked Fred to describe his experience in Laos, he said: “At the age of 27, a moral abyss suddenly opened before me. I was shocked to the core of my being as I found myself interviewing Laotian peasants, among the most decent, human and kind people on Earth, who described living underground for years on end, while they saw countless fellow villagers and family members burned alive by napalm, suffocated by 500-pound bombs, and shredded by antipersonnel bombs dropped by my country, the United States.”
The successful relaunch of Trump’s political quest has again rocketed him into the stratosphere of power. Corporate profits for the few will reach new heights. Only humanity will suffer.
Fred moved to Washington, where he worked with antiwar groups to lobby Congress and protest the inflicting of mass carnage on Indochina. During the decades that followed, he kept working as a writer and activist to help change policies, stop wars, and counteract what he described as “the effect on the biosphere of the interaction between global warming, biodiversity loss, water aquifer depletion, chemical contamination, and a wide variety of other new threats to the biospheric systems upon which human life depends.”
When I talked with Fred a few years before his death in 2014, he said: “I find it hard to have much 'hope' that the species will better itself in coming decades.”
But, Fred went on, "I have also reached a point in my self-inquiries where I came to dislike the whole notion of ‘hope.’ If I need to have ‘hope’ to motivate me, what will I do when I see no rational reason for hope? If I can be ‘hopeful,’ then I can also be ‘hopeless,’ and I do not like feeling hopeless.”
He added: “When I looked more deeply at my own life, I noticed that my life was not now and never had been built around ‘hope.’ Laos was an example. I went there, I learned to love the peasants, the bombing shocked my psyche and soul to the core, and I responded—not because I was hopeful or hopeless, but because I was alive.”
We’re alive. Let’s make the most of it, no matter how much hope we have. What we need most of all is not optimism but determination.
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