Behold and Beware! The Age of
Trillionaires Is Coming
Have we just about decided that the further
accumulation of billionaire fortunes makes
for good public policy?
By Bob Lord
November 01, 2021:
Informationclearinghouse.info
-- "Common
Dreams "Barely
a year ago, my colleagues Chuck
Collins and Omar Ocampo
noted the passing of "a disturbing
milestone in the U.S. history of
concentrated wealth and power." On August
13, 2020, just twelve obscenely wealthy
Americans held a combined $1.015 trillion.
They called those twelve the "Oligarchic
Dozen."
Or we've accepted the
notion that the use of revenue derived from
taxing billionaires in a meaningful way to
alleviate human pain and suffering would be
bad policy.
Oh, how quaint, how yesteryear.
On October 29, 2021, just half that
group—just six extraordinarily rich
people—held wealth totaling $1.003 trillion.
Meet our "Oligarchic Half-Dozen": Elon
Musk ($292.6 billion), Jeff Bezos ($195.9),
Bill Gates ($137.4), Larry Ellison ($130.0),
Larry Page ($126.2), and Sergey Brin
($121.6). That number for Elon Musk,
definitely not a typo: America now has its
first "quarter-trillionaire."
Chuck and Omar had it right: The arrival
of the Oligarchic Dozen last year should
have disturbed us all. The appearance of the
Oligarchic Half-Dozen just one year later
should be absolutely alarming.
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But apparently not alarming enough to
Congress and the Biden administration. In
the face of recent blockbuster reporting—by
ProPublica on the paltry rate that
gigantic wealth increases translate into
taxable income and by both
ProPublica and
Bloomberg on the routine use of obscene
estate tax loopholes—the Biden
administration's Build Back Better framework
released last week threw every proposal
directed at billionaire wealth concentration
overboard.
At the behest of Joe Manchin and a few
other lawmakers, the so-called "Billionaire
Income Tax" proposal developed by Senator
Ron Wyden suddenly disappeared off the
bargaining table. Wyden's modest proposal
would have required billionaires to
recognize their wealth gains as income and
pay tax as those gains accrued.
The new framework also
includes no measure to close
the stepped-up basis
loophole, the neat trick
that lets billionaires avoid
income tax on a lifetime of
investment gains through the
unavoidable act of dying.
This loophole survives
thanks to a massive and
shamelessly dishonest
lobbying campaign
purportedly waged on behalf
of farm families, all of
whom would have been
protected from any adverse
impacts.
For no known
reason at all, but possibly
at the insistence of Senator
Kyrsten Sinema, measures in
the recent House Ways and
Means proposal that would
have narrowed several gaping
estate tax loopholes now
don't appear in the
framework either.
Who should get blamed for
all this? We have plenty of
suspects who've contributed
to the stupefying result now
before us. Implicitly, we've
decided that the further
accumulation of billionaire
fortunes—and the imminent
arrival of our first
trillionaires—make for good
public policy. Or we've
accepted the notion that the
use of revenue derived from
taxing billionaires in a
meaningful way to alleviate
human pain and suffering
would be bad policy. Or
both.
This can't get much
crazier.
