On Wealth Taxes

Why the Kleptocratic Nightmare Made Me Reconsider Elizabeth Warren

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Honestly, I was largely opposed to wealth taxes until very recently. But watching the kleptocratic nightmare unfold in Washington has significantly warmed me to Elizabeth Warren’s position. If America’s wealthy don’t want a wealth tax, maybe they shouldn’t convert their wealth into political power. Perhaps they shouldn’t actively participate in corrupting democratic governance. But since that’s exactly what they’re doing—well then, wealth taxes it shall be!

I get all the concerns about taxing unrealized gains, and all the challenges there. I’m not sure what the right mechanism is. But what I do know is that the social contract has been breached. Everything from Paramount’s $16 million settlement with Trump over a flimsy legal feint to Jeff Bezos killing the Washington Post endorsement, to Zuckerberg’s pathetic genuflection to this corrupt administration has demonstrated something urgent: the wealthy in this country are not invested in the idea of America, except as a place to do business.

This isn’t ideological conversion—it’s practical recognition that extreme wealth concentration has become incompatible with democratic governance. When billionaires can systematically violate constitutional rights, program AI to praise Hitler, steal disaster relief money, and deploy federal police against families while facing zero consequences, traditional approaches to economic policy become inadequate.

The oligarchs have proven that they view extreme wealth not as economic success to be responsibly managed, but as political power to be deployed against democratic institutions. When Elon Musk declares empathy “civilizational weakness,” when tech billionaires choose fascism over progressive taxation, when major corporations pay protection money to authoritarians rather than defend press freedom—wealth concentration becomes a direct threat to constitutional government.