As ordinary Americans are forced to skip meals to afford health care, it is vital that the Democratic Party resists abandoning small-d populist policies.
California Democratic gubernatorial candidate and billionaire Tom Steyer speaks during a news conference with union workers at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, May 18, 2026.(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) To what extent has anti-billionaire sentiment taken over the Democratic Party? Even billionaires are getting in on the action.
In the ultra-competitive primary for California governor, businessman Tom Steyer sold himself as “the billionaire who wants to tax billionaires.” He spent much of the campaign touting plutocrats and corporations WHO oppose him as a sign of credibility. And he underlined his commitment to Give a commitmentmeaning that he and his wife intend to give up most of their money during their lifetime; as he said, “I won’t die a billionaire.” (That makes us 342 million.)
Steyer and his team recognize that energy can increasingly be found in progressive politics. In a nation fueled by Horatio Alger myths about self-made tycoons, 18% of Americans consider being a billionaire to be “morally bad; » this figure is one in three among young people. More than half of American adults believe now billionaires are a threat to democracy. And as more and more blue states consider it wealth taxesit is clear that the public is increasingly demanding that extreme inequalities be taken into account.
Yet right now, the person best positioned to lead the charge against billionaires – in the state where highest number live – is one of them.
It’s a reflection of a catch-22 situation that progressives have long challenged: For the long-term health of democracy, the systems that have allowed the ultra-wealthy to exert unlimited financial influence over politics must be dismantled. But can these systems be overturned without the help of their billionaire beneficiaries?
Excessive wealth inequality in the United States is not new; we are not going towards season four of The golden age for nothing. Yet it continues to soar and is reaching record levels. The richest 1 percent of Americans now own more than 40 percent of the wealth of the nation; in no other industrialized country does this figure exceed 28 percent. There is now about a thousand billionaires in America, with a collective net worth of approximately 6.9 trillion dollars. Meanwhile, Americans’ median wealth now lags behind that of their peers in countries like Australia, Canada and United Kingdom.
Current number
No matter how you measure it, the richest Americans are jealously accumulating more wealth every day at the public’s expense. But hoarders may finally have to step in.
As a political analyst and Populism on the pitchfork author Bradford Kane describeAmerica has long had a split personality: “fierce individualists on one side and communal collectivists on the other.” Over the centuries, the tension between these two groups has repeatedly evolved into populist movements.
Kane argues that in 2016 and 2024, Trump managed to channel this resentment into a kind of false populism that gave himself power over the masses. (Bernie Sanders’ true progressive populism also energized large swaths of the public, but he faced an uphill battle against Democratic establishment.) Today, as Trump approaches his final midterm elections historically unpopular presidenthe dropped the veneer and I don’t even pretend anymore caring about the economic struggles of ordinary Americans. Progressives, meanwhile, are running and winning with platforms focused on affordability and inequality.
In states like California, new York, WashingtonAnd Mainelawmakers are pushing for new taxes on millionaires, ultra-millionaires, billionaires and pied-à-terre owners. This has led some oligarchs to cry that such taxes would cause so-called job creators from liberal havens to flee to DeSantis country.
This did not happen. Nearly six months after Zohran Mamdani’s arrival as mayor, the threats of departure from his wealthy detractors have proven, until now, empty. You can also consider a state like Massachusetts, which passed a 4 percent tax on incomes above $1 million in 2022, where millionaires largely stayed put. Thanks to this revenue, the state has been able to strengthen its transportation infrastructure and education, making it easier to keep young families working. As my colleague Michael Massing wrote for The Nationthe only lifestyle change the ultra-rich could experience thanks to this type of policy would be to give up a private plane, yacht or 12th house.
As the harmful effects of high concentration of wealth on democracy become a staple of American political discourse, a plaintive counter-response is often invoked: Aren’t billionaires also billionaires? Should we criticize and blame the 0.1 percent? But, as are the Americans forced to skip meals In order to afford health care, it is vital that the Democratic Party resists abandoning its small “d” populist policies when it comes to wealth and class.
This is not to say that Steyer and the Patriotic Millionaires have no role to play in these discussions. In his support of Steyer, Robert Reich recalled: “We’ve had wealthy Democratic politicians before. FDR and JFK had enormous fortunes, but they implemented some of the most progressive policies in American history.”
Rather, Steyer’s drive for higher taxes for himself and his peers makes him a powerful messenger, immune to the charge that proponents of wealth redistribution simply suffer from class resentment. Instead, he has as much credibility as anyone to call for a breakdown of the structures that allowed billionaires (like him) to consolidate enormous amounts of money and power in the first place.
As Bernie Sanders-affiliated PAC Our Revolution explains in its tweet endorsing Steyer: “We’ve never supported a billionaire, but [he] uses his position to shake up the system.
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That said, as inequality.orgit’s Chuck Collins wrote in an incisive column for Inside Philanthropy“If we wait for the billionaire class to summon their urgency to step up and solve the pressing problems of our time, we are in trouble.” Instead, eliminating extreme inequality requires mass mobilization and responsive elected officials who are more accountable to the public than to them. big donors.
Higher taxes on the ultra-rich and redistribution policies may seem like an uphill battle in a country that has long mythologized free enterprise and limitless ambition. But the heyday of the American middle class has been just as mythologized. And at that time, the highest federal tax rate was 90 percent, antitrust enforcement was robust and a third of the workforce was unionized.
Seeking a truly fair share from the ultra-rich is not contrary to the American dream. It’s what keeps the rest of us going.
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Katrina Vanden Heuvel Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The NationAmerica’s leading source for progressive politics and culture. An expert on international affairs and American politics, she is an award-winning columnist and frequent contributor to The guardian. Vanden Heuvel is the author of several books, including The Change I Believe in: Fighting for Progress in the Age of Obamaand co-author (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers.
