The Left-Wing Attack on Wealth Is an Attack on American Greatness

This November, voters in California will decide whether to enact a first-in-the-nation wealth tax of five percent on every resident whose net worth exceeds $1 billion. Polls show a tight battle – but even if the measure fails, it is unlikely to deter Democrats’ escalating war on wealth that should alarm every American.

It’s hardly breaking news that Democrats want to raise taxes to pay for expensive social programs. But in recent years, their general opposition to lower taxes and less government has morphed into an intense and often highly personal smear campaign against ultra-wealthy individuals.

No one has borne the brunt of this more than Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who has become something of a bogeyman on the left. When Musk became the world’s first trillionaire earlier this year (his net worth, which is largely tied up in the stock of the companies he owns, has since fallen below that figure), it prompted a wave of outrage, with liberal pundits proclaiming that it is morally reprehensible for anyone to accumulate such an astronomical net worth.

Wealth inequality has indeed reached its highest point since the Federal Reserve began tracking that metric in 1989. But the nature of the left’s hostility reveals something far more radical than concern about struggling families. The “tax the rich” slogan is really cover for an attack on wealth itself – on the very idea of some people succeeding more than others based on merit and hard work.

In a free-market system, the reality is that some people will succeed more than others. Some will create enterprises that transform entire industries or perhaps even the world. The socialist left treats those extraordinary outcomes as an indictment of the system that made them possible.

The Democratic Socialists of America spell out the end game of the policies Democrats have increasingly coalesced around in recent years. Their platform calls for “public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries,” alongside aggressive wealth taxes to fund government spending.

This is communism, plain and simple. The rhetoric about “making the rich pay their fair share” serves as a Trojan horse for a Marxist agenda that reaches far beyond tax policy.

The claim that wealthy Americans do not contribute their “fair share” itself deserves scrutiny. IRS figures compiled by the Tax Foundation show that the top one percent of earners paid 38.4 percent of federal individual income taxes in 2023. The top ten percent paid 70.5 percent. Roughly four in ten households were projected to owe no federal individual income tax in 2025.

In other words, the suggestion that high earners leave everyone else to shoulder the income-tax burden is a fiction. The United States has the most progressive tax regime in the free world. For liberals, however, bashing the rich and blaming them for all the problems in American society is a convenient lie that yields lucrative political rewards.

The deeper danger is the class warfare this rhetoric encourages. Divide Americans into permanent camps of economic exploiters and the economically exploited, and it kills individual ambition. People are told that their prospects are limited by their current economic standing, their struggles prove the system is rigged, and their only hope is a politician promising to take from someone else to give to them.

The end result, of course, is more government power, and a greater reliance on the state as a parent-like entity rather than a neutral enforcer of the law. That message strips people of their agency and their dignity. Resentment becomes a substitute for opportunity.

Of course, there must be rules, and everyone must play by them. Crony capitalism, corporate welfare, and political favoritism corrupt markets and stifle competition. Americans should demand an economy in which success depends on innovation and merit rather than cultivating politicians or influencing public policy.

But public ownership of industry would make political access even more decisive. Putting government in charge of major industries entrenches the very power that well-connected insiders already know how to manipulate. Just ask Cubans how that has worked for their country.

A wealth tax also reaches beyond income or cash. It targets accumulated ownership, including business interests and stocks. Depending on its design, paying it can require selling shares, borrowing, or taking resources out of an enterprise. Calling this a punishment for billionaires does not shield workers and investors from the consequences.

What gets lost is how broadly wealth creation can spread prosperity. Reporting on the SpaceX IPO cited projections that roughly 4,400 current and former employees could become millionaires. Ownership gave those workers a stake in what they helped build.

The left-wing activists and officials who claim that their schemes to “cut the rich down to size” will improve the fortunes of everyday people have never actually done anything tangible to improve the lot of middle- and working-class Americans. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has never created a job for anyone. Senator Bernie Sanders has never invented anything. California Governor Gavin Newsom has never built a company. Instead, their inflationary spending has only lined the pockets of left-wing special interests while hammering working families with higher costs.

Meanwhile, these liberal demagogues reduce the achievements of others to a complaint that founders and innovators gained too much – that employees who freely enter into an agreement to earn wages for their work are somehow getting shafted.

While the cost of living is a very real issue, the reality is that Americans enjoy a standard of living earlier generations could scarcely imagine. We carry powerful computers in our pockets. We have satellite internet, air conditioning, electric lighting, and conveniences once beyond the reach of kings. These achievements required invention, investment, and people willing to risk everything.

Capitalism has flaws. It produces unequal outcomes and remains vulnerable to corruption. Yet a movement obsessed with cutting down the country’s greatest successes risks destroying the incentives that allow people to rise to greatness and improve lives in the process.

Billionaires do not need everyday Americans to defend their honor. But everyday Americans do need to defend the principle that building wealth is an honorable ambition.

We are still a nation of trailblazers, pioneers, and entrepreneurs. Opposing the left’s war on wealth protects the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of our forebears. The American Dream depends on the freedom to build something extraordinary and enjoy the rewards. Treating those rewards as a moral offense is an attack on the dream itself – on the very thing that has made this country so exceptional.