It's Tax Day. You've Paid Your Share, But the Billionaires Haven't

Today our 2024 taxes are due. You likely had most of your federal taxes deducted from your paychecks throughout the year. This is not true, however, for mega-millionaires and billionaires, some of whom are practically running our government right now. They receive much of their income in the form of appreciation on the stocks of the corporations they run. And the companies themselves use loopholes and deductions to reduce their tax bill, sometimes down to zero.

Take Tesla (please!).

The company, valued at over $1 trillion, paid no federal income tax on its 2024 income of $2.3 billion. And its CEO, Elon Musk, who had hoarded some $342 billion in wealth by earlier this year, avoids paying taxes on most of his income until he chooses to “realize” capital gains by selling his enormously appreciated stock.

Because of our overall low taxes, the U.S. does not collect as much revenue as other comparable nations. This means you get a lot less by being an American citizen than you get by being a French, German or Swedish citizen. Less health care, less child care, less access to affordable college.

These low taxes are part of the reason that America experiences supercharged inequality. While other countries do more to boost people at the bottom and enable upward mobility for the middle class, in the U.S. low taxes combined with an anti-worker, anti-consumer, anti-environment regulatory regime means that here the rich get richer and the rest of us stagnate.

A regime of relatively robust taxation and reasonable regulation delivered a more educated, healthier, more prosperous America.

Further, the extreme wealth of the billionaire class often lets them buy the elected officials and the policies they want—usually policies that add further to their riches in a vicious cycle that leaves most of us worse off. President Trump has given Musk the power to fire tens of thousands of workers, eliminate funding for hospitals and universities around the country, and destroy Congressionally-created agencies that carry out vital public functions.

Shutting down special tax breaks for very wealthy individuals and profitable corporations could go a long way to addressing these problems. But Trump and his allies in Congress are moving dramatically in the opposite direction. While they plan to double down on tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy, they are also allowing the most destructive billionaire-driven attack we’ve ever seen on the policies that keep us healthy and safe.

Musk is wielding a chainsaw against public services using his so-called DOGE (“Department of Government Efficiency” though it’s not a government agency and will likely undermine efficiency). DOGE’s cuts to services could decimate education, health, and income support. And its cuts to public oversight will enable corporations to more easily exploit us as workers, consumers, and community members.

For example, Trump and Musk are trying to eliminate the Department of Education and slash school budgets in ways that will particularly harm children with disabilities, students in disadvantaged rural and urban schools, and college access for working class kids.

They’ve fired 10,000 staff members at the Department of Health and Human Services, including those who ensure vaccine distribution, drug safety, and health care access. They’ve haphazardly slashed funding nationwide for labs conducting medical research on cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, maternal health, and more.

They tried to get rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), an agency which has recovered more than $21 billion for consumers from companies that engage in unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices. And they even slashed the Federal Emergency Management Association which helps communities facing floods, hurricanes, and wildfires, leaving communities unprotected.

Their reasons are three-fold, all bad for regular people:

• Cutting public services can free policymakers to pass expensive tax cuts for the wealthiest people and corporations.
• It can also allow privatization of services so Musk and others can demand payment to provide them.
• Finally by hobbling regulations and firing public employees that safeguard factories, inspect meat, and test drugs, Musk hopes to juice corporate profits as CEOs are permitted to shed factory safety equipment, ignore anti-pollution rules, and violate labor laws.

This doesn’t even begin to touch on the crazy on-again, off-again tariffs that are roiling our financial markets and industrial supply chains.

Policymakers of the 20th century created regulations, safety nets, and labor standards that made Americans more educated, more prosperous, and healthier. They didn’t work perfectly of course. But education, income, and health improved dramatically over this span.

Educational investments boosted high school attainment rates for adults from a mere 10 percent in 1910 to 90 percent by 2017. With more education and unionization, inflation-adjusted per capita income went from $18,460 in 1967 to $46,193 by 2023. Research and vaccination nearly eradicated polio, smallpox, and measles. And safety standards meant the number of workers killed on the job plummeted from 15.8 to 1.9 per 100,000 between 1928 (when tracking began) and 1998. The big picture: life expectancy at birth nearly doubled (from 46.6 years to 74.7 years) for white men and more than doubled (from 32.5 years to 68.2 years) for Black men between 1900 and the year 2000.

In other words, a regime of relatively robust taxation and reasonable regulation delivered a more educated, healthier, more prosperous America. In 2025, it seems, Trump and those he enables are trying to make American impoverished again by rolling back the 20th century and its accomplishments.