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billionaires
Don't Just Tax the Uber Rich, Reform the Corporate Structure That Creates Them
The real engine of inequality is structural: corporate and financial practices that concentrate wealth among shareholders while shortchanging other stakeholders who should be benefiting from corporate profits
Mar 13, 2026
Targeting billionaires with California’s proposed wealth tax is an eye-catching idea, but perhaps the real problem is how some of these people become billionaires in the first place.
California has long eyed taxing the ultra rich. In 2024, Assembly Bill 259, backed by progressive Democrats and unions like the California Federation of Teachers, sought annual wealth taxes but was blocked by centrist Democrats, business groups, and Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Now, advocates are going for a one-time 5% levy on roughly 200 billionaires, covering everything they own—stocks, businesses, art, private islands, personal spacecraft, even intellectual property—basically the whole enchilada if they were state residents on January 1, 2026. Service Employees International Union United Healthcare Workers West estimates the tax could raise $100 billion for health and social services.
Backers call it a fair share. Critics cite economic, legal, and retroactive risks.
A one-time California wealth tax might dent the personal fortunes of the Zuckerbergs and Cooks, but it does nothing to slow the corporate machinery that grinds on to produce still more of them.
To many, the logic seems straightforward: Billionaires have absurd, even toxic amounts of money. The richest 1% now own more than the bottom 90% combined. Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman note that middle- and working-class Americans often pay higher effective tax rates than the super rich, whose California fortunes grew over $2 trillion in just a few years.
Why not tax them?
But Here’s the Twist
Economist William Lazonick, a long-time critic of the way many US corporations are run, argues that targeting individual fortunes treats the symptom, not the disease. The real engine of inequality is structural: corporate and financial practices that concentrate wealth among shareholders while shortchanging other stakeholders who should be benefiting from corporate profits—and too often creating little of real value to society.
Most billionaires don’t “earn” their fortunes through work. They build wealth by owning stock in corporations. Executives and boards pump up dividends and stock prices, often using stock buybacks, which rocket their own pay into the stratosphere. Managers and professionals with stock options or stock awards can cash in too—but only if they keep their jobs. Everyone else—most workers and the wider public that depends on taxing corporate profits to fund schools, roads, and healthcare—gets left behind.
This shareholder-first model (famously called “the dumbest idea in the world” by former GE CEO Jack Welch), encourages executives and investors to treat companies like giant ATMs, pulling money out rather than reinvesting profits to create lasting value.
Stock buybacks and ownership stakes that line the pockets of executives at the expense of employees, communities, or innovation are a modern form of illth.
Consider Mark Zuckerberg. Nearly all of his mind-boggling fortune—the kind that just bought him a record-smashing $170 million mansion in Miami-Dade County near Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, and is funding a bombproof bunker-complex in Kauai that disturbs local wildlife—comes straight from owning stock in Meta Platforms. Meta has spent nearly $200 billion on stock buybacks in the past five years. Those buybacks have fattened the wallets of shareholders, including Meta’s top executives and professionals, while leaving the rest of society out of the gains (Meta is famous for its tax-dodging schemes). With Meta, there aren’t any hedge-fund activists forcing Zuckerberg to do buybacks—they’re happening by choice.
Lazonick points out that “with all the profits that they have, they could be creating stable, high-paid jobs for the workers whom they employ—and thereby put in place powerful social conditions for collective and cumulative learning.” He adds, “Instead they are using stock-based pay, which is always volatile and which results in unstable and inequitable employment, to compete for talent.”
Now, even some of Meta’s highest-paid employees are feeling the squeeze. With stock-based pay being cut back and the AI revolution changing work, some of the people who once seemed untouchable are discovering that their jobs aren’t as secure as they thought.
Then there’s Tim Cook. Much of his wealth comes from stock-based compensation tied to the stock-market performance of Apple Inc. Under his leadership as CEO, Apple’s so-called “Capital Return Program” has spent hundreds of billions on stock buybacks—north of half a trillion dollars when counting programs from the early 2010s on—which have helped push up the share price and richly rewarded executives and shareholders. Lazonick has criticized this trend, arguing that Apple’s huge buybacks reward shareholders who have never provided finance to the company, instead of investing in value-creating workers who are the source of innovation. This is the activity that has Cook extremely rich—though he still buys his underwear on sale at Nordstrom, so it’s not entirely clear why he needs all this money.
His workers could sure use a bigger cut. It is a fact that many of the workers who build, sell, or support Apple products have faced stingy pay and labor issues: Some retail employees have pushed for higher minimum wages and better benefits as recently as 2022, and labor-rights groups have documented low wages and complaints about conditions among Apple’s supply-chain workers.
A one-time California wealth tax might dent the personal fortunes of the Zuckerbergs and Cooks, but it does nothing to slow the corporate machinery that grinds on to produce still more of them.
Historically, reformers recognized this issue. For example, Thorstein Veblen critiqued the ways elites could extract wealth while contributing less to society than might be expected. And early 20th-century progressives championed higher corporate taxes and antitrust laws because they understood that inequality was more structural than individual.
This is what 19th-century critic John Ruskin had in mind when he coined the term “illth.” For Ruskin, true wealth, or “weal,” promotes everyone’s health and prosperity. Illth, by contrast, amasses when money is extracted or hoarded without focusing on social value. Stock buybacks and ownership stakes that line the pockets of executives at the expense of employees, communities, or innovation are a modern form of illth.
We don’t want illth.
Taylor Swift Isn’t the Problem
Now let’s bring in someone we can all relate to—Taylor Swift. Her fortune comes from her creativity, work, and audience engagement. She writes songs, records albums, tours, sells merchandise, and negotiates brand deals. Yes, corporate structures like Ticketmaster’s oligopoly complicate matters—but Swift herself isn’t the CEO of a company extracting illth through financial engineering. Taxing her personal wealth dramatizes the issue without addressing its source.
Policies aimed at corporate engines of inequality, rather than individual fortunes, could reshape the system itself. Lazonick and others have recommended a variety of approaches:
- Ban stock buybacks and suppress predatory value extraction. This curbs wealth concentration at the top.
- Encourage employee ownership or provide employee representation on corporate boards. Gains should benefit a broader group of stakeholders—not just shareholders.
- Reimagine corporate governance. Move towards stakeholder models balancing shareholder yields with social and environmental responsibility.
And last, but not least:
- Strengthen progressive corporate taxation. Close loopholes that allow extreme wealth accumulation.
As Lazonick sees it, whether it happens at the federal, state, or local level, government policy should focus on curbing predatory value extraction and promoting what he calls “progressive value creation”—which means passing laws to stop corporations from being looted, a key source of the exploding wealth of the mega rich. “From this position of regulatory power,” he advises, “we should then decide how the top 0.1% should be taxed.”
The real work, from this perspective, is reforming the structures that concentrate wealth. If we want an economy that fosters health, innovation, and opportunity instead of illth, chasing Taylor Swift won’t cut it. We need to start regulating the corporate engines behind her peers’ billions
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Billionaires Tax Supporters Up in California By Nearly 2-to-1, Poll Shows
"The American people are sick and tired of massive income and wealth inequality," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "Billionaires need to start paying their fair share."
Mar 10, 2026
Voters in California are supporting a proposed wealth tax on billionaires in their state by a ratio of almost 2-to-1, according to a poll conducted by the Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research.
Politico, which commissioned the poll from the center at the University of California, Berkeley, reported on Tuesday that support for the billionaire tax is currently at 50% of California voters, while just 28% registered opposition.
However, University of California Berkeley political scientist Jack Citrin told Politico that the measure's passage isn't yet a slam dunk because voters remain vulnerable to counterarguments against the plan, which would impose a one-time 5% tax on billionaires' total wealth.
"The yes side has the current lead and you have some strong supporters, so that’s the good news," Citrin explained. "Most experts on the initiative process say that the yes side has an advantage to start with because no one’s been talking about it and it sounds like a good idea... but then once the campaign begins you whittle away at that."
Among other things, the poll found voters were concerned about whether the wealth tax would really be a one-time measure, whether it would push wealthy individuals out of the state, and whether the middle class would be forced to pay more in taxes to make up for the potentially departed billionaires.
Citrin told Politico that supporters of the wealth tax will have to convince voters that billionaires' threats to leave California if the measure passes are a bluff.
"If you’re the yes side you have to hammer away at: this isn’t true, they’re not going to leave, it’s just scare tactics," Citrin said.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who along with other progressives has championed the wealth tax, hailed the UC Berkeley poll as a sign that the political tide is turning against US oligarchs.
"A new poll shows voters overwhelmingly support California’s proposal to tax billionaire wealth to fund healthcare—by nearly a 2-to-1 margin," Sanders wrote in a social media post. "The American people are sick and tired of massive income and wealth inequality. Billionaires need to start paying their fair share."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, seen as a likely 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, has gone on the record opposing the wealth tax and has said he will campaign for its defeat.
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‘Astonishing Stat’: Billionaires Gave Nearly 20% of Donations in 2024 US Federal Elections
"For a representative democracy like ours to work, citizens must have some confidence that, through... political engagement, they have a fighting chance to turn their priorities into government policy," said an elections expert.
Mar 09, 2026
Billionaires exerted an unprecedented amount of influence over the 2024 US federal elections, accounting for almost one-fifth of the nearly $16 billion spent to elect candidates during that cycle, according to a New York Times analysis published Monday.
Just 300 billionaires and their immediate families poured an unprecedented $3 billion into the election, either giving directly to candidates or through political action committees.
These individuals represent just about 0.0087% of the 3.46 million people who donated more than $200 to one or multiple candidates during the election cycle.
And yet, with an average donation of $10 million apiece—equivalent to what 100,000 typical donors would give—they amounted to about 19% of all spending, allowing their interests to be pushed to the center of major races.
The Times highlighted the extraordinary role that billionaire fundraisers played in pushing Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) over the finish line in his bid to unseat the three-term incumbent Democrat, then-Sen. Jon Tester.
Sheehy's long shot campaign was given a boost by Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who donated $8 million to his super PAC after previously investing $150 million in the candidate's struggling firefighting business, which helped seed his campaign.
As the report explains, Schwarzman "was not the only financial heavyweight in Mr. Sheehy’s corner":
At least 64 billionaires and 37 of their immediate family members donated directly to his campaign, a New York Times analysis found. When also accounting for money that flowed through political committees that support Mr. Sheehy, an analysis shows that billionaires contributed about $47 million in the race that Mr. Sheehy went on to win.
Sheehy's campaign drew support from a who's who of GOP power brokers: Jeff Yass, the founder of the Pennsylvania-based trading firm Susquehanna International Group and a major funder of Trump's massive White House ballroom project; the Uihlein family, which owns Uline shipping and has been central to backing anti-abortion, anti-immigrant, and election-denialist causes; and Florida hedge fund founder Ken Griffin, who spent $12 million to stop an initiative in the state to legalize marijuana.
In installing Sheehy, the ultrawealthy bought themselves "a key ally on tax policies that benefit the wealthy" who "cosponsored a proposal to eliminate the estate tax," the Times reported.
While billionaires still have their talons in both political parties, the Times noted a distinct shift toward Republicans in 2024—for every one dollar given to Democrats, five went to the GOP in the election.
Trump, who openly begged for donations from oil tycoons on the campaign trail, was the single largest beneficiary of this avalanche of spending.
According to a study by Americans for Tax Fairness in October 2024, less than a month before election day, Trump had already received $450 million from 150 billionaire families, 75% of their $600 million total to major candidates, and three times Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris's $143 million.
By the end of the campaign, Trump and his affiliated PACs would amass more than $250 million from Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and more than $100 million from both the pro-Israel megadonor Miriam Adelson and the banking heir Timothy Mellon, according to OpenSecrets.
Trump has since appointed more than a dozen billionaires to administration positions, including Musk, who was tasked with eviscerating public spending as the de facto head of the so-called "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE).
But as the Times reported, "Many of those billionaires are not only hoping to reshape the federal government... but to win influence in state legislatures, city councils, school boards, and courthouses."
"Ultrawealthy donors... have helped overhaul political leadership and policy in states across the country, expanding private charter schools, restricting abortion rights, advancing artificial intelligence in government, and blocking laws that would make it harder to evict tenants," the report explained.
As the 2026 midterm cycle begins, another spending blitz is coming. As the Times reported last month, the artificial intelligence industry, crypto industry, the pro-Israel lobby, and Trump's super PAC have each amassed war chests of tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to help elect their allies to Congress.
Silicon Valley billionaires, including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, meanwhile,have collectively dumped tens of millions into stopping a proposal in California for a one-time 5% tax on billionaires in the state, which would replace Medicaid funding slashed by Republicans' massive budget law last year.
The explosion in spending by the ultrarich has come quickly. Where billionaires spent just $16.6 million to influence the 2008 election cycle, that number has steadily ballooned up to $3 billion in 2024, a more than 12,000% increase when adjusted for inflation.
Daniel Weiner, the director of the Brennan Center for Justice's elections and government program, said that the "astonishing stat" was a "legacy of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision" in 2010, which allowed billionaire-funded dark money groups to spend unlimited amounts of cash on political communication advocating for candidates.
"The resulting collapse of campaign finance rules has combined with a resurgence in the sort of high-level self-dealing that was pervasive during the Gilded Age, when bribery and graft were common, and corporations used their wealth to secure monopolies, government subsidies, and other benefits," Weiner wrote for TIME on Monday.
"As in the past, the question now is who will offer Americans a real alternative, including a commitment to stamp out self-dealing in all three branches of the government," he said, recommending a constitutional amendment to restore campaign finance limits tossed aside by the Supreme Court, a ban on spending by government contractors seeking contracts, and bans on congressional stock trading.
"For a representative democracy like ours to work, citizens must have some confidence that, through voting and other forms of political engagement, they have a fighting chance to turn their priorities into government policy," he concluded. "Far too many Americans have lost that faith, and they identify pervasive corruption at the top of our government as a big part of the reason. But cycles of corruption followed by reform are an enduring feature of American history. A new round of ambitious reform is overdue."
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