The Alarming Growth Of Extreme Wealth & The Enabling Political Influence It Affords The Ultra-Rich

Billionaires Should Not Exist

Last week, Erica Payne noted that “on March 18, 2020, there were 614 billionaires in the U.S. Just four years later, there are now 737 billionaires with a combined wealth of $5.5 trillion. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are well on their way to trillionaire status— and now they’ve got some company. Oracle founder Larry Ellison is the second richest person in the world and is also on his way to trillionaire status. The fortunes of these men represent a gross failure of the American tax system to constrain extreme economic inequality.”

By way of background, Payne wrote that “Forty years ago, there were just 13 billionaires and the wealthiest among them— Daniel Ludwig— had a total wealth (adjusted for inflation) of $6.15 billion. Today, that fortune would barely get him on the Forbes Billionaires List. Today, $1 billion of wealth in one person’s hands translates into far too much political power, but even that is now considered a rounding error in the context of America’s largest fortunes. Timothy Mellon— descendant of the late U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon [and notorious robber baron]— has spent $165 million thus far in the 2024 elections. According to political scientists Jeffrey Winters and Benjamin Page, the political influence of the 400 richest Americans is 22,000 times that of the average member of the bottom 90%. Needless to say, Timothy Mellon is one billionaire that’s proving Winters and Page right.”

But this rapid increase in the number of U.S. billionaires from 614 to 737 isn’t just a statistic about rich people. What’s important is how wealth is increasingly concentrated at the top of society, with the richest Americans amassing fortunes that dwarf those of previous generations and that with that wealth comes immense political power over our elected officials and skewered democratic system of governance. This surge in billionaire wealth, with hyper-partisan right-wing figures like Musk and Ellison heading towards trillionaire status— plus Mellon’s use of untaxed robber baron inherited wealth— exemplifies the failure of the U.S. tax system to curb rampant inequality. Despite their staggering wealth, these individuals and their corporate empires benefit from tax policies that allow them to accumulate more, further entrenching the disparity between the ultra-wealthy and the average citizen.

What we need to be worried about isn’t that these people can buy super-yachts or multiple mansions or even their own islands but that they can buy politicians and even political parties. This kind of concentration of wealth translates directly into raw political power. As billionaires accumulate wealth, they also buy influence. Timothy Mellon, for example, has already spent $165 million on the 2024 elections, using his vast resources to shape policy and sway elections, effectively drowning out the voices of ordinary people. Mellon isn’t the first. Plutocracy— as well as siblings oligarchy and kleptocracy— is certainly a new phenomenon and hardly unique to the U.S. Athens, the “birthplace of democracy,” was also plutocratic and oligarchic. Ancient Rome even more so. Europe’s feudal system was an out-growth of plutocracy and the Renaissance’s so-called “merchant republics” of Venice and Genoa had government essentially controlled by the wealthiest families. They defined oligarchy— along with the 17th Century Dutch Golden Age, the power of the English landed aristocracy of the 17th and 18th centuries, the concentrated— and toxic— wealth and power of pre-Revolutionary Bourbon France, and, of course, the colonial oligarchies created by Spain and Britain.

And then of course, our own Gilded Age, perhaps the clearest  illustration of how extreme wealth translates into political power, with industrial titans like John Jacob Astor, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Mellon, Thomas Fortune Ryan, Edward Harriman, Andrew Carnegie, Philip Armour, Charles Crocker, George Pullman, Sen. Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Henry Frick, Russell Sage, James Buchanan Duke, Marshall Field, James Hill, Oliver Hazard Payne, Henry Flagler, William Randolph Hearst and J.P. Morgan exerting enormous— usually corrupting— influence over government policy that benefitted themselves.

Through lobbying, campaign donations, and the outright purchase of political support, they shaped policies in favor of big business, allowing them to further entrench their wealth. Rockefeller, for example, used his wealth to dominate the oil industry through Standard Oil and protect it from government regulation by influencing lawmakers. The political landscape during the Gilded Age was characterized by widespread corruption, with powerful monopolies manipulating economic and political systems for their benefit.

What Payne was writing about is a broken system in which extreme wealth, unchecked by effective taxation, results in a dangerous concentration of political power in the hands of a few, at the expense of the many. The wealth and influence of individuals— like Mellon’s grandson— prove that economic inequality is not just a matter of numbers—it’s a very direct threat to democratic governance itself.

It’s frustrating that very modest and very moderate reform efforts in the U.S. have had— at best— mixed results in addressing the concentration of wealth and power. Some reforms initially succeeded in curbing excesses, such as trust-busting during the Progressive Era (the Sherman Antitrust Act, the 16th Amendment, allowing a federal income tax, and the Clayton Antitrust Act) or New Deal regulations on finance (Glass-Steagall, the Wagner Act, Social Security). However, these successes have often been followed by backlash and rollbacks as powerful moneyed interests worked to weaken and undo reforms and regulations. The failure of long-term reform reflects the persistent political influence of wealth, which has found ways to adapt to new legal frameworks and reassert control. The challenge of reducing the power of plutocrats remains a central issue in contemporary politics, as rising inequality continues to mirror the conditions that originally gave rise to these reform efforts.

And now we have a corrupt and aggressively pro-plutocrat Supreme Court helping the plutocrats shred all manner of reform. What happened to the Tillman Act (1907) banning corporate contributions? What happened to Federal Election Campaign Act (1971) creating the FEC? What happened to McCain-Feingold (2002)? Dodd-Frank (2010)? At least there is still the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, although I’m certain the Supreme Court has every intention in the world to strike that down too. 

Polling shows wealth taxes are extremely popular with voters— although elections show that that popularity apparently is not motivational enough to be meaningful at the ballot box. If it was, there wouldn’t be Republicans in government and there wouldn’t be New Dems and Blue Dogs in increasing control of the Democratic Party. Of the 33 House candidates backed by the DCCC (basically an arm of the New Dems) this cycle, just one, Sue Altman, is a progressive, while at least a half dozen are virulently anti-progressive and no better than Joe Manchin, Joe Lieberman or Kyrsten Sinema.