Against Oligarchy, Part II: Wealth Taxes

Forbes has been publishing its “rich list” of the 400 wealthiest Americans since 1982. In that first year, Forbes estimated the combined net worth of its 400 at $92 billion — not a small sum, but only 0.8 percent of total U.S. wealth and 3.2 percent of national income.

In 2025 the Forbes 400 were worth $6.6 trillion. That was 3.7 percent of national wealth and 26 percent of national income.

With great wealth comes great power. The New York Times estimated that 300 billionaires and their families made 19 percent of all political contributions in the 2024 election. America’s richest man, Elon Musk, bought Twitter in 2022 and has tilted the former public square drastically to the right, as well as making it a platform for authoritarian politics and white supremacists. Musk himself became, for much of 2025, effectively America’s second most powerful official, using his unelected, extralegal position at DOGE to eviscerate large parts of the federal government.

Moving down the list, America’s second richest man, Larry Ellison, has purchased CBS news, moving it rightward, and is trying to take control of CNN. America’s fourth richest man, Jeff Bezos, has purchased the Washington Post and shifted it, too, to the right. And so on.

There are, in other words, good reasons center-left politicians increasingly mention billionaires in fundraising emails, why concerns about the rise of American oligarchy have moved from the fringes of political discourse to the mainstream.

What can be done to reduce the concentration of wealth at the top? In last week’s primer I pointed out that over the course of the middle third of the 20th century America reduced the wealth and power of the hyper-elite via progressive taxation, but that extreme inequality reappeared after taxes at the top were cut at the end of the 1970s. Hence there is a strong case for restoring a highly progressive tax system.

But what form should taxes to limit extreme inequality take? They need not be the same as the taxes…