They Could Have Prevented All Of This.
Instead, they chose to violate you.
Who is more guilty of murder: Luigi Mangione or Brian Thompson? Sure, Mangione might be accused of directly pulling the trigger and killing Thompson in cold blood, but as the CEO of United Healthcare, Thompson used dirty tricks to refuse healthcare claims at twice the industry standard, making United Healthcare the most profitable health insurance corporation out there and killing thousands in the process. For some, there is no question who has the most blood on their hands and whose “good intentions” will hold up at the pearly gates. But others struggle to draw such rigid ethical lines. So let’s focus on a more straightforward question — who is guilty of the US’s poverty epidemic, ballooning national debt, and stalling economy: the average American or the 902 billionaires that call the US home? Large swathes of the political class and billionaires like Trump and Musk place the blame firmly on working Americans. That is why DOGE has elected to cut the public funds these working Americans rely on, and once these shackles have been removed, the US economy can soar! Right? No. Not at all. This is a mortal crisis manufactured and driven by billionaires, and we have the receipts to prove it.
These 902 billionaires collectively hold an astonishing $16.1 trillion in wealth. Yet, many of them, like Jeff Bezos, pay an effective tax rate of less than 1%. More conservative estimates place the average US billionaire tax rate at just 8%. Meanwhile, the average American pays a 14.5% tax rate, and the top 1% of earners (those who make more than $790,000 per year) pay an average 23.1% tax rate. In short, the wealthiest people in society are paying back the least amount of tax proportionally.
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Why does this matter? Well, the US’s predicted deficit — which is how much more money the government plans to spend than it actually owns — for 2025 is $1.9 trillion. This figure is so concerning that economists and politicians are maniacally running around screaming that the sky is falling. But if these billionaires paid the same effective tax rate as 1% earners, they would pay for the deficit twice over! That means that within just 16 years, the uber-rich could completely pay off the US government’s $32 trillion national debt, and they could all still be wildly wealthy!
The only reason there is a deficit and national debt crisis, and the only reason government cuts are even being discussed, is because billionaires don’t pay the tax they should.
Some of you may now be up in arms, claiming I am conflating income taxes with wealth taxes (to understand the difference, click here). But that isn’t accurate. Billionaires make the large majority of their money from stock-collateralised loans and engaging in financial trickery based on the wealth they have already hoarded, not from their actual income like the rest of us. So, a wealth tax against billionaires is actually functionally the same as an income tax against you.
Just like how Thompson broke our collective social contract and killed the medical clients that made him so wealthy, these billionaires are breaking our social contract and violating the very society that made them so wealthy.
Let me be crystal clear here: No billionaire is truly self-made. Governments keep the law; they build infrastructure, protect the land and its assets, ensure the population is healthy, well-educated, and safe, and even invest directly in the very industries that made these billionaires so wealthy. The entire ecosystem that enables billionaires’ wealth to even exist is overwhelmingly proportionally paid for by the other 99.9% of Americans.
Instead of paying their fair share and contributing to the collective society through our democratic government, these billionaires actively work to not pay a penny into it. Not only do they lobby politicians to create tax loopholes that only they can exploit, but they pay corporate media mouthpieces to create widespread fear and misunderstanding that national debt is deadly to the economy and that the only way to solve it is with deep government cuts and austerity.
This is just a bait and switch. A sleight of hand. They distract us with imaginary welfare queens and fictitiously wasted government spending, decrying it as the reason people are hurting and calling for sweeping government cuts to boost the economy. Meanwhile, out of sight, they are doing everything they possibly can to reduce their tax burden to zero.
Unfortunately, this perspective is utterly bullshit on two counts.
Firstly, cutting government spending doesn’t decrease the deficit; it increases it. Take DOGE’s recent decision to cut the IRS workforce by 20%, which would save about a billion dollars in annual government expenditure. However, on average, every dollar spent on an IRS agent returns about $8.50 to the government by recuperating taxes that otherwise would have been lost. So, this cut would actually cost the government over $7 billion, creating a shortfall of funds and therefore raising the deficit. The same is true for other programmes involving healthcare and welfare. For example, for every pound the UK government spends on the NHS, it gets back four pounds in increased productivity and economic activity.
So, if you want to decrease the deficit, ironically, you need a government to spend more. This basic economic fact was once well understood, but we seem to have forgotten it after decades of billionaire propaganda.
And this naturally ties into the second blatant lie. Cutting government spending doesn’t boost the economy; it crushes it! This notion of “cut to grow” is moronic on its face. It is like claiming a business can only grow if its investment is cut. We saw this play out predictably in the aftermath of 2008. Every country that reacted to the credit crunch with austerity and government cuts took forever to recover, and their citizens suffered greatly. But countries that did the exact opposite — taxed the wealthy proportionally, raised their national debts, and increased government spending — recovered far quicker, and now their national debts are lower and their economies are outperforming their rivals.
For decades, we have been suffering at the mercy of this demonstrably false, morally bankrupt bait and switch. You could say that almost every major financial crisis has been caused by, and worsened by, the ultra-wealthy not paying their fair share of taxes and using their influence to force the tax burden onto you; not to mention cutting the vital, economy-stimulating government services you need to survive. All so they can grow their mountain of gold by a few more pennies.
After years upon years of this violation and exploitation, the public were understandably disenchanted and angry. They looked up to the political elite in dismay. These leaders were supposed to protect them and nurture them, but they didn’t. The people were desperate for change. So what did the billionaires do? They put one of their own in charge and helped to fashion the presidency into a throne. Now, the same broken ‘behind-the-scenes billionaire’ ideology that created this problem in the first place has been let loose with DOGE and Trump’s tariffs. And the economy is failing. The people are suffering more than ever, and things are set to get much, much worse.
Poverty already causes 183,000 preventable deaths in the US each year, and that figure is set to soar in the coming years under the billionaire president.
Things didn’t need to be like this. This could have all been avoided if the wealthiest actually engaged with society and supported it rather than just raping it. Brian Thompson was guilty of murder thousands of times over, and so are the billionaires.
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Sources: Fortune, BPC, Fiscal Data, Fortune, Tax Foundation, American Progress, PubMed, Will Lockett, The Guardian, Healthcare Finance, VOX, DS Burge, ITEP, NHS Confed
In debating income vs wealth taxes (which should include capital gains, already taxed), propose a tax on a fair measure of how much your wealth increased per year, without all the tricky trading of “losses” against that increase. This might be the year to do it, when many billionaires won’t have any wealth increase, the way things are going. /s
I lived through Sam Brownback's tax cuts here in Kansas, but it took almost 4 years to recover.