Tax the Rich and Save the World

I dream of seeing the title of this post on bumper stickers, billboards, and personal tattoos. The slogan “Tax the rich and save the world” comes from a message from the Patriotic Millionaires—a group of more than 200 high-net-worth Americans, from investors and executives to filmmakers and heirs, who are actively lobbying Congress to raise their own taxes. 

Millionaires are watching billionaires pull further ahead financially, and watching their coastal properties sink closer to the waterline as unchecked carbon emissions push sea levels higher. As ecological economist James K. Boyce explains, the concentration of wealth that drives carbon-intensive consumption is the same force blocking the public investment needed to address it: The ultra-wealthy have the resources to protect themselves from environmental degradation, as well as the political power to resist dealing with it. Taxing the rich could help keep the planet livable for the rest of us. 

The growing visibility of wealth concentration is rousing a coalition of economists, lawmakers, labor unions, and the worried rich who are pushing back against four decades of trickle-down orthodoxy. Their message is gaining traction: the ultra-wealthy are not paying their fair share, and working-class voters are getting shafted.

The Myth of 40%

A useful place to start is with a number you've probably heard: According to the Wall Street Journal, the top 1% of taxpayers pay about 40% of all tax revenue. Jeff Bezos recently reiterated this scandalously misleading claim. The figure applies only to federal income taxes, ignoring both Social Security taxes and state and local taxes. The Congressional Research Service estimates that about 63% of U.S. tax filers pay more in payroll taxes—Social Security and Medicare—than they do in federal income taxes. In addition, state sales taxes and local property taxes eat up a larger percentage of the income of low and middle-income families than those at the top.  

When the full tax picture is considered, the wealthy's "fair share" argument really falls apart. Paul Krugman dissects Bezos's claims in detail, and John Miller examines the Wall Street Journal's panicky response to Republican Mitt Romney's proposed tax reforms. The structural roots of the problem are powerfully explained by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman in The Triumph of Injustice, which documents how the U.S. tax system systematically privileges income from capital over income from labor. The most striking and consequential strategy rests on wealth accumulation: the very rich let their assets grow, untouched and tax free (capital gains aren’t taxed unless and until assets are sold for a profit). When the very rich need cash, they borrow against those assets at interest rates far below the income tax rate on wages—allowing wealth to compound while generating no taxable income at all. Capitalists have good reason to love capital.

California in the Headlines

In a Left Hook post last October, I described some important steps toward "taxing the top." Now California has captured national attention with a ballot initiative that could make history. This coming November, voters in the state will decide on the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act—a one-time levy of 5% on billionaire wealth, spread over five years. If passed, it would be the first tax anywhere in the world explicitly targeted at the combined personal and business wealth of billionaires. The initiative was drafted with input from Saez and Zucman and has already collected 1.6 million signatures—nearly double the number needed to qualify for the ballot.

The case is straightforward. California's roughly 250 billionaire households—0.001% of the state's families—now hold wealth equal to more than half of California's entire annual economic output. Yet from 2019 to 2025, while their wealth grew an average of over 15% per year, they paid on average just 0.26% of their wealth annually in state income taxes. The four wealthiest Californians—Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Jensen Huang, and Mark Zuckerberg—paid an effective tax rate of just 0.07% of their wealth. Because they didn't sell their stock, its rising value was simply never taxed.

The proposed tax would raise approximately $100 billion—enough to offset the federal health care and social program funding that the Trump administration has stripped from the state. Critics warn that billionaires will flee to Nevada or Florida, but Saez and Zucman have done the math: even if every single California billionaire departed, it would take 25 years for the resulting loss in tax revenue to exceed the one-time haul from the wealth tax. Washington state has already passed a millionaires' tax, and New York City's mayor is proposing a 2% levy on residents earning over $1 million—California is widening a door that other states can walk through.

The Momentum in Washington

While private wealth has been concentrating for some time, the policies of the Trump administration have dramatized the dynamics. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) has done the unglamorous work of actually following the money—and its findings are striking. All but the richest 5% of Americans are paying higher taxes on average than they did last year. 

Elected officials are taking notice. The 118th and 119th Congresses have seen a cluster of Democratic-sponsored bills targeting capital income and accumulated wealth. None has advanced out of committee under the current Republican majority, but together they represent the most sustained and varied legislative push on this front in a generation. Four proposals stand out:

Senator Markey's (D-MA) Equal Tax Act would require millionaires and billionaires who earn most of their income through investments to pay the same tax rates as wage earners and would close loopholes that allow the super-rich to shelter income from taxation entirely. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is a cosponsor, and the Patriotic Millionaires have energetically lobbied for it.

The Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act of 2026, sponsored by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representatives Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Brendan Boyle (D-PA) with more than 45 cosponsors, would impose an annual 2% tax on the net worth of households and trusts exceeding $50 million, with an additional 1% surtax on wealth above $1 billion. To discourage tax avoidance through expatriation, it includes a 40% exit tax on any U.S. resident worth more than $50 million who renounces citizenship.

The Billionaire Minimum Income Tax Act, promoted by Representatives Steve Cohen (D-TN), and Don Beyer (D-VA) would require households with a net worth exceeding $100 million to pay a minimum annual 25% tax rate on their full income—including unrealized capital gains. Under the current law, gains on assets that are never sold are simply never taxed; this bill closes that gap.

The ROBINHOOD Act—introduced by Representative Dan Goldman (D-NY), a multimillionaire who acknowledged the bill would raise his own taxes—targets the "buy, borrow, die" strategy directly, imposing a 20% excise tax on loans and lines of credit backed by capital assets such as stocks, bonds, and real estate. It is the most targeted legislative response yet to the borrowing-instead-of-selling loophole described above.

Crossing the Divide

A majority of working-class Trump supporters may already agree with the core of this agenda. Research suggests that more than half—53%—of white working-class Americans, a core MAGA constituency, believe the best way to grow the economy is to raise taxes on wealthy individuals and businesses and invest in education and infrastructure. A 2025 poll by The Working Class Project found that working-class voters overwhelmingly believe the GOP is looking out for the wealthy, billionaires, and big corporations—not them.

Researchers who study the MAGA coalition identify a significant segment they call "Anti-Elites"—voters who are genuinely suspicious of concentrated power, supportive of economic redistribution, and persuadable on tax policy. Both the California initiative and the national legislative push offer a rare opportunity to speak to these voters on their own terms. Why should a nurse or a truck driver pay a higher effective tax rate on their income than Mark Zuckerberg pays on his? Why should billionaires be able to borrow billions against untaxed stock gains while working families lose Medicaid?

Even millionaires stand to gain from a more sustainable economic environment. Morris Pearl, chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, is refreshingly candid about his motives: "Millionaires like me want less inequality because we and our families will be better off in a society with less economic disparity. I'm not any more altruistic than the next person—I'm just greedy for a different kind of country."

Now there's a form of greed that might actually do some good. The California ballot initiative, the cluster of bills in Congress, and the polling that reveals some political realignment—these are not isolated developments. They are pieces of a gathering challenge to four decades of upward redistribution. It might even be a gathering storm. 

Nancy Folbre is a professor emerita of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research explores the interface between political economy and feminist theory.