The Economic Myths Supporting The Existence Of Billionaires
This post contains links to other posts in this series.
I started this series by identifying the major causes of the problems we face with the MAGA movement spawned by Trump and glommed onto like leeches by fascists, Christian Dominionists, White Supremacists, anti-vaxxers, the grifters behind the manosphere and so many other creeps and perverts. In this post I offer a thought on dealing with the filthy rich.
My suggestion is to unlearn the stupid ideas about capitalism that dominate our education system and our political discourse. Replace them with something approximating reality.
Background
Since the beginning of this country, the filthy rich have hated democracy, arguing that the masses would use the power of government to seize their wealth and reduce their power. The filthy rich of the day hated FDR, and worked to destroy his legacy.
As part of that campaign, they linked capitalism to democracy, so that if you didn’t support their views of capitalism, if you even asked questions about it, you were a commie, an enemy of democracy. They became vocal advocates of the simple-minded economics we were all taught in high school and/or college, and spent massive sums to eradicate all alternatives. My first econ course was taught out of Samuelson on Economics, editions of which are still standard in colleges.
I’ve written extensively about this here at Emptywheel. Some of those posts don’t hold up well, but all of them raise substantial questions about the economic theories underlying neoliberal capitalism. Search the site for Jevons, for example. The ideas that underlie marginal utility spring from the utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham. I hope we’ve all outgrown that.
Of course, there may be some value in the simple models of Econ 101. But all of it is open to question, and all of it requires more justification than “Mankiw said so in his textbook”.
Examples
1. Trickle-down. Surely there is no one left who seriously believes that trickle-down theory has any merit other than as a laugh line. But versions of it are everywhere. Here’s a Bluesky post by Mark Cuban, one of the filthy rich.
Want to use rich people like me to your advantage? Incent us to help those who need it the most. Lower corp taxes for comps that pay a min of $25 per hour. Lower corp taxes if employees get stock at the same pct as the CEO. Bottom up incentives work. Dems never innovate. They bitch
This is a form of trickle-down. Give the filthy rich a tax cut, and the benefits will trickle down to someone. Only, of course, that’s not how things work. Corporations won’t do that unless the benefits outweigh the costs. The tax cuts have to be at least equal to the cost of raising wages. Companies that already pay close to $25 per hour will get a tax cut greater than the cost of raising wages. Companies that pay substantially less won’t raise wages, meaning the worst-paying jobs in the worst industries won’t benefit.
The Chicago Bears don’t like Soldier Field, and want the city to build them a new stadium. They tell us we Chicagoans will benefit from having a new stadium so we should pay for it to encourage them to build it. Well, the Bears owners benefit from being in our city, which is a much greater value. What do they think the TV market looks like in Omaha? The owners are rich. If they were capitalists, they’d build it themselves.
Wages
I wrote a post on the justification for allocation of the profits from business activities. Please read it. It’s a good example of the kind of nonsense smuggled into economic analysis using simple-minded models. The argument from the standard economics text begins by assuming we live in a competitive capitalist system. We don’t. The model fails at the outset.
But worse, it hides the reality that everything in the real world is set up by people who already have power and wealth. Why would such a system benefit anyone other than the people who set it up, except by accident? Consider the enclosure laws which drove people into “dark Satanic Mills”, as William Blake called them in his short 1810 poem Jerusalem.
The Econ 101 model hides the fact that the allocation of income is a political issue, and that workers can and should fight for a bigger share than the mingey allocation authorized by John Bates Clark and his Natural Laws.
Land
Capitalism is built on ownership of private property. Much of English history is bound up in the struggle of aristocrats to hold onto their property against the power of the monarch. Here’s John Locke in his Second Treatise on Government, Chapter V, § 32:
But the chief matter of property being now not the fruits of the earth, and the beasts that subsist on it, but the earth itself; as that which takes in and carries with it all the rest; I think it is plain, that property in that too is acquired as the former. As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from the common. Nor will it invalidate his right, to say every body else has an equal title to it; and therefore he cannot appropriate, he cannot inclose, without the consent of all his fellow-commoners, all mankind.
Is it that plain? I can see why the usufructs of the land collected by this guy should be his, whether he raised them himself or merely found them. But what is the source of his claim to the earth itself? And why does it survive him and go to his heirs? And why is he allowed to sell it and keep all the money? Locke doesn’t say.
And indeed, it seems plain to me that these questions are obscured by Locke’s assertions. Doubtless it was true of the monarch, because the monarch had armed troops to back him up. But why should it be true now? And whatever the justifications might be, are there no limits?
Here’s one perspective. Our ancestors drove the Native Americans off the land and claimed much of it for the government. The railroads wanted incentives to build out their systems (see trickle-down), so the government gave them a big chunk of the land. Then the railroads sold it. A public resource was turned into cash by the rich. How would Locke explain that? What would be today’s equivalent? Giving leases to oil companies to drill on our national forests? Is that cool?
Conclusion
These are three examples of the simple-minded capitalism that infests our minds. From this kind of tripe, we get ideas about intellectual property in gene sequences, and patents on computer code. Why though? We did it without thinking.
Now it’s time for those of us who can to start thinking about these foundational idea. They were given to us by people like Adam Smith or William Stanley Jevons, as are all our ideas. And mostly they no longer describe reality. When they’re gone, replaced by something better, how can the filthy rich justify their wealth and power?
The feelthy rich demand services for which they pay *less* in proportion to income than the rest of us. They work less, most of them, than the rest of us. And then they tell us that we need them because they create jobs. They create NOTHING; the companies they own create jobs, as few as possible, and pay as little as possible. Everything they claim to do, is done by the work of others.
I’d suggest eating the rich, but I think they’re toxic.
More ketchup or Frank’s Red Hot I suppose if you’re being literal (we used to see the ‘eat the rich slogans all over Berkeley back in the day). However, the problem with these entitled creeps is that they never acknowledge all the souls that got them where they are, in addition to believing that they know everything. Stockton Rush, for example, and he took several souls with him.
great
Whenever my class discussed the former German Democratic Republic, the topic of capitalism = democracy comes up. Students are always surprised to learn that this dogma can and should be questioned.
Your first paragraph made me think of this: “Hedley Lamarr: “I want you to round up every vicious criminal and gunslinger in the West. Take this down. I want rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers, and Methodists!” ” Now back to reading the rest of the post.
Also, too: every billionaire represents a policy failure.
I always think of that movie as the parable of the first Obama presidency as foretold by Mel Brooks in 1974.
Does that make Gene Wilder a stand-in for Biden? Hmm….
I could see Biden slipping and calling MAGAts morons. LOL
That framing tracks. Interesting!
I got the Upton Sinclair feeling from this post. I was such a communist as a teenager. I sat in a public library and read everything he wrote. I think the Jungle transformed my entire outlook on life.
I saw a film a ways back, based on the book Oil. There Will Be Blood. Famous actors, brilliant film. In the book religion plays an important part of exploiting the poor, the oil baron uses a evangelist to buy land cheap from poor people. Hand in hand go the two characters on a pathology of self destruction.
Ronald Reagan would use the Christian revival TV shows. I remember feeling sick to my stomach watching Reagan, because I knew what he was doing from reading Sinclair. It appears the maga cult is so convoluted with religion, I don’t know what to make of it.
Interesting. I was entranced by Frank Norris’ books, The Octopus and The Pit. I think it was the way he made me see the impact the rich had on the individuals, farmers and others, who did the work of production only to be ruined by the financial games of the rich and powerful. I’ve never lost that feeling of revulsion at the inhumanity of the financial vultures.
I actually write formal classical music. Things like string quartets, songs, and opera. I am writing an opera based upon a character exactly like Jimmy Swaggart. Like pure opera, a woman in his chorus stands and reveals their sexual relationship in an intense aria. He admits to the relationship, begs forgiveness…blah, blah…
I did research for the tone and rhythm of the music and pacing of the Swaggart show. I watched a lot of Assembles of God on youtube.
The worst part is when Jimmy would turn to the camera and his audience and say, “I know you are poor, that you don’t have money to do the things ya want…” and then boom, “please call the number on the screen and give us money….”
Many business men and politicians see religion as a way into the pockets of the poor.
Interesting. I used to sing chorus with the Nashville Opera. In 2007 I sang in the chorus of the world premier of Elmer Gantry, an opera composed by Robert Aldridge, libretto by Hershel Garfein. It was directed by John Hoomes of the Nashville Opera.
The plot roughly follows the Sinclair Lewis book of the same name.
One aspect of the show is the grift you describe, one I’ve seen in my law work life. It disgusts me to see peoples’ religious instincts abused.
“Affinity groups” scams are not unknown. They frequently are based on church membership. People don’t like to admit they were scammed for any amount of money (and some lose their entire savings).
Great post, Thank you!
I had an aunt & uncle, real depression-era kids, frugal as could be (the kind of folks who wrote down every single cent they spent by the day!). We had a very elderly 2nd-cousin, Ora she was named, rural poor in Louisiana, who only got indoor plumbing in 1970! (everyone who visited had to view the new bathroom, LOL). At any rate, every Christmas, this frugal couple sent Ora $100 “to tide her through the year.” After about 10 years of these annual gifts, Ora got a phone! (1980). In her 1st phone call one Christmas, she thanked the aunt & uncle for their generous gift. They replied that they were pleased she could use it. Then, Ora told them that because of them, she was able to make a $100 gift to Jimmy Swagart! My aunt and uncle never got over that! They were just speechless!
Or you could go to Norris’s masterpiece McTeague for a brutal vision of how Death (Valley) reduces all human machinations to nothing. We may want to own certain pieces of land, but in the end nature/the earth owns us, in the ugliest and most democratizing of ways–fancy above-ground tombs notwithstanding.
Seemingly when oil is involved, religious zealotry is not far behind. I can see it in Saudi as easily as I see it in Wyoming and Texas.
Quinn recently posted about Americans being considered “fun” by the rest of the world and he seemed to link it back to whaling…..I went down the rabbit hole and I found protestant religion.
Between Whale Teeth and the Moral Uses of the Sea: Considering Religion in the US Whaling Industry’s Extractive Zone
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/15/11/1296
While in that hole I found this article about the far right in Alberta and its relationship to the oil industry.
Taking Alberta Back: Faith, Fuel, and Freedom on the Canadian
Far Right
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/15/10/1250
Interesting reads…IMHO – humanities worst invention was the Abrahamic Religions……
The others are not better. The problem may be monotheism combined with the idea of conversion by any means.
I think you’re on to something there. In polytheism, other beliefs can be incorporated into theology as populations come into contact. With monotheism, there can only be conflict.
The Abrahamic Root was a exclusively “genetic” as long as you were one of the 12 tribes* while its offshoots became abusive to any and all human rights in pursuit of proving what stupid rules would result in eternal life, while hell for anyone else that doesn’t know god’s mind like them.
* For example Mormon’s believe they are part of the lost tribes of gods chosen people and those gold tablets cannot lie….until DNA made their whole premise one big farce…just like the bible from whence the troubles begin for mankind.
Bobby Zimmerman nailed it.
God knew that Abraham had been told no human sacrifices, The deity was wanting the answer “fck no!” and was greatly disappointed in Abraham. Thus the ram tangled in the shrubbery..
…and as to the products of the Abrahamic religions, I’ve thought for a long time that the last verse was a prediction of Bush II and Dick Cheney:
Bobby usually does:
“Well, God is in his heaven
And we all want what’s his
But power and greed and corruptible seed
Seem to be all that there is”
Mr. Walker – I always appreciate your thoughtful columns, that give EWs very bright readers a chance to flex their intellectual muscles beyond the national security/hard data world of politics and social power. On that point, I think one needs to differentiate between wealth accumulation and “power” as defined as the ability to influence thought or action in our society. I know a number of wealthy people, none of whom I would describe as “powerful”. You can accumulate wealthy quietly and in an insular way without anyone noticing. However, what you do with that wealth ultimately defines who you are and who you influence. The Just Faith movement in Catholicism teaches that no single person can accumulate great wealth without great exploitation of other human beings. It is for that reason, people of great wealth must always be giving back to society and the common good or the body of collective human beings (Corpus Christi) is being harmed.
In today’s world, rarely would anyone become wealthy without anyone noticing. But for starters, what’s wealth? It’s more than having so much money, you needn’t work to live well.
But that itself is a form of power, the power to make choices, to do what you want, to tell an employer to fuck off, without facing financial hardship. Few can do that. Move the decimal point on that level of wealth, and power and wealth become two sides of the same coin.
Thanks. I think that enormous wealth gives the holders too much power in the sense of setting the rules of society. That includes both the power to arrange social and economic rules to their benefit, and the power to inscribe doctrines of thought favorable to thier position as leaders.
In this post, i point to the linking capitalism to democracy as an example of the latter. Capitalism can exist outside of democracy, as we see in China, and democracy can exist in a socialist-type system as in the Scandinavian countries. The linkage obscures the alternatives, in which the rich would have less control.
In the same way, that graph which I discuss in the linked post obscures the reality of the allocation of profit as a political matter, not an economic matter.
Both of these cement the power of the rich which comes at the expense of the rest of us. This kind of obscuring is how the rich maintain their power. Recall from my series on Pieree Bourdieu, that the goal of the powerful is to make their control seem natural and unavoidable. That is the same thing we learn from reading Foucault.
False equivalences are a major tool of the power elite.
Or, as Balzac put it, Behind every great fortune is a great crime. Certainly true in Restoration France but not necessarily in our multifarious, highly-ramified economic arrangements.
I can think of hundreds of fortunes that were accumulated simply by having a good idea and the skill to make it real — something Balzac could not have imagined — like Robert Abplanalp’s aerosol valve.
Having accumulated great wealth, one then gets to show what he is made of, and oftentimes that is unlovely, as in the case of Henry A. Wallace, but that is not wealth’s fault.
The difficulty with wealth creation is that no system has been devised — or even imagined — that would give the greatest amounts of wealth to the people who contribute the most to betterment (or, perhaps, least to immiseration), if we could ever agree on what those were. If a system could manage that, Pasteur would have been the richest of all.
The fundamental error of economic systemizing — and this applies to any — was touched on by Hugh Thomas, when he wrote of Marxism, No economic system can have any validity if it is based on conditions in Manchester in the 1840s. (From memory, in his “A History of the World”)
The bumper sticker version of Balzac: “Behind every fortune is a felony”
What was unlovely about Henry A. Wallace?
Not exactly sure what Harry was referring to by that remark, but post WW II Wallace was openly sympathetic to the Soviet Union, while U.S. “national interests” were actively lining up against Soviet communism since the war’s end. Wallace eventually retracted his pro-Soviet POV publicly in 1952.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_A._Wallace
Whether you judge him to have been a Stalinist or an idiot, either was unlovely.
Is wealth defined by what you hoard – or by what you can afford to give away?
“As part of that campaign, they linked capitalism to democracy, so that if you didn’t support their views of capitalism, if you even asked questions about it, you were a commie, an enemy of democracy.”
Bingo.
Some of my most frustrating conversations revolve around those who cannot differentiate between economic systems and political systems. So yes – it is possible that the linking of Democracy to Capitalism could be deliberate.
But unchecked Capitalism + a bought and paid for SCOTUS + Democracy being dismantled before our very eyes = The authoritarianism we are currently witnessing.
Look at the tariff debacle – the elected (?) government gaming the economic system for the benefit of whom exactly? And with the possibility that the DOGE access to personal and financial data at the highest levels of government created back doors to our economic well-being for undetected access later? Scary stuff.
Not a conspiracy theorist – not even close; but I can see an upward transfer of wealth at a scale never before dreamed possible. Anyone remember the 1992 film ‘Sneakers’?:
“There’s a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it’s not about who’s got the most bullets. It’s about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think… it’s all about the information!”
Day drinking is becoming more appealing…
Day drinking isn’t much different from night drinking, except that for a while, you can see better. But it does make it easier to assume that economic and political systems are separate things. (Contra, see, Powell Memo.)
Or, to think that promoting unregulated capitalism, by linking it to a constipated version of democracy, was only possible rather than deliberate and fundamental to keeping power in the hands of a few. (See, McCarthyism or the Trilateral Commission’s post-Nixon commitment to avoiding an “excess of democracy.”)
I resemble that remark about outgrowing Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian economics. Like many, I have prayed before his auto-icon at UCL, and find that the bones of his arguments are held together only by bits of old clothes and sealing wax. :-)
This article pleases me. I’m sure you will have more coming.
Perhaps it is worth mentioning Christian Socialism in the future? The insistence that “socialism = communism” was sold pretty well in the US, but the possibility of knocking out both crony capitalism and religious support of income inequality might be worth another attempt.
The super wealthy have managed to convince many of the not so wealthy that we are in competition against each other for scarce resources. It is their version of the Hunger Games. Of course resources are scarce because the super wealthy have assured that their stash is not to touched. They have taken a large part of the pie and we fight for the crumbs.
It is interesting that so many have made their fortunes by developing industry and technology that eliminate work. Yet they expect people to work for a living. Have they given any thought to how people can work for a living if there is no work? I suppose that that thought is what makes people like Yarvin want a monarchy.
I came across a statistic somewhere that estimated almost 5 million American households had a net worth of over $5 million. The same concepts that help people become billionaires help many others become just casually wealthy. That matters because once a family becomes comfortable, it’s less likely they will advocate for any major economic policy change that would threaten their millions. And if you happen to have a few million in the bank, you’re probably not going to care too much about the vast unfairness the creates billionaires.
You can’t judge 5 million across the board. You got to take into consideration where the person lives. And you have to consider how many depend on that 5 million to live. A couple or single person in Kansas, 5 million is nice and comfy. Same in people in LA or NYC would not feel as secure. Add children or parents to pay for and that 5 million could be just a few years safety net.
That’s an excuse, not a reason. Rich people can live pretty much where they wish; the rest of us have fewer choices.
The real issue is that “net worth” can be a little broad and collapse a lot of different circumstances that aren’t anything alike. But when drawing a line, $5m is high enough it probably avoids most of those scenarios.
You can have a net worth of $1 to $2m just because you bought a house in a place where property values later exploded, but it doesn’t mean you necessarily have actual cash to live on. If you are willing to sell your house and move someplace with much lower property values, then okay. But otherwise its just crystalized wealth that you may not be able to access in any meaningful way. (Though your heirs may.) But $5m would be multiple properties, and now you really are talking about a different lifestyle.
pH unbalanced, that reminds me of my mother talking about real estate values: it’s a $30K house, even if it’s valued at $180K (and that one is currently at about a million – it’s an odd house).
That. USD$2 million is not enough to safely see a couple from age 65 to 95 without relying on federal programs. Long-term care and health care will eat the lion’s share easily here in the Midwest and leave little for funeral and burial.
Right on the mark, Rayne. So true.
Reply to posaune
August 25, 2025 at 4:03 am
Literally just went through this with my FIL. His wife’s long-term care ate nearly all his cash; his long-term care ate what was left from capital gains on their house. They’d been business owners, reasonably well-to-do by standards of 1980s when they retired, but there was almost nothing left by the time he died at age 94 last year. Enough to bury him and pay most of his last debts. He left a piece of undeveloped woodland he had refused to distribute before his death because the increase in taxes would have forced heirs to sell their pieces off immediately. Now we’re stuck with a piece of land that must be sold before the increased taxes on it cut into *our* savings. There will likely be nothing left by the time my spouse has finished wrapping up the estate.
There might have been something left if they’d both died in their late 70s-early 80s but unfortunately the old man was just healthy enough in spite of a five-year battle with cancer to exit this plane. What a horrible concept.
$5 million doesn’t go very far when it comes time to bequeath. If one has 5 grandchildren, then the generational wealth would not amount to a college education and a house for each.
In the 1972 campaign, McGovern floated the idea of a confiscatory inheritance tax on estates over $250,000 (those were the days when a dollar was a dollar). No one applauded.
McGovern asked an adviser, do they think they are going to win the lottery?
Yes, apparently, though the same people have adages like ‘shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.’
No, $5M is not a lot of money per se. The far greater benefit is growing up in a family with a healthy amount of disposable income to pay for an exclusive address, private schools and universities, and the social network that comes with all that, along with savvy accountants and attorneys to set up trust funds and other structures that allow family wealth to grow while shielding from taxes.
Parents who don’t teach (even by example) saving and investing are failing as parents, in this society.
Also, a million dollars is a good start.
Let me be crystal clear. When I talk about the filthy rich, I’m not talking about people with $5 or 10 million. I’m talking about the over 800 billionaires in the US, and the hundreds of centi-millionaires who dominate our politics and exercise symbolic violence. See the reply to commenter Epicurus.
I do, however, think that very few, if any, people become that rich by inventing something new and brilliant. I think almost all of them got rich by exploiting our screwed-up economic system, and by screwing it up even worse.
While I don’t know any billionaires, i do know some centimillionaires, three of whom got their start in trucking. One of these had a leg up by being from a big landowning family, but the other two had no particular advantages.
Historically, money accumulates not around primary producrs but around negociants. It is simply an outcome of throughput: You can make a lot more money by taking 0.01% of all the wheat than from 100% of the biggest wheat farm.
Lately, the key is throughput of shares, and the new wrinkle is not getting a tiny share of all the shares but a huge slice of a particularly well-situated kind of share. Investors did not use to tolerate this, and up until Roosevelt made investing much safer, the lion’s share of income from corporations went to holders of bonds and preference shares.
This has nothing much to do with theories of capitalism.
What has happened is that terms of commerce have become so much more comprehensive. The current proposal to combine the Union Pacific with Norfolk Southern to form the first transcontinental rail line is instructive.
That was the dream of Jay Gould but even in the era of unrestrained capitalism, he couldn’t pull it off. (At his peak, he may have had assets of $100 million, relatively richer than anyone alive today.)
Blame Eisenhower for this change. The USA was just too big to operate a nationwide business in. Even at the height of the dominance of Big Oil (at least since the breakup of Standard Oil), there was no national gasoline brand. (There were a few national businesses. but hese tended to dep end on national government, like Sears, Roebuck.)
Improved transportation drove the expansion and concentration of American business. I remember going to a talk by a Silicon Valley maven early in the dot.com boom, where he listed the No. 1 requirement for a tech startup: convenient access to an Interstate onramp. So blame Ike.
PedroVermont, 5 million in the bank does not afford you the things you’re talking about. For instance, you may have a choice to send your children to private school instead of public but these shadowy things and super exclusive things are just not accessible with only a few million in the bank- the people at these places would consider you poor I imagine. At least in LA, you’re more likely to over pay for a small house (paying a couple of million for a less than 1500 square foot house) in a very good public school district if you just have a few million in the bank.
Joe Orton- People with $5-10M don’t store that in a bank. They use their money to own assets, which is the fundamental difference between the wealthy and everyone else, who use their money primarily to pay bills.
From a political influence perspective, I would argue those 5 million families- 10+ million voters would generally align with more centrist/conservative views that allow the creation and preservation of the extremely wealthy. Attitudes on estate taxes are a good example.
Billionaires should not even exist.
Louis Brandeis explained it well in Other People’s Money
(from Chapter 1)
The Pujo Committee–appointed in 1912–found:
“Far more dangerous than all that has happened to us in the past in the way of elimination of competition in industry is the control of credit through the domination of these groups over our banks and industries.”…
“Whether under a different currency system the resources in our banks would be greater or less is comparatively immaterial if they continue to be controlled by a small group.”…
“It is impossible that there should be competition with all the facilities for raising money or selling large issues of bonds in the hands of these few bankers and their partners and allies, who together dominate the financial policies of most of the existing systems…. The acts of this inner group, as here described, have nevertheless been more destructive of competition than anything accomplished by the trusts, for they strike at the very vitals of potential competition in every industry that is under their protection, a condition which if permitted to continue, will render impossible all attempts to restore normal competitive conditions in the industrial world….
“If the arteries of credit now clogged well-nigh to choking by the obstructions created through the control of these groups are opened so that they may be permitted freely to play their important part in the financial system, competition in large enterprises will become possible and business can be conducted on its merits instead of being subject to the tribute and the good will of this handful of self-constituted trustees of the national prosperity.”
“These are three examples of the simple-minded capitalism that infests our minds. From this kind of tripe, we get ideas about intellectual property in gene sequences, and patents on computer code. Why though? We did it without thinking.” I think it just the opposite, that we did it with a whole lot of thinking, continually reinforced in politics and through the law. How that thinking took place is described in the book Oligarchy by David A. Winters.
In that book he notes that Max Weber’s most important insight was to focus on the role and social locus of coercive power and violence as the defining feature of the modern state compared to all previous forms. Coercion is particularly important because the change in the locus of coercive power, from individual to state, is the single greatest source of transformation in the character of oligarchy in history. He also notes that all theories, ideologies, and norms used to secure property claims are erected ultimately on coercive capacities, that property and violence are inseparable. (The Essays of Robert Cover: Narrative, Violence and the Law is a wonderful discussion of the law’s coercion and violence.)
We have embraced, internalized, institutionalized the belief in the sanctity of property individually and collectively. I don’t think we are changing our stance. Isn’t a fundamental building block of our society pretty much the sanctity of property? James Madison seemed to think so, prospectively, in his article On Property, even expanding on the general understanding of its meaning at the time to argue against democracy. Perhaps you could offer a review of Oligarchy, having read it I believe, and flesh out its meaning in terms of property’s political and economic meaning and status in our society, the corresponding protection afforded oligarchs, and in terms of your concerns above.
My thinking on this issue was heavily influenced by David Swartz’s Culture And Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu thinks that the issue is symbolic power, the power to control the way we understand the world around us. https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/01/17/on-pierre-bourdieu-part-4-symbolic-capital/ Crucially, Bourdieu says that symbolic power hides itself from the dominant class as well as the subordinate class.
He discusses symbolic violence as “… the capacity to impose the means for comprehending and adapting to the social world by representing economic and political power in disguised, taken-for-granted forms.“ https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/01/20/symbolic-violence-in-neoliberalism/
Kuhn makes a similar point about the use of textbooks to control the forms of knowledge.
This is the battle we have to fight. If the rich control the bounds of discourse, and they largely do, we will never change anything.
Now consider property. I do not disagree with the statement I quoted from Locke. I do question its extension. What happened, I think, is that the rich, acting through their agents (lawyers, certain academics, and a host of organizations devoted to the spread of their version of capitalism) present each extension of the idea of property from the land needed for subsistence to patents on genes, and a host of similar things. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have agreed with any of it if I’d been thinking more carefully, not that my consent would make an iota of difference.
The only way out is to begin this discussion. So, taking land as an example, we might ask the questions I posed in this post. Or we might ask if there is a difference between a farmer owning 160 acres of farmland used as a dairy, and a gigantic corporate farm sucking water from the nearby river, and allowing runoff to poison that same river, all supported by tax breaks and outright subsidies.
One way of thinking about it: “wealth management.”
That phrase contains layers. It is pitched toward convincing those who clear the threshold of “wealth” (they never say “money”!) that they both need and can afford to pay someone else, an “expert,” to “manage” (that is: increase) it.
This arrangement exists both to increase the “wealth” and power of those hiring the “manager” and to permit the manager, remora-like, to attach himself to the realm of wealth and power, and thereby increase his own via his access. The ceiling he finds will be determined by how subtly he plays his hand.
My choice of pronouns is deliberate. I went to Princeton.
“Tulkarm Chat” (Arabic) says:
“Your article is descriptive, useful and understandable, thank you.” (Turkish)
Interesting name:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulkarm
The one word I’d add to this post is this: externalities.
Externalities are when costs can be pushed off on others, rather than be included in the cost of doing business by the company. The easiest example is companies dumping polluting waste into the air, water, or ground without having to cover any costs such waste creates. When the Clean Water Act came into force, companies had to clean up their act (or pay someone else to clean up after them). Ditto for the Clean Air Act, and other environmental regulations. Taken together, a lot of governmental regulation is based in the notion that companies should be responsible for everything they create – products to sell and also waste products.
The push in TrumpWorld to eliminate regulations are in part a massive effort to open up various paths for companies to exploit externalities.
But externalities are not just about pollution. They also include third-party incentives on the income side. Ed’s mention of Soldier Field and Chicago is a great example of this. The NFL and MLB are very good at getting governments to throw money at them, thus externalizing the costs of running their business. “OK, you give us the land, and we’ll stay. Well, the land and you pay for new parking lots. Oh, and the improved wifi and electronic infrastructure. And you give us the income from when we sublet the stadium in the off season for concerts and such. And . . . and . . . and . . .”
KC is facing not one but two stadium fights right now – both the Royals and the Chiefs are seeking new stadiums or significant $$ to upgrade their existing stadiums. Right now, the two stadiums are next door to each other in the Jackson County portion of Kansas City MO. In addition to pressuring the KCMO and Jackson County governments for more money, the teams are pitting various other parts of metro KC into bidding wars, including state money from both Kansas and Missouri. And it’s working.
*sigh*
Exploiting externalities are where corporate bean counters make their money, and where the communities pay the price.
The NFL Raiders tried this on Oakland and Alameda County, and didn’t get anywhere. They (and the MLB As) did the first time around, getting an arena/stadium complex with a BART stop.
Ah, Mount Davis. I remember it well.
Bumper sticker version: Socialize costs, privatize profits.
Externalities take another form as well. We pay for the road system. But the primary users of the road system are the filthy rich and their price-gouging corporations. They do not pay for their fair share of that expense. The same thing is true of many public goods.
We pay for a college and university system that educates people, making them more useful in the producing sector. Corporations are the big users of that educated talent, and they don’t p ay for it. This list can be expanded indefinitely.
Corporations use all sorts of inventions they didn’t make and don’t pay for. Who paid James Clerk Maxwell for the value of his work. Who paid Werner Heisenberg for the brilliant work of creating quantum mechanics?
We take these things for granted, but they are part of our heritage as human beings. Corporations appropriate these things for their own profit, with no payment, and regardless of the impacts they have on our society. AI? Crypto? Social Media?
There’s a lot to think about in Peterr’s comment.
Trump is taking full advantage of externalities. His firings of govt employees alone will cost the USG untold millions.
Wall Street hires more senior bankers as growing confidence spurs deal rebound
NEW YORK — Wall Street banks have hired dozens of senior executives in recent months, as improved economic sentiment [WTF?!] has spurred mergers and IPOs after a lull earlier in the year due to concerns over the effect of U.S. tariffs.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/2025/08/25/wall-street-hires-more-senior-bankers-as-growing-confidence-spurs-deal-rebound/
“Confidence” my ass. It’s that Trump’s FTC and SEC will no longer regulate or enforce anti-monopoly and competition law. That’s where Wall Street’s confidence comes from.
Confidence?
Found it. This is the way I was expecting Treasury sales results would look like at the beginning of the month.
Kind of the way Ms. Vito describes the tilt of the tires in My Cousin Vinny, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W7YoxrKa4f0&pp=ygUWbXMgdml0byBkZXNjcmliZXMgdGlsdA%3D%3D and interest rate tilt https://bsky.app/profile/jamellebouie.net/post/3lxbd7yyxlk2d
I was expecting triple digits though and much quicker than the chart has.
The chart shows inflation rate but I thought that that would be the way the interest rate chart would look like.
The right loves to frame the rich as victims. They argue out that the rich unfairly pay most of the taxes, citing things like “the top 1% pay 33% of taxes.” To which I reply “the rich pay most of the taxes because they have most of the money.” I also point out that under JFK the top tax rate was 91% and yet the rich managed to survive.
After her death, I was fascinated by the newspaper articles of the disposition of Huguette Clark’s wealth ($300 million in 2011).
At one time, her “family resided in a 121-room mansion fronting Fifth Avenue at 77th Street.”
A quick life story of her is at https://ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/2024/02/12/the-story-of-a-reclusive-heiress-and-what-she-saw-outside-her-fifth-avenue-window/
She lived for decades in a Manhattan hospital suite. It is unclear whether the hospital kept her there drawing down her wealth, which her supposed “family” claimed, or she intended to live there for that length of time.
Outstanding piece about a very difficult & multifaceted subject that includes, but is not limited to, basic economic principles of accounting, economics of capitalism, Marxism, communism, cultural history & practices, political philosophies, education or lack thereof for those not of high wealth, labor vs. employers, the consequences of wars, & the marketing & sales of convincing the masses who are not of high wealth to strive for high wealth.
Thank you for writing this piece!
I’ve always believed an educated & informed society would understand & thereby covet living under the Rule of Law protected by a constitution that states no one is above the law & that all people are created equal.
If, however, a society, especially those who are not of high wealth, are uneducated, or too distracted to pay attention to the criminal activity by the high wealth individuals, then the Rule of Law & its constitution become meaningless & are often rewritten by the criminals to protect & enhance their high wealth & maintain their grip on power for generations.
I’m going to push back a little on Adam Smith.
I actually read The Wealth of Nations. The Chicago School of Economics types cite the “invisible hand” comment out of context, but Smith was not peddling their agenda. Smith was much more nuanced in this thinking. He recognized the obstacles wage workers faced in dealing with corporate masters (including wage suppression) and supported government intervention to level the playing field. He favored public education; he considered it a good investment in having a stable and healthy society.
The Econ 101 proponents aren’t just oversimplifying. They are sometimes misrepresenting the work of people who came before them.
I agree. A big part of neoliberalism is a deliberate misreading of old texts.
Wondering what y’all think about The Giving Pledge (Bill Gates).
Philanthropy is not a substitute for taxes as philanthropy allows the wealthy donor to dictate where the money goes while taxes are more likely to be spent where they are needed.
Like charter schools, https://apnews.com/article/92dc914dd97c487a9b9aa4b006909a8c
Perfect example — Bill Gates undermines public schools with his support for charter schools under the guise of philanthropy.
Of course that was set in motion by DeVos family funding of right-wing think tank Mackinac Center for Public Policy which wants to destroy teachers’ unions by undermining public schools by way of charter schools a la school choice as well as anti-tax efforts. Yet another toxic 501c3 receiving charitable donations from the uber-wealthy.
Also–obviously–philanthropy relies on wealthy folks opting in. Which allows penurious wealthy people to NOT opt in. See: Donald Trump.
Trump doesn’t only fail to opt-in to philanthropy. He’s far worse than that as he’s used the guise of philanthropy for predatory aims — outright fraud.
I agree with Rayne. We all need to remember that our donations aren’t just for our own interests, in my case, opera. There are hungry people, people in need. We have to fill our share of that need.
i’m not sure where to put this.
abc.net.au/news/2025-08-26/australia-post-commercial-shipping-suspension-us-tariffs/105696336
but i think you should know.
A lot of countries Are doing that, because The Felon Guy and his minions haven’t set the rules yet. The other countries don’t know who pays tariffs or where, and there’s no exemption for low-value stuff at all. A lot of small businesses all over the world are screaming.
Coming to all neighborhoods of the US, destruction of the USPO without any assistance from deJoy.
UPS and Fedex, etc. stock gains going to go through the roof?
USPS, like most mail systems, handles a *lot* of packages. They’re cheaper than delivery services, too.
“The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.” Voltaire
I once worked for a millionaire & when he spoke glowingly of unlimited growth I told him firmly that he & his fellow capitalists benefitted greatly from the efforts of their workers. His eyes widened as if he was startled by my feistiness.
Piketty is very good on what he calls proprietarianism — the protection of private property above all else. His very well-documented tome is full of graphs, but it shows that wealth tends to concentrate over time. It’s easy to imagine, I make a profit from renting you a house and your labor. I can buy more rental units and establish new businesses with the capital I accumulate. You can’t get ahead because the profits of your labor go to me and you’re paying the mortgage on the property I own. Then I leave my assets to my kids and the process continues.
A stiff inheritance tax and a wealth tax are needed to change this. While the billionaires talk about the “job creators” and suggest that they are where they are because of their brilliance, it’s never known how many smart, talented and creative people don’t get the chance because they didn’t have the same opportunities.
How much of America’s substantial wealth should be monopolized by the people who inherited or created it? How much should go to invest in young people’s futures? It’s particularly interesting to thing about this question in the context of resource exploitation in poor countries. An African country might be rich in, say, diamonds, but not have the capital to buy the equipment needed to mine it. So a foreign investor comes in a reaps a substantial profit because they do have the money to invest. Thus, the foreign investors get rich and the African country gets less from the valuable resource there. Thus, the cycle perpetuates itself.