A 10-Point Plan To Make America Affordable Every candidate should pledge their support ......... 1. We’ll eliminate Trump’s across-the-board tariffs. They’re import taxes that are raising the prices of just about everything American consumers buy. ........... 2. We’ll get energy prices down by ending Trump’s war in Iran and shifting to renewable sources of energy.......... Trump’s war has increased gas prices by $1 a gallon over most of the country. It’s accomplished nothing but give Iran bargaining leverage to close the strait — which was open before the war. We’ll bring down energy prices by ending the war and then reduce energy prices by shifting to renewable sources that are cheaper than fossil fuels, such as solar, wind, and biomass. ........... 3. We’ll bust up monopolies. Another major source of high prices is monopolies — especially in high tech, healthcare, food, and finance. We’ll vigorously enforce antitrust (anti-monopoly) laws so that corporations don’t have the power to raise prices. We’ll bust up giant corporations. We’ll bar large firms from merging or acquiring other firms. .................... 4. We’ll fight for stronger unions. Workers need more bargaining power to get higher wages. Part of the answer is stronger unions. Democrats will make it easier for them to start or join them. ................ 5. We’ll raise the national minimum wage to $20 an hour. No one who works full-time should be in poverty. And we’ll raise it even higher for employees of big corporations that pay their top executives more than 200 times the typical worker. .............. 6. We’ll make housing more affordable. We’ll stop private equity firms from buying up large tracts of housing and colluding on prices. We’ll get rid of zoning laws that keep housing prices high. And we’ll raise taxes on big corporations that drive up housing prices where they’re headquartered or have major facilities and use the funds for more affordable housing there. .................. 7. We’ll cut healthcare costs by making Medicare available to everyone. Giving everyone the option of buying into Medicare would bring healthcare costs down because it’s cheaper and more efficient than private for-profit health insurance. ................ 8. We’ll get working families help with childcare and eldercare. Both are essential for working families who must now pay out large portions of their incomes to provide care for family members. .............. 9. We’ll give working families paid family leave. Twelve weeks of unpaid leave has proven useful but not adequate. Every other advanced country provides paid leave; the richest country in the world should too. ................ 10. We’ll raise taxes on the wealthiest to pay for this. Since Reagan, the rich have paid far lower taxes while accumulating a near-record portion of total income and wealth. It’s only fair that they pay more so that the rest of America can afford what Americans need. We’ll raise the top marginal tax rate to 70 percent — what it was before Reagan. We’ll also impose a 0.5 percent tax on wealth in excess of $100 million. We’ll also eliminate the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes, require that the ultra-rich pay annual capital gains taxes on unrealized income, and eliminate the stepped-up basis at death.
Democracy in an Age of Powermaxxing The billionaire backlash has finally arrived. But is it too late? ........ Suddenly it’s OK to sound the alarm about the political power of billionaires. And I do mean suddenly. The chart above, from political scientist Andrew Hall, examines fundraising emails to track the extent to which politicians say negative things about the hyper-wealthy. Not surprisingly, almost all mentions are negative. Until 2025 there were remarkably few such mentions – that is, until the cavalcade of fawning tech bros at the Trump inauguration abruptly made criticism of billionaires and their influence mainstream. .................. Hall calls this “billionaire bashing.” Tyler Cowen calls it “billionaire derangement syndrome,” as if it were unreasonable to worry about the political power of a handful of incredibly wealthy men who are bestowing tens of millions in favors to the Trump administration and the Trump family, as well as spending vast sums to influence elections and Supreme Court nominations. The real puzzle is why it didn’t happen sooner.......... You don’t need statistics to realize that there has been an explosion of wealth at the very top of the scale. From their titanic yachts to their life extension treatments, the hyper-wealthy are flaunting their billions almost everywhere one looks. For example, a few days ago the Wall Street Journal published a report on a new trend: “landmaxxing,” as in, the hyper-wealthy are increasingly buying giant estates: ................... in 1982, the first year Forbes compiled its list of the 400 richest Americans, the combined wealth of the 400 was only $92 billion. In 2025 it was $6.6 trillion. Even adjusting for inflation, the growth of wealth at the top has dwarfed gains in income and wealth for the average American: ............... So why should the rest of us care about how the other 0.0002% live? One important reason is that wealth at the top is, to a significant extent, coming at the expense of American workers. .............. A second, even more important reason is the fact that the hyper-wealthy aren’t just landmaxxing -- they’re powermaxxing.They are seriously undermining American democracy as well as lowering the living standards of ordinary Americans. ................. statistical data bear out the impressionistic evidence. As recently as the 2000s, the hyper-wealthy played little direct role in campaign finance, although influence campaigns by the likes of the Koch brothers and Richard Mellon Scaife were already having a major effect on the politics of taxation, climate and more. Since then the combination of soaring billionaire wealth and the Citizens United decision by the Roberts Supreme Court — a court whose Trump-enabling, anti-democratic slant was itself largely engineered by the Kochs — have opened the floodgates. Billionaires accounted for almost 20 percent of campaign spending in 2024, and that surely understates their influence: ................ Massive political spending has given billionaires massive political power. True, some of what the Trump administration does reflects Trump’s personal whims, obsessions and vanity — which is why the Iran debacle happened and is turning into a quagmire. But a large part of federal policy now is government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, for the billionaires
. ............... What do billionaires want and get? Money isn’t their only object. Some of them genuinely believe in causes beyond their own further enrichment. Unfortunately, these causes are on average loathsome. Elon Musk, to take the most prominent example, appears to be personally committed to white supremacy and right-wing extremism. Peter Thiel, who bought JD Vance his Ohio Senate seat, appears to be genuinely crazy: he’s called for a return to monarchy and is now ranting about the antichrist. As Henry Farrell argues, we shouldn’t be talking about billionaire derangement syndrome, we should be talking about deranged billionaire syndrome. .................. Obligatory disclaimer: not all billionaires are deranged, and some are public-spirited figures who try to use their wealth and power to help others. However, the Citizens United decision, along with the Trump administration’s raw corruption, opened the door for the all too numerous predatory billionaires to acquire more political power in order to further rig a system that is already greatly tilted in their favor. Want to pollute air and water? Want your anti-competitive merger approved? Want a big tax cut that benefits the billionaire class while stripping ordering people of their healthcare? Want to eliminate financial regulation so that you can play games with and siphon off other people’s money? No problem on all those counts. ............... Above all, the billionaires want low taxes for themselves. A recent paper by Balkir et al estimates that because we tax income from wealth at much lower rates than income from wages, the wealthiest 400 people in American pay an average tax rate of 24%, compared with 30% for the population at large and 45% for high-income Americans who derive their income from earnings rather than ownership of assets. ............... the real question about the backlash against billionaires is why it didn’t happen sooner.
Trump's National Socialism It is centralizing ever more economic power in Trump's hands ......... Quietly and without any fanfare, the Trump regime is becoming a shareholder or profit-sharer in an array of corporations thought to be critical to the nation’s security.......... For example, in one of the most remarkable turnarounds in corporate history, the U.S. chipmaker Intel’s shares have more than quadrupled in value since March 2025. The stock has surged 464 percent in the past 12 months, with the company hitting a market cap of $608.7 billion. .......... A year ago, Intel was on life support. Many predicted its death. What happened?Intel’s rebirth is partly due to the AI boom, which requires huge quantities of computer chips known as CPUs, which are Intel’s specialty. ........... In August 2025 — in one of the most audacious moves by any administration — the U.S. government converted $9 billion in federal grants to Intel into a 10 percent stake in the company, thereby becoming Intel’s single largest shareholder. ............ Can you imagine if the Obama administration had converted its bailouts of Wall Street, GM, and Stellantis into equity stakes in the big banks and automakers? Republicans would have been on rooftops hollering: Socialism! Communism! ........... But the Trump regime did the deal without so much as a Republican peep. ............ Huang got what he was after, after agreeing to two conditions. First, the United States government would get 25 percent of all profits from Nvidia’s sales in China. Second, Nvidia would invest $5 billion in Intel and buy its custom data center chips. Huang called the deal a “historic” partnership. ................ This isn’t capitalism, folks. It’s government becoming the major shareholder of the biggest chip-making in America, then giving a tariff exemption to another key tech corporation on condition it buy the products of and collaborate with the first, and giving a national-security exemption to a third key tech company on condition it also buy the products of the first and give the government a portion of its sales in China. .......................... Trump’s national socialism doesn’t stop here. Under Trump, the U.S. government has also become the largest shareholder of MP Materials, which operates the only mine for rare earth minerals in the United States, after sinking $400 million of taxpayer dollars into the corporation. .............. And when Nippon Steel acquired U.S. Steel in June of 2025, it was announced that Trump would personally control the so-called “golden share” that his regime forced U.S. Steel to accept as part of the deal. ................. The result is not unlike the world’s last big experiment with national socialism — in the 1930s, in Germany.
