We Don't Need to Eat the Billionaires. We Need to Take Back Control.
We're not interested in punishing anyone for building something valuable. Getting rich isn't the problem. The problem is a system where enormous wealth quietly buys two things it was never supposed to buy: an exemption from the tax rules everyone else follows, and direct control over who gets elected. Fix those two things and this stops being a fight about billionaires at all. It becomes a fight about fair rules, applied to everyone.
Pay taxes on real gains, like everyone else
As of June 16, 2026, America's 977 billionaires held a combined $9.24 trillion — up $2.2 trillion, or 32%, in just twelve months, according to Americans for Tax Fairness. U.S. GDP grew 6% over that same year. That gap is the whole story: wealth at the very top is compounding roughly five times faster than the economy the rest of us live in. And it's barely taxed while it grows. Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman calculated in May 2026 that Mark Zuckerberg paid an effective tax rate of just 4.8% over the past six years on more than $192 billion of income. That's because most billionaire wealth sits in stock, and under current law, gains on stock you haven't sold aren't taxed at all — no matter how many billions they're worth on paper. A schoolteacher's raise gets taxed the year she earns it. A billionaire's fortune doesn't, as long as he never has to cash out.
End Citizens United so money stops being a vote
The clearest proof that this is one connected problem, not two, is Elon Musk. Americans for Tax Fairness previously found he spent $278 million to influence the 2024 election — more than any individual in American history. In the year since, his net worth grew 205%, adding $864 billion and making him the world's first trillionaire, at $1.285 trillion. Outside election spending overall has gone from $574 million in 2008 to $4.5 billion in 2024, with the top 100 donors now supplying nearly 73% of all super PAC money. A tax system that barely touches billionaire wealth and an election system that lets that same wealth buy influence directly aren't two separate problems — they're the same feedback loop. Ending Citizens United is what breaks it. It's not about silencing anyone. It's about making sure political power stays tied to votes, not net worth.
Neither of these asks requires villains. They require the same rule for a construction worker and a hedge fund founder: pay tax on what you actually gained, and win elections with votes, not war chests. That's not eating the rich. That's taking back control of the two systems the rich currently get to skip.