A Labor Day Indictment: The Case Against the Billionaire Class

10 minutes read time.

The Day of Action and the Cry from the Streets

This is not your father’s Labor Day parade. Across the nation, from the steps of Trump Tower in New York City to the historic labor landmarks of Chicago, a new and deeply ornery movement is taking to the streets. The traditional, sleepy end-of-summer holiday has been transformed into a fiery, organized, and deeply necessary “Day of Action.” Led by the AFL-CIO and a broad coalition of progressive and labor groups, more than 1,000 protests are taking place under a single, defiant banner: “Workers Over Billionaires.” This is not a single-issue protest; it is the physical manifestation of a profound and growing public rage. It is a sustained and increasingly sophisticated movement that, after months of quiet organizing, has found its strategic muscle and is now beginning to flex it against a system it sees as fundamentally rigged.

The flashpoints for this anger are, predictably, the cities that have been the direct targets of the Felonious Punk administration’s vitriol and authoritarian overreach. In Chicago, a city with a deep and bloody history of labor activism, marchers are gathering at the Haymarket Memorial—the birthplace of the fight for the eight-hour workday—to send an unmistakable message of defiance against the president’s threats to occupy their streets. In Los Angeles, citizens are still seething after one of the administration’s cronies, Kristi Noem, had the gall to claim the president had “saved” their city, a comment that has acted as a powerful organizing tool for the opposition. This is the backdrop for our analysis: a nation in which the chasm between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else has grown so vast and so obscene that the people are once again taking to the streets to demand a fundamental reordering of American life.

What They Want Us To Think – Deconstructing the Myth of the “Good Billionaire”

Before we can build the case against the billionaire class, we must first fairly and honestly engage with the arguments made in their defense. These arguments, put forward by well-funded conservative think tanks and academics, are seductive because they are built upon the most powerful and enduring myths of American capitalism. The first is the “value creation” argument, which posits that billionaire innovators create an almost incalculable amount of value for society, of which they themselves only capture a “minuscule fraction.” By this logic, a figure like Jeff Bezos is not a hoarder of wealth, but a generator of trillions in societal good in the form of lower prices and saved time.

The second pillar of their defense is the “self-made myth.” They argue that the primary path to extreme wealth is not inheritance, but entrepreneurship and hard work, framing the billionaire class not as a detached aristocracy, but as the ultimate embodiment of the American dream. Finally, they make a moral and inspirational argument, claiming that “billionaire-bashing” is a corrosive force that sends a “terrible and perverse message” to young people that success is bad, thereby lowering aspirations and discouraging the very risk-taking that fuels economic growth.

These arguments are powerful, but as a deep dive into the political science of the issue reveals, they are built on a foundation of deliberate omissions and dangerous false equivalences. Darrell West of the Brookings Institution provides the crucial historical context that shatters the myth of inevitability. From 1945 to 1976, a period known as the Great Compression, wealth inequality in America declined dramatically, fueled by progressive taxation, strong unions, and public investment. Our current Gilded Age is not a natural state of affairs; it is the direct result of 50 years of deliberate policy choices that have systematically reversed that progress. The mechanism for this reversal is what West calls the “investment theory of politics.” It is the cynical but brutally accurate framework that understands a multi-million dollar political contribution not as a civic act, but as a “great investment” that can yield a hundred-million-dollar tax break or a piece of favorable deregulation. This system, supercharged by the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision, has transformed our democracy into a system of legalized bribery, a process of “wealthification” where public policy is no longer shaped by the will of the people, but by the checkbooks of the ultra-rich.

Why We Don’t Need Billionaires – An Indictment in Five Parts

The case against the existence of a billionaire class is not an argument against success; it is an indictment of a system that allows for the accumulation of wealth on a scale that is economically destructive, politically corrosive, and morally indefensible. The evidence is overwhelming.

First, as a damning report from Oxfam makes clear, the majority of billionaire wealth is not earned; it is “taken.” The report, titled “Takers not Makers,” argues that roughly 60 percent of billionaire wealth comes from one of three sources: inheritance, cronyism and corruption, or monopoly power. For the first time in history, more new billionaires are being created through inheritance than entrepreneurship, and all of the world’s billionaires under the age of 30 inherited their wealth. This is not a meritocracy; it is the birth of a new, global aristocracy, a class that has done nothing to earn its power other than being born.

Second, the existence of billionaires is a profound and direct threat to the health of the planet. The same Oxfam report found that 125 of the world’s richest billionaires are responsible for emitting an average of 3 million carbon tons a year each through their investments in polluting industries. A single billionaire, on average, contributes a million times more carbon to the atmosphere than the average person. This is made horrifically tangible by the billionaire space race, where a single 10-minute tourist flight, like the one Katy Perry recently took, can release more than three times the average American’s annual carbon footprint. These are not just misplaced priorities; they are acts of active, planet-destroying narcissism.

Third, the very scale of their wealth makes their philanthropy a moral and logistical paradox. As one blogger so powerfully and simply put it, “if billionaires really wanted the world to be a better place, it already would be.” A figure like Warren Buffett, at 93 years old, could not possibly spend his fortune in the time he has left on Earth. The Giving Pledge to donate his wealth after he dies is not an act of urgent generosity; it is an act of profound delay. As your own reflections made clear, Charles, the ultra-wealthy are trapped in a “philanthropic prison,” where the simple act of giving is transformed into the complex, full-time job of managing a massive financial institution, insulating them from the very world they claim to be helping.

Fourth, the existence of this class is a direct cause of the political instability that now threatens to consume our democracy. The political scientist Peter Turchin’s theory of “elite overproduction” provides the perfect sociological mechanism. When a society produces too many wealthy, ambitious people all vying for a limited number of powerful positions, it creates a dangerously volatile environment. This has led to a new and more sinister phase in billionaire political engagement. Their goal is no longer simply to protect their own commercial interests; their goal is to neuter any and all influence that may countervail their own. They are no longer content to have a loud voice in the public square; they are now actively working to burn the public square to the ground so that their voice is the only one that can be heard.

Finally, we have the smoking gun, the specific motive that triggered the all-out political takeover we are now witnessing. As Ryan Cooper’s scorching analysis in Prospect makes clear, the unprecedented flood of billionaire money into the 2024 election was a direct, class-conscious act of self-preservation against Kamala Harris’s proposed tax on “unrealized gains.” This was not about ideology; it was a hysterical and successful effort to purchase an election to protect a specific tax loophole that allows them to live lavishly while paying almost nothing. The “investment theory of politics” is no longer a theory; it is a documented fact.

The Ground Level – A Tale of Two Realities

This is not an abstract economic debate. The consequences of this rigged system are felt every single day, on the ground, in the lives of ordinary people. Let me bring this down to the most personal, base level.

The instant my Social Security check hit the bank this month, I placed an order on Amazon. Not everything shipped. Why? Because other, automated bills came out faster, and I was $135 short. What do you suppose that $135 would have bought me? Not a new Bluetooth speaker, not a fancy meal, not new shoes. It was a seat for my walker, so I can get a little exercise and still be able to rest. It was a therapeutic mattress topper, so I can wake up with a little less pain. It was a new line for the weed trimmer, because the weeds are about to take over the whole damn house. There is no frivolous spending here. There is only the desperate, month-to-month struggle for a basic level of dignity and comfort. And I forgot the kitty litter. That’s going to be a problem.

I am convinced that people who have a lot of money see those of us without as merely beggars. What we’re asking for, though, is something that comes closer to resembling equity. I have needed to be in an assisted living facility for over two years, but at upwards of $6,000 a month, I cannot afford it. And when I do get any help, it is never from the billionaires in Indianapolis, who are too busy with their professional sports franchises. It is from people who struggle just as much as anyone else, but who are willing to sacrifice a little to help someone else out. IT’S NEVER THE BILLIONAIRES. IT’S NEVER THE GOVERNMENT.

This is the reality for tens of millions of Americans. We are told to work harder, try harder, and spend our money more wisely. But we are good people working in a system that was never made for us. It is a system designed to funnel wealth upwards, to create a permanent overclass that is so detached from our reality that they can spend on a 10-minute space joyride what it would take for a thousand of us to live with dignity for a year. And then they have the gall to call themselves philanthropists.

Fuck that. We need financial equity, and we need it now. This is why we march. This is why the billionaire economy has to be overthrown. This is why we absolutely cannot allow billionaires to have control of the government.

Sources:

• American Enterprise Institute: “More Billionaires, Not Fewer”
• National Library of Medicine: “Wealth Without Limits: in Defense of Billionaires” by Jessica Flanigan & Christopher Freiman
• Brookings Institution: “Democracy in Question: Can Billionaires Buy Democracy?” transcript
• Oxfam: “Takers not Makers” report summary
• What She Said blog: “Do Ethical Billionaires Exist?”
• The Guardian: “Elite overproduction is hitting global politics square in the jaw” by Zoe Williams
• Prospect.org: “Elon Musk and the Other Billionaires Who Are Trying to Destroy Our Country” by Ryan Cooper