Tax the billionaires: They are not your friends

OPINION:

Everyone on the right is all excited about Elon Musk buying Twitter, but it would be wise to reserve judgment about whether that will ultimately be a good thing.

The simple reality is that no matter your political preferences, billionaires are not your friends. They are not your allies, your advocates or even really your sponsors in most cases. They are less interested in ideological or policy outcomes than financial outcomes in every instance.

Despite the hagiography, with a few exceptions, none of them has done much to help the world. They are people who were smart or lucky and who managed to conquer or game a system that made them wealthy.

Bill Gates is a salesman. A very good salesman, but a salesman. His entire contribution to humanity has consisted of selling suboptimal operating systems for computers to businesses and individuals who don’t know any better.

Elon Musk, the schoolboy crush of the moment, has figured out how to use government programs at both the federal and state level to make money. All or almost all of his profits come from “creating” and selling tax credits, renewable energy credits and low carbon fuel standard credits to others tangled in government regulatory programs.

Laurene Powell Jobs, like many people, inherited her money when her husband died. Sam Walton ran the best five and dime in the world. Jeff Bezos is a master of the warehouse. I could go on, but you get the point.

Therefore, it is not surprising that none of these people or their peers are heroes of the revolution, especially on the right.

Yet, when President Biden suggested that we tax billionaires’ wealth, the usual constellation of legacy Republicans and conservatives tut-tutted the idea as unworkable, unwise, collectivist or whatever.

We tax all kinds of things all the time. The idea that somehow a wealth tax — really, truly massive wealth — is out of bounds or too complicated to construct or administer is ridiculous.

What legacy Republicans can’t or won’t face is that many billionaires have become pathologies in the political system. Mr. Gates spends most of his time trying desperately trying to convince us that climate change is an existential problem that could be solved if only we gave the federal government more tax dollars and power. He funds biolabs in China with his spare change.

Mark Zuckerberg spends a significant portion of his wealth trying to ensure that the left wins elections, even when they may not receive the most votes. MacKenzie Scott just recently gave $275 million to Planned Parenthood so they could kill more American children in the womb. Warren Buffett backed candidate Barack Obama and helped him become president.

The various foundations created by the American oligarchy — Ford, Rockefeller, Walton, etc. — are unfailingly hostile to the American way of life.

I’m not saying Republicans and conservatives should be in favor of taxing billionaires. I’m also not saying they should not be. Whether the concentration of that much wealth (and consequently power) in the hands of a few individuals or families is good for the republic is an open question. I tend to think it is not. Long experience, ranging from the Rockefellers and their eponymous foundation right down to the present-day American oligarchs, suggests that too much money in too few hands is not a good thing.

For the rich, the political play is pretty straightforward: Fund the left because the Republicans are so committed to minimizing taxes and the role of government that they will always seek to preserve wealth, no matter how extensive or how recklessly it is deployed.

Republicans are chumps for playing along with this game.

Whatever one thinks about the wisdom of taxes on billionaires, given the steady-state tilt of that demographic group against the interests of America and Americans, it is crazy for anyone to fight on their behalf. They should be forced to fight their own battles.

• Michael McKenna, a columnist for The Washington Times, is the president of MWR Strategies. He was most recently a deputy assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Legislative Affairs at the White House.