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Aren’t Billionaires People, Too? Yes, but…

When ordinary Americans are forced to skip meals to afford healthcare, it’s vital that the Democratic Party resist retreating from small “d” populist policies.

How much has anti-billionaire sentiment pervaded the Democratic Party? Even the billionaires are getting in on the action.

In the ultra-competitive primary for California governor, businessman Tom Steyer has sold himself as “the billionaire who wants to tax billionaires.” He has spent much of the campaign touting the plutocrats and corporations who oppose him as a signal of credibility. And he has emphasized his commitment to the Giving Pledge, meaning he and his wife intend to give up most of their money while they’re alive; as he put it, “I will not die a billionaire.” (That makes 342 million of us.)

Steyer and his team recognize where the energy can increasingly be found in progressive politics. In a nation reared on Horatio Alger myths of self-made tycoons, 18 percent of Americans see being a billionaire as “morally wrong;” that figure is one in three among young people. Over half of American adults now believe billionaires are a threat to democracy. And as more blue states consider wealth taxes, it’s clear the public is increasingly demanding a reckoning with extreme inequality.

Yet right now, the person who may be best positioned to lead the charge against billionaires—in the state where the highest number live—is one of their own.

It’s a reflection of a catch-22 that’s long challenged progressives: For the long-term health of democracy, the systems that have allowed the ultra-wealthy to exert unlimited financial influence over politics must be dismantled. But can those systems be toppled without the help of their billionaire beneficiaries?

Excessive wealth inequality in the United States isn’t new; we’re not heading into season four of The Gilded Age for nothing. Yet it continues to soar to record highs. The top 1 percent of Americans now hold over 40 percent of the nation’s wealth; in no other industrialized country is that number greater than 28 percent. There are now roughly a thousand billionaires in America, with a collective net worth of around $6.9 trillion. Meanwhile, the median American’s wealth now lags behind their peers’ in countries like Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

No matter how you measure it, the richest Americans are jealously accumulating more wealth every day at the public’s........

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