Taxing Excessive Wealth Will Safeguard the U.S. from Modern Kings
Donald Trump’s messy 250th anniversary celebrations aren’t just an embarrassment, they embody exactly the type of corruption our Founders warned against. Rather than celebrating the United States and the people who made our country what it is today, Trump and his cronies have leveraged this landmark anniversary to further enrich themselves.
Our Founders feared concentrated wealth would corrode self-governance and hollow out the Republic from within—and today their fears are playing out in front of us. Wealth inequality has skyrocketed to historic levels while trust in democracy crumbles. Trump’s greed-driven fumbling of the 250th anniversary is emblematic of his broader brand of governance: one that elevates private gain and personal grievance over public service.
“Freedom 250” Embodies the Oligarchic Grift
When James Madison and Alexander Hamilton debated the structure of the presidency, they feared the office could be captured by an “unmerited accumulation of riches” and turned into a vessel for self-aggrandizement. Trump’s execution of the 250th anniversary reads like a blueprint for their worst nightmares:
- Replacing Bipartisan Celebrations with MAGA Moments. Congress established the bipartisan America250 to oversee events for the landmark celebration. But Trump, being Trump, created his own entity, Freedom 250 to serve a similar yet profoundly different purpose: maximizing profits while marking the milestone in a partisan manner.
- At least $68 million in taxpayer funds went to the parent group of Trump’s Freedom 250.
- After politicizing the celebrations, Trump failed to secure talent for a Fourth of July concert and pivoted to a self-serving campaign-style rally event on the National Mall.
- No-Bid Contracts for Friends. In preparation for the 250th celebration, Trump has been “beautifying” key D.C. landmarks. Bypassing standard practices meant to prevent corruption, the administration gave a Trump donor a $14 million no-bid contract to repaint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The project is now estimated to cost taxpayers at least $16 million, with the final price likely being even higher after the botched paint job and widespread algal bloom.
- Creating Moments to Cash In. Despite widespread public pushback, Trump spent at least $60 million to transform the White House South Lawn into a pay-per-view UFC arena—an event he and his allies profited from directly.
- While the fight was portrayed as a public celebration, watching required a Paramount+ subscription, funneling money directly to Trump ally Larry Ellison.
- Prior to the fight, Trump bought between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock in TKO Holdings, the UFC parent company, meaning he stood to benefit financially from the fights and associated deals.
- Corporate Pay-to-Play. The administration turned the country’s birthday into a corporate auction house. Major corporations seeking regulatory favors—from United Airlines pushing a massive merger to tech companies angling for lucrative Medicare placements—bought their way onto the sponsor list, trading cash for access.
Straying from the Founders’ Vision
The current concentration of wealth in America is precisely the oligarchic threat the Founders feared.
- James Madison explicitly linked political instability to economic disparity in Federalist No. 10. Madison argued that the state must withhold “unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property.”
- Thomas Jefferson similarly warned against the “aristocracy of our monied corporations” capturing government institutions and transforming a republic of equals into a playground for the wealthy.
The Founders’ fears have manifested fully. Excessive concentrated wealth is actively eroding our democracy and economy.
- Today, just 300,000 U.S. households—those worth $50 million or more in the top 0.2%—control $40 trillion, an amount comparable to the net worth of 256 million Americans who make up the bottom 80%.
- Our system is rigged so that wealth begets more wealth. The ultra-wealthy wield their fortunes to buy electoral and policy outcomes, making themselves even more wealthy.
- In 2024, 150 billionaires collectively spent a record-breaking $2 billion on federal races.
- Elon Musk, now a trillionaire, personally financed the administration’s ground operations and ran a legally questionable $1 million-per-day voter sweepstakes that some experts argued amounted to paying for votes.
- The return on investment is clear. Trump gave Elon Musk access to sensitive government information and empowered him to gut essential workers and services through DOGE. At the same time, Musk secured lucrative new federal contracts and ended regulatory actions that threatened $2.3 billion in potential liabilities for his companies.
- Trump selected Cabinet members from the top 0.0001% of America and his signature tax law will reward the richest 1% of Americans with $121 billion in net tax cuts in 2026 alone.
- Consequently, in the first 16 months since Trump was reelected, the collective fortune of America’s 974 billionaires grew by $1.96 trillion, or 30.6%.
Taxing Excessive Wealth Embodies America’s Founding Spirit
The American Dream cannot survive when unlimited wealth for a few destroys opportunity for the rest of us. Working Americans are living the exact consequences the Founders forewarned: We’re priced out of housing, health care, and child care. The upward mobility of previous generations has been erased by billionaires acting like kings.
A crisis of this scale demands more than standard political rhetoric. We must stop pretending that merely calling for the ultra-wealthy to pay a slightly higher “fair share” within an inherently broken system will solve anything. Anything short of taxing excessive wealth is not enough.
True to our founding principles, we must use the tax code as a tool to preserve our democracy. Aggressively taxing excessive wealth will break up these dangerous concentrations of private power. Reining in billionaire control is deeply American, historically grounded, and overwhelmingly popular across the political spectrum. As we celebrate our founding and look ahead to the next 250 years, we must reclaim our Republic from the tyranny of excessive wealth and tax greed.
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