Is the Tide Turning Against Billionaires and Their Unreasonable Power?
BY JAN MASAOKA
For a while, billionaires felt like our real-life superheroes — Batman and Iron Man with tech companies and PR agents.
In the comics, it tracks: Bruce Wayne (Batman's secret identity) and Tony Stark (Iron Man's) are both billionaires, complete with vast inheritances and high-tech toys, and they keep saving the world.
Back in the real world, figures like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Donald Trump were often treated the same way: admired, celebrated, and held up as ideals for ambition and success. (Trump’s fortune was inherited; Gates, Musk, and Zuckerberg built theirs—though not without aggressive, and sometimes illegal or questionable corporate strategies.)
In 2001, Occupy Wall Street caught public attention with the phrase, “the 99% versus the 1%.” And over the following decade, "millionaire" stopped sounding outrageously rich. Even the reality show Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? didn't seem to be offering enough money.
In fact, we have been seeing a gradual shift in the popular idea of extreme wealth—To be really rich, now you had to be a billionaire. And for the first time, there were enough billionaires to talk about them as a group.
Now we appear to be in the middle of a wider cultural—and possibly political—shift in how billionaires are viewed. Cultural shifts don't easily lend themselves to precise measurement, but several indicators are visible:
- The growing use of the term “billionaire class.” This isn’t about colorful individuals anymore; it frames billionaires as a group with shared economic interests.
- “Tax the Rich” has increasingly become “Tax the Billionaires.” The target has narrowed—and sharpened.
- Federal policy vocabulary: Just last year, the Biden administration proposed a Billionaire Minimum Tax—a 25% tax aimed at the wealthiest one-thousandth of one percent (0.001%).
- State policy vocabulary: In California, unions and advocates are gathering signatures for a proposed Billionaire’s Tax—a one-time 5% tax on the wealth (not the income) of roughly 200 California residents who have net worths of $1 billion or more.
- Pop culture: It’s risky to read too much into movies and TV, but it’s notable that the past two years have delivered a wave of billionaire villains—from Succession to Glass Onion: Knives Out, Jurassic World: Rebirth, and Alien: Earth. The billionaire-as-hero motif is increasingly supplanted by the billionaire supervillain.
A small number of billionaires themselves have acknowledged the distortions created by extreme wealth. Warren Buffett put it bluntly: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
And let's not forget how hard it is to even picture a billion. Stack $1 bills and one million dollars reaches about 358 feet (31 stories). One billion dollars? About 68 miles high. That's sixty miles higher than where commercial airplanes fly!
So there is some good news. More people are recognizing that billionaires don’t just act solely as individuals—they often act in the interests of a billionaire class, with consequences for everyone else: for inequality, for democratic institutions, and for the planet itself.
Cultural and political moods can swing quickly, and not always in the same direction. For now, though, this shift is worth noticing and offering a ray of optimism. There's a problem with so few people having so much money and thereby control and influence. We should remember that billionaires exercise their power through multiple vehicles, including philanthropic entities. And they typically exercise this power to strengthen the financial and political interests of the billionaire class. Let's appreciate this small cultural shift and seek ways to build on it.
Philanthropy Project Awarded!
Exciting news: The Philanthropy Project has just received the Pablo Eisenberg Memorial Prize from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP).
We could not be more honored. Pablo Eisenberg has been called "a folk hero for grassroots nonprofits" who frequently criticized foundations as "gutless wonders" and called out mega-donors for funding the wrong things and/ not funding enough," NCRP said:
“Jan [Masaoka] and Jon [Pratt] have for decades been truth-tellers and thoughtful critics of philanthropy. Their latest joint effort, The Philanthropy Project, seeks to focus attention on the need for appropriate regulation and public accountability for tax-favored philanthropic wealth. Pablo appreciated their work, and I know he would be incredibly pleased that they are receiving this award that bears his name.”
We know the effort for regulatory philanthropic and tax reform is a long one. This recognition when the Philanthropy Project is only a year old means so much to us. It's also a fun honor to follow Prize recipient Vu Le, the sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued writer of Nonprofit AF. And a quote from Pablo Eisenberg that Jon cited when we accepted the award in Minneapolis:
"What sense does it make to sit on billions in endowments while communities are starving for help? The moral case for increasing payouts is overwhelming."
And NCRP: we are glad to be allies with you in the fight for reform.
Fifteen Years Into the Famous Giving Pledge
By Carolyn Karr
Remember Warren Buffet's highly-publicized Giving Pledge? The billionaire challenged others to promise to donate at least half of their wealth during their lives or upon their deaths.
Fifteen years later, philanthropy reform leader Chuck Collins and the Institute for Policy Studies found that only one living Pledger — Laura and John Arnold — has fulfilled the Pledge. And, of the 256 billionaire individuals and families who signed the Pledge, only four are now worth less than $1 billion due to charitable giving. Their conclusion? The "Pledge is unfulfilled, unfulfillable, and not our ticket to a fairer, better future."
So how did this big, uplifting idea flop so badly?
The Giving Pledge was inspired by Chuck Feeney (DutyFree) who gave his $8 billion fortune to charity before he died. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett initiated the Giving Pledge in 2010 as a way to increase charitable giving by U.S. billionaires.
In addition to the disappointing numbers, those who have given away substantial amounts have channeled most of that money to foundations or donor-advised funds (DAFs) rather than to active nonprofits. There it often lies dormant indefinitely—never reaching the causes and beneficiaries that the charitable tax deduction was intended to help.
Meanwhile, the public isn't clear that such donations are subsidized through tax deductions at a rate of up to 74 cents per dollar donated.
While the Pledge may have been designed to diminish dramatic disparities in wealth, the chasm between income groups remains firmly intact. The recently passed tax law, (Trump’s Big Bill) provides massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, making matters worse by further concentrating power over political and social policy in the same miniscule yet hugely influential group.
In addition to the generosity of the Arnolds, one bright spot is Bill Gates's promise to spend down his foundation's entire endowment over the next 20 years, although we wait to see how much is simply distributed to other foundations and DAFs. Alas, few other billionaires are doing likewise.
As the report recommends, rather than waiting for billionaires to give away their wealth voluntarily, we should adopt popular, common-sense, nonpartisan policy measures to direct billions of dollars into charitable gifts. And the most important way to fulfill the Pledge's intent of re-distributing wealth would be to tax wealth at a fair rates.