Probably the most notable traits of 2025 has been the shamelessness of the billionaire class and the conspicuousness of its corruption.
For a few years, each time I’ve warned that an growing portion of the nation’s wealth is falling into the arms of an ever-smaller variety of folks, the moneyed pursuits have responded: “However that’s simply the free market,” or “the free market has determined they deserve it.”
Garbage. There’s no such factor as a “free market” to start with. As we speak’s so-called “free market” is the result of political selections over monopolization, labor group, non-public property, finance, commerce, taxes and far more.
Who’s behind these political selections? More and more, the identical small variety of ultra-rich who’ve gained disproportionate affect over our politics. They’ve created 5 ways for themselves to accumulate a billion dollars or more.
1. Exploit a monopoly.
Does Jeff Bezos deserve his billions as a result of he based and constructed Amazon?
No. Amazon is a monopolist with practically 40% of all e-commerce retail gross sales in America. As well as, Amazon is protected by a slew of patents granted by the U.S. authorities.
In 2023, the U.S. authorities — via the Federal Commerce Fee and 17 states — charged Amazon with illegally sustaining a monopoly by crushing competitors, inflating costs and harming shoppers via anticompetitive practices like punishing sellers who supply decrease costs elsewhere. (The trial is presently scheduled to start in 2027.)
If the federal government absolutely enforced anti-monopoly (antitrust) legal guidelines and didn’t give Amazon such broad patents, Bezos could be price far much less.
If anti-monopoly legal guidelines had been enforced, different titans of excessive tech could be price far much less too — amongst them, Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook dinner and Oracle’s Larry Ellison.
2. Get insider data that’s unavailable to different buyers.
Billionaire Steven A. Cohen headed up a hedge fund agency wherein, in accordance to a prison grievance filed by the Justice Division, insider buying and selling was “substantial, pervasive and on a scale with out recognized precedent within the hedge fund trade.” 9 of Cohen’s current or former staff pleaded responsible or had been convicted. Cohen obtained off with a effective, modified the title of his agency and apparently is again on the recreation.
Former billionaire investor Invoice Hwang was convicted in late 2024 and sentenced to 18 years for fraud associated to the collapse of his Archegos Capital Administration. The costs centered on his buying and selling on insider data, market manipulation, and fraud.
The crypto market typically experiences sharp volatility linked to coverage bulletins by the Trump regime. Moments after Trump introduced new tariffs on China, one inside dealer grew to become $150 million richer from a leveraged quick place.
Insider buying and selling is endemic in C-suites. SEC researchers have discovered that company executives are twice as doubtless to promote their inventory on the times following their very own inventory buyback bulletins, when their inventory costs soar, as they’re within the days main up to the bulletins.
If authorities cracked down on insider buying and selling, hedge fund professionals and high company executives wouldn’t be raking in practically as a lot cash.
3. Purchase off politicians who will change the principles of the “free market” in your favor.
The primary Trump tax reduce has saved Charles Koch and Koch Industries an estimated $1 billion to $1.4 billion a 12 months, not even counting tax financial savings on earnings saved offshore and a shrunken property tax. The second Trump tax reduce saved the Kochs even more. They and their affiliated teams spent some $20 million lobbying for the Trump tax reduce and $550 million looking for to get Trump elected in 2024. Not a dangerous return on funding.
Elon Musk, the richest particular person on the earth, sank a quarter of a billion dollars into getting Trump elected in 2024 and is on the way in which to spending as a lot if not more attempting to hold the Home and Senate below Republican management. What does Musk get out of it? Decrease taxes on himself and his companies, rollbacks of rules that restrict his earnings and federal contracts that make him even richer.
Trump and his family have additionally reaped massive rewards by altering the economic system’s guidelines of their favor. By the tip of 2025, that they had cleared a minimum of $1.2 billion via their crypto investments — whose worth has ballooned largely due to Trump’s selections to decontrol crypto and encourage its use.
The worth of their crypto investments additionally rose with Trump’s pardon of Changpeng “CZ” Zhao — the billionaire co-founder of the Binance crypto alternate who pleaded responsible to cash laundering prices. Binance was intently tied to World Liberty Monetary, actively managed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
Earlier this 12 months, a state-controlled United Arab Emirates agency purchased $100 million of cryptocurrency issued by World Liberty Monetary– basically a enormous deposit for World Liberty, which might then generate returns within the tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
Trump’s wealth soared once more in mid-December on information that Trump Media & Know-how Group, the publicly traded firm whose largest shareholder is Trump, is merging with TAE Applied sciences, a privately held fusion expertise firm. The extra wealth was the consequence of more self-dealing by Trump: His Division of Vitality had created an Workplace of Fusion to assist the commercialization of fusion.
The household firm of billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has additionally been making a bundle off political affect. Lutnick’s firm helped elevate capital for Toby Neugebauer, a billionaire who’s constructing one of many big information facilities that can energy the subsequent technology of AI, banking hundreds of thousands in charges within the course of. Lutnick has additionally been twisting the arms of American allies and dangling coverage favors in alternate for investments in U.S. industrial tasks which have given his household’s shoppers entry to international capital.
If we had powerful anti-corruption legal guidelines stopping such political payoffs and self-dealing, the Kochs, Musks, Trumps, Lutnicks and different high-rollers wouldn’t get the spoils of their political affect: tax breaks, regulatory rollbacks, and authorities subsidies which have enlarged their fortunes.
4. Extort massive buyers.
Adam Neumann conned J.P. Morgan, SoftBank, and different buyers to sink a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands into WeWork, an office-sharing startup. Neumann used a number of the cash to purchase buildings he leased again to WeWork and to take pleasure in a life-style that included a $60 million non-public jet. WeWork by no means made a nickel of revenue.
After Neumann was pressured to disclose his private conflicts of curiosity, WeWork’s preliminary public providing fell aside, and the corporate’s estimated worth plummeted. To salvage what they may, buyers paid him over $1 billion to exit the board and quit his voting rights. Most different WeWork staff had been left holding near-worthless inventory choices. Hundreds had been set to be laid off.
A couple of rich fraudsters have been discovered responsible and compelled to disgorge their ill-gotten positive factors (in 2024, Sam Bankman-Fried, founding father of the FTX cryptocurrency alternate, whose web price reached an estimated $26 billion, was sentenced to 25 years in jail for defrauding prospects and buyers of practically $10 billion).
However many haven’t. If we had harder anti-fraud legal guidelines and higher enforcement, Neumann and others like him wouldn’t be billionaires.
5. Get the cash from wealthy mother and father or kin.
A brand new UBS report finds that a document quantity — 91 folks — grew to become billionaires in 2025 via inheritance. Their complete bounty was virtually $300 billion.
It’s the start of what’s anticipated to be the biggest intergenerational wealth switch in historical past, throughout which heirs will inherit a minimum of $5.9 trillion over the subsequent 15 years.
An estimated 45% of all wealth in America is inherited. That’s as a result of, below U.S. tax regulation — which is itself largely a product of lobbying by the rich — the capital positive factors of 1 technology are worn out when these property are transferred to the subsequent.
As Mitt Romney (bear in mind him?) just lately identified, had Elon Musk bought his Tesla inventory for, say, $1 billion and held it till his demise, and if it had been then price $500 billion, he would by no means pay the 24% federal capital positive factors tax on the $499 billion revenue. Underneath the present tax code, when Musk’s heirs inherit his inventory, the property might be handled as if the heirs bought it for $500 billion. So nobody will ever pay taxes on the $499 billion capital acquire.
If unearned earnings had been handled the identical as earned earnings below the tax code, America’s nonworking wealthy wouldn’t be billionaires. And if capital positive factors weren’t eradicated at demise, many heirs wouldn’t be, both.
The excellent news is that Individuals have gotten more and more alarmed concerning the harms billionaires are inflicting on our system. A Harris ballot launched final month finds that over half of Individuals (53%) consider that billionaires are threatening democracy.
As well as, a vital 71% of Individuals consider there ought to be a wealth tax. And a majority consider there ought to be a cap on how a lot wealth a particular person can accumulate.
These schemes additionally threaten capitalism itself. The system doesn’t work when monopolies, insider buying and selling, political payoffs, fraud and huge quantities of inherited wealth are rigging it. Because the system loses public belief, it begins to unravel.
When and if sane and trustworthy folks ever once more management the U.S. authorities, one of many first issues they need to do is enact a tax on giant accumulations of wealth.
Additionally an finish to the present rule that permits all capital positive factors to be erased when the house owners of the capital die, thereby enabling heirs to inherit all of the accrued wealth tax-free.
Not the least, we should get massive cash out of politics — to finish the bribes and corruption which have distorted capitalism for the good thing about a handful of individuals on the high.
Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of Labor, is professor of public coverage on the College of California at Berkeley and the writer of “The System: Who Rigged It, How We Repair It.” Learn more from Robert Reich at https://
robertreich.substack.com.
