From the technological Olympus of Silicon Valley to the urban canyons of Wall Street, a narrow club of vastly wealthy plutocrats sits on a ballooning share of the nation’s resources. One percent of Americans at the apex of the economy are hoarding over 31% of the nation’s total wealth, a cool $55tn in net worth.
Getting them to share with the rest of society, to fund redistribution or pay for public goods, is proving pretty much impossible. Their ability to move resources around, hide profit across jurisdictions, and minimize income to hoard wealth until they die appears to put them beyond the reach of taxation.
One recent research paper found that the country’s richest 384 oligarchs paid only 24% of their economic income in 2025, compared with 30% for the average taxpayer. And not all of them are getting top notch tax advice. Reporting by ProPublica revealed that some of the richest Americans – like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Michael Bloomberg – live largely tax free.
Just a reminder that Hayek and his mob were opposed to the application of the scientific method to economics, and also that the only place any of them had any experience of actual governance was in the proto-fascist pre-Anschluss government of Austria, where their proposed policies failed.