Fresh off his shellacking of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor, New York state assembly member Zohran Mamdani is the hottest guest on the press circuit. When asked on NBC if he thought billionaires have the right to exist, he chuckled. “I don’t think that we should have billionaires,” he said, “because, frankly, it is so much money in a moment of such inequality.”
The United States is a fiercely capitalist society based on the meritocratic idea that everyone has the opportunity to build their own futures—and fortunes. Billionaires typically make their money by starting companies that are engines of innovation, and which employ millions of their fellow citizens. Think Amazon. Nike. Walmart. Microsoft. Google. If the U.S. were to enact a hyper-aggressive wealth and asset tax—the only way to truly attack fortunes of this size, because most billionaires have little in the way of ordinary income—it might push many billionaires to leave the country and take their companies with them.
There’s another practical roadblock: The U.S. is led by a billionaire president who has surrounded himself with a posse of billionaires, all of whom are likely to fight off wealth tax proposals. Not to mention that Congress just passed a megabill that protects billionaires’ wealth more than ever before.
But, just for kicks, say that America really decided it wanted to get rid of its billionaires. How could that be accomplished? Short of firing squads and nationalizing much of the economy (see: Russia, 1917; Cuba, 1959), the only possible answer is massive, confiscatory taxes.
Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kylemullins/2025/07/08/memo-to-mamdani-how-to-get-rid-of-billionaires/
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