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- Photo by William Gibson on Unsplash For the left, it’s important that you do more than view billionaires with skepticism. You have to actually hate them. You have to blame them for every ill that befalls you, and you must actively resent their wealth.
One way that the left accomplishes this is by framing their gains as somehow your losses.
Tilting At Windmills is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Congressman Greg Cesar (D-TX) decided to try that on X Tuesday with this banger.
pic.twitter.com/F91Med1tYG — Congressman Greg Casar (@RepCasar) June","full_text":"New data shows billionaires have tripled their net worth in the past 15 years.\n\nFrom $4.5 trillion to $14.2 trillion.\n\nIs your life 3 times better than it was 15 years ago? ","username":"RepCasar","name":"Congressman Greg Casar","profile_image_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/profile_images/ /xIoU4Dov_normal.jpg","date":"2026-06-09T20:15:23.000Z","photos":[{"img_url":"https://pbs.substack.com/media/HKZeXgkXsAAG5oi.jpg","link_url":"https://t.co/F91Med1tYG"}],"quoted_tweet":{},"reply_count":130,"retweet_count":70,"like_count":157,"impression_count":24671,"expanded_url":null,"video_url":null,"belowTheFold":false}" data-component-name="Twitter2ToDOM">
Now, it’s interesting that he talks about their wealth being three times what it was 15 years ago, but doesn’t account for what the rest of us are dealing with. Instead, he engages in an apples-and-oranges comparison.
For starters, the increase in net worth for billionaires has nothing at all to do with whether your life is three times better than it was back then. There are too many variables. Someone who was unemployed and homeless and got a job, built a life back up, and then started a successful business is a lot more than three times better off, right?
Plus, it doesn’t account for differences in the cost of living or anything else.
Instead, a better metric is whether the median household net worth in America has increased a similar amount. So, I went to Google, then got its AI to generate a graph for me showing what’s happened over that timeframe. -
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- While that’s not three times, it is 2.5 times the median net worth 15 years ago, and since this caps at 2022, it may well have increased even more.
In other words, the net worth of ordinary Americans seems to be mostly keeping up with that of the billionaires.
Cesar’s question, though, is disengenuous because the cost of living has gone up about 53 percent over that timeframe . So while net worth has increased, so has the cost of living. Not enough to completely drain away the gains in net worth, but enough that people aren’t living three times better than they were.
But that’s the point, isn’t it?
It’s not enough that, on average, Americans are much richer than they were 15 years ago, and by about the same amount as the billionaires, because that won’t foster the necessary resentment the left needs to push through their policies. You have to resent their wealth, and that’s less likely if you realize you’ve gained as much as they have by percentages. You have to feel like their wealth has been taken from yours, otherwise you’re less likely to look at wealth redistribution as a good thing.
And wealth redistribution is what it’s always about.
When they’re talking about billionaires, they don’t even really try to hide it. Look at the wealth tax proposal in California. They want to take a massive chunk of people’s net worth, then use it as the state sees fit. They know that since the public votes on tax measures there, they’ll likely embrace such a proposal because it won’t impact most of them.
But the issue with wealth redistribution is that while someone like Elon Musk has a very high net worth, all the billionaires in the country could be taxed at 100 percent of their net worth, and the federal government would blow through that well before June.
So, they’ll redefine who is wealthy enough to be penalized for their success. It’s not like we haven’t seen this play out already. The income tax was authorized via a constitutional amendment, where the top one percent would pay out based on their income in a temporary measure to help fund World War I.
Now, almost anyone above the poverty level pays out thousands of dollars to the feds annually, and because of withholding, they feel like the pittance they get back after filing their taxes is free money. Seriously, if everyone got a 1099 and had to write a check to Uncle Sam each year, people would feel a lot differently about taxes and the concept of wealth redistribution.
For the left, people who create wealth are nothing but a human host that the ticks can suck dry for their own purposes, which universally shapes out to be vote-buying schemes masquerading as government programs.
But to get to that point, you have to find a way to make it so that people resent others. You have to move the goalposts as needed so that when you’ve tapped the one percent dry, you have someone else to move onto.
In this case, it’s trying to make you upset that the billionaires are three times richer than they were while you’re dealing with inflation still, even though you may well be three times richer than you were, too.
The thing is, you don’t have to buy into the hype. People should look for themselves and see where they were 15 years ago by the same metric Cesar is using. If it’s net worth, then compare the ratio of net worth then versus now and see if you’re keeping up.
But here’s the twist: If you’re not, then maybe you should do something about it. The billionaires aren’t taking money out of your pocket. Most of the time, you’re handing it over. Seriously, I mean it. Jeff Bezos didn’t become as rich as he is on his own. I gave more than enough money to Amazon to help him get there. Elon Musk made his money because he made things people wanted. People gave him money for them.
So, if you’re not keeping up, maybe you should take a look at why that is. Are you still in a dead-end job and aren’t looking for anything better? Is your company refusing to raise wages for some inane reason, even in good years? If so, that’s on you. Company loyalty is fine, but when it’s clear that it’s not a two-way street, there’s nothing wrong with jumping ship for something better. Share “But I like where I’m at,” some might say, which is totally cool, too. If that’s you, then guess what? You can’t gripe because you didn’t get richer when you’ve taken no steps to become wealthier. There’s no shame in being happy with your life as it is. In fact, I’d say it’s pretty healthy a lot of the time if your needs are met and your family is safe and comfortable.
People like Cesar, though, hate that, because if you’re comfortable and happy, you won’t vote to let them strip the wealthy down to nothing and keep doing it until you’re not comfortable or happy anymore.
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