It’s election time, and you will hear a lot about “corporate greed” and “greedy billionaires” from the Democrats.  Already, Joe Biden has unveiled plans to raise corporate taxes by one third and slam billionaires (and those making as little as $75,000) with higher tax rates, wealth taxes, and taxes on unrealized gains.  A good word for this is “stealing.”

For his part, Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to restrict drug companies on the prices they charge for weight-loss and diabetes drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic.  Granted, these drugs are expensive, but the cost of drug development, partly as a result of government policies and FDA approval delays, averages $350 million, and most drugs fail to gain approval.  So drug companies invest literally years and hundreds of millions for each drug that makes it through.  It’s necessary to charge high prices in order to defray this cost and make a profit.  The alternative is to produce no new drugs and allow Americans to be a lot sicker.

I for one would prefer to pay more, a lot more, for new drugs that would extend life and quality of life.  How much is your life worth?

What Biden and Sanders are doing, in effect, is attempting to steal the profits of drug companies — and, truth be known, of every other company and person who has money, so as to put it under their own control to use for political power.  That is the playbook of all socialists and all progressives.

Biden’s proposed taxes would be crippling to the U.S. economy.  The immediate effect would be to shift capital overseas, where it already enjoys lower rates.  By reducing re-investment in our own economy, the Biden plan would lower America’s growth rate and reduce job creation.  It would also depress wages for ordinary Americans.

And don’t imagine that these taxes would apply only to “billionaires.”  Even Biden admits that they would apply to those households making $400,000 (or individuals making $200,000).  That’s a far cry from “billionaire.”  But in fact, failure to renew the Trump tax cuts would punish all Americans, even those making less than $50,000.  And a tax on unrealized gains would harm everyone invested in stocks, bonds, or other assets — including those invested through 401(k)s, annuities, and other indirect holdings.

Above all, by slowing the economy over years and decades, Biden’s tax increases would punish workers seeking better wages.  That slowdown has already begun.  The U.S. economy is now growing at less than 2% (CBO estimate for 2024 is 2% but currently running at 1.6%).  One point six percent is far below the long-term growth rate of 3%.  Over just one decade, that divergence compounds at 16% — a decline in average standard of living of 16% over what it would have been, just at average growth of 3%.  During Trump’s last year before the pandemic, the growth rate was 4.1%.  That means that over a decade, relative to MAGAnomics, Bidenomics would lower the standard of living for ordinary Americans by 30%.

As for “greedy corporations,” one should not imagine that corporations simply funnel all the profits they earn to billionaire investors.  Nor should one imagine that billionaires and others who invest spend the money on themselves: most earnings of wealthy Americans are re-invested, thus creating more jobs and productivity.  And most corporate profits go into running and expanding the corporation, thereby maintaining and creating jobs.

It is not corporations or billionaires who are particularly greedy.  It is progressives in government like Biden and Sanders who are envious of everyone else’s wealth and are obsessed with putting all wealth in their own hands so as to extend their control over the people of this country.

When progressives “deploy capital,” they do so in order to buy votes and gain power.  None of their “investments,” as they call them, like investments in wind and solar, produces a profit, and none of them makes life better for the average American.  I can think of only one major government program that made life better — the interstate highway system — and even that was carried out under the guidance of a wise Republican president who had thought deeply about the project’s importance for national security and the economy.

Progressives are enraged by the idea that anyone except themselves can deploy capital and make a profit, even if by doing so they make life better for everyone.  Elon Musk is a hero for many, and he should be, because he has deployed capital to create many things of value, most recently via xAI, an investment that has the potential to improve health care research by speeding clinical workflows, and Neuralink, a Musk startup that aims to improve daily life for paraplegics.  As he demonstrated with Tesla and Starlink, Musk is able to innovate where government cannot.

The goal for progressives is the same as it was for Karl Marx: centralized government control of all production.  Imagine a world in which all production is directed by Joe Biden.  Biden has already demonstrated his ability to squander $7 billion to build 7 E.V. charging stations or to contribute $618 million to UNRWA, much of which found its way to Hamas, and credible sources allege that some UNRWA staff, funded by Biden, actually took part in the October 7 massacres and hostage-taking in Israel.

On July 15, 2022, President Biden reaffirmed his support for a Palestinian state, which would almost certainly be controlled by Hamas, and pledged even greater funding for UNRWA.  That is exactly the sort of “investment” of our tax dollars that progressives have in mind.

What does the average American gain from Biden’s ceaseless commitment to the Palestinians and to UNRWA?  After only one week in operation, a $320-million “investment,” the temporary pier that Biden built to transport aid to the Palestinians broke loose in a storm and began to sink. That’s the kind of return we can expect from everything Biden and the progressives touch, and it is impoverishing Americans.

Now Biden and Sanders want to steal the rest of what Americans earn by imposing the largest tax hike in American history: by allowing the Trump tax cuts to expire, raising corporate rates from 21% to 28% or even 30%, taxing unrealized capital gains, and imposing wealth taxes.  These might seem like taxes that affect only corporations and the rich, but that’s not the case.  With these new taxes, meant to put even greater power in the hands of government, every American would pay more, either directly in higher rates and capital gains and wealth taxes, or indirectly as those who are taxed raise the prices of what they produce to offset the taxes they are paying.

Just 60 years ago, a new Chevy Impala cost less than $3,000.  Today it is $30,000 and higher, much of it the result of government regulations that add cost and government policies that lead to overall inflation.  Far worse, and an example where government has played an even greater and more direct role in driving up costs, in 1960, the cost of Harvard’s annual tuition was $1,520.  Today it is $57,261.  That increase in cost is a reflection of government involvement in education.  President Trump’s proposal to eliminate the Education Department by merging it with Labor is spot on.

The reality is that Biden intends to steal an unlimited amount of funds from individuals and corporations and waste them on unproductive projects.  If today’s government spending of $6.2 trillion (FY2023) were transferred back to private corporations and individuals — the USPS to FedEx, food aid to Kroger and Publix, Medicare and Medicaid to Amazon and xAI, education to local school systems — the U.S. would be stronger and more affluent.  Progressives impoverish everything they touch, and they are determined to touch everything.

Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).

Image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 (cropped).