Tax the Rich
though we don't need their money
The federal government doesn’t need your money.
Let’s just say that out loud. It prints the money. It issues the debt. It controls the currency. The United States is not a household. It doesn’t need to collect taxes before it can spend. It spends first—then taxes later to balance the books, cool inflation, or just prove the money’s real.
So why tax the rich?
Because it forces a choice: spend it, or share it.
A high marginal tax rate is pressure. Not punishment. Pressure. It says, “You can keep growing your business, hiring people, building things. Or you can hand that money over.”
And here’s the secret: we want them to avoid the tax.
We want them to buy the plane. We want them to build the factory, invest in the startup, open the restaurant, fund the movie. That spending is the fuel of capitalism. But without pressure, the rich don’t invest—they hoard. They sit on mountains of cash, buy back stock, and dump money into real estate nobody lives in.
Meanwhile, we pretend we “can’t afford” school lunches.
This is where it all breaks down. We’ve convinced ourselves the government runs on taxes. It doesn’t. It runs on choices. And right now, we’re choosing to let billionaires sit out the economy.
Back in the 1950s, we taxed top earners at 91%. Not because we needed their money, but because we needed their money doing something. You want to stay rich? Fine. Just don’t hide your cash in a vault and call it freedom.
Spend it. Risk it. Move it. Or pay up.
That’s not punishment. That’s how you keep capitalism from eating itself.
So no, we don’t need their money.
We need them to act like citizens.