Wealthy Americans are running scared. The multimillionaire and billionaire class increasingly fears that a revolution is coming to eat them. Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York, California’s push toward a wealth tax, and the steady radicalization of elite universities all point in the same direction. The threat isn’t merely higher taxes; it’s the normalization of socialism, with its attendant nationalization, asset seizures, and permanent class conflict. What are the odds that America avoids a class war that immiserates everyone?
Slim — unless the rich and successful do something dramatically different.
Many are tempted to cave, backing bad tax policy in hopes of avoiding worse. Others are voting with their feet, first leaving California, then contemplating leaving the country altogether. Still others attempt to buy goodwill through philanthropy — funding art museums here or hospital wings there. But none of these responses address the underlying reason socialism is gaining traction.
CHAMPAGNE SOCIALISM IS FORCED TO RAISE ITS GLASS TO ECONOMIC REALITY
Millions of Americans believe that only government can solve society’s problems — poverty, addiction, family breakdown, and now AI-driven job disruption. Government’s track record hardly supports this faith, yet the belief persists because there appears to be no alternative. That is precisely where the wealthy must step up: not by defending their fortunes, but by demonstrating a better way — one that gets everyone involved in solving America’s biggest problems.
This is not another plea for a return to free-market economics. As someone who has built multiple businesses, I know economic growth matters. A hand up is always better than a handout. Innovation lowers costs and raises living standards. American free enterprise has improved more lives than any force in human history. But growth alone is not enough. People also need community, moral formation, and support when life goes off the rails.
Unfortunately, Americans have outsourced almost all that responsibility to politicians and bureaucrats for decades. Since the 1960s, the federal government has spent at least $24 trillion on welfare and transfer payments. D.C. now spends well over a trillion dollars a year on welfare programs, with states and cities spending billions more. Yet the handouts have proven not only ineffective, but socially destructive. Yet poverty and dependency remain entrenched. Work has been replaced by welfare for tens of millions of people. Marriage and birthrates have collapsed.
The massive government expansion has crowded out not just private charity, but family responsibility itself. Subsidies and means-tested benefits now routinely encourage families to divest assets and sever intergenerational support in order to qualify for aid. This erodes the moral command to love and care for one’s neighbor. What should be acts of love are replaced by bureaucratic transactions. Bottom line, the War on Poverty was sold as compassion, but it’s fiscally unsustainable, socially corrosive, and morally hollow.
Despite this failure, both the Left and much of the Right assume there is no alternative. There is — but it requires the wealthy to build something new.
America needs a parallel and superior infrastructure of social support, rooted in private initiative and local knowledge. This goes far beyond more food banks and charity galas. It requires new institutions and unprecedented collaboration among donors, entrepreneurs, and faith communities.
Can it work? Consider two examples that show the superiority of private-led support efforts, starting with disability insurance. Federal programs like SSI and SSDI are notorious for trapping recipients in long-term dependency. Private disability insurers, by contrast, succeed far more often at helping people return to work. They have the incentive, since they don’t want to cut disability checks for decades on end. Scaled nationally, such private alternatives could restore dignity and productivity to millions currently sidelined by bureaucracy.
Or consider foster care. Government-run systems, despite good intentions, dramatically increase the risk of poor life outcomes for children. But the private organization CarePortal connects struggling families with local churches and volunteers, preventing over 80% of the children it helps from entering foster care at all. More than 250,000 children have already been helped this way, avoiding the suffering that comes with foster care.
Most Americans have never heard of these successes. Why? Because too few people with resources are investing in similar alternatives to government. The default assumption is that social support is someone else’s job. In fact, the burden of empowering others falls on all of us, and it falls heaviest on those with means.
Wealthy Americans have a moral obligation to steward their resources responsibly — not just investing in productive enterprises and creating jobs, but strengthening communities through charitable innovation. Some already do this: The Stand Together philanthropic network, founded by Charles Koch, supports hundreds of nonprofit organizations addressing everything from criminal justice reform to addiction recovery. It does so at a fraction of the cost of government programs and with far greater accountability. But America doesn’t just need a few hundred wealthy people funding a few hundred effective nonprofits. We need every wealthy person driving solutions in their communities, inspiring others with a better way.
MAMDANI’S COLLECTIVIST VISION FOR AMERICA
If they don’t, socialism will continue its rise, despite having failed everywhere it’s been tries. It promises universal empowerment, but consolidates power in the hands of a few. It shrinks civil society, weakens families, and leaves a society diminished in every respect. Even the looming disruptions of artificial intelligence should not push us toward such statism. To the contrary: Worries over AI should spark a new era of community-driven efforts to help those displaced. That will always be more effective than government efforts that hurt people in the name of helping them, like the rising demand for universal basic income.
There is no problem so large that a free people cannot solve. But that future depends on whether those with the most resources are willing to show the way. The wealthy are the ones running scared right now. It would be far better if they ran toward the fires that socialism falsely promises to put out.
Tim Busch is founder of the Napa Institute and Pacific Hospitality Group.