The Democratic Socialist Congregation

By Jesse Arm

Monday, September 21, 2026

 

In August, when the New York Post profiled Grace Ryan—a 25-year-old NYU graduate, chocolate heiress, and socialist activist known online as “Lulu Lenin”—it supplied her critics with an irresistible caricature. Ryan had displayed the expensive clothes and vacations of a young woman born to wealth even as she was championing a movement devoted to dismantling class privilege. Confronted with the contradiction, she offered a defense more suited to an Edwardian drawing room than a Democratic Socialists of America meeting: “Y’all never heard of noblesse oblige?”

 

Ludicrous and unknowing as Ryan’s remark was, it was revelatory nonetheless about something very real. The DSA attracts people who have benefited from capitalism but feel cheated by it. It provides them with a moral vocabulary that gives them room to reinterpret personal disappointment as systemic injustice. And, most important, it gives them somewhere to go on a lonely Tuesday night, just as, for thousands of years, religion provided a social basis for Mormons on a Monday, Muslims on a Friday, Jews on a Saturday, and Christians on a Sunday.

 

More than merely an organization with a platform, the DSA is an entire social world, just as a faith tradition is. It supplies friends, status, identity, rituals, instruction, practical obligations, and a story that situates the individual inside a world-historical struggle. For young people whose jobs feel precarious or pointless, or whose expensive educations have not produced the lives they expected, or whose families and religious institutions no longer provide a thick sense of belonging—or a combination of two or all three—the DSA is the answer to a prayer. Perhaps literally.

 

The trajectory of New York DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo is an almost too perfect example. A Yale-educated artist living in a $1.5 million townhouse purchased by his wealthy father, who he falsely claimed was an immigrant from Peru, Gordillo cultivated a public identity as a union electrician even after being dismissed from his apprenticeship for prolonged absence. The extensive renovation of his family-funded home was reportedly performed with nonunion labor, and Gordillo was sued for unpaid rent on a separate apartment while the $1.4 million renovation was underway. He later persuaded DSA members to make his chairmanship a $95,000 salaried position. The organization had given him what the conventional elite economy had not: a vocation, status, and a constituency.

 

Members who derive that much from a movement will give much in return. That helps explain why the DSA’s political influence exceeds its raw numbers. A conventional interest group can produce a scorecard or buy an advertisement. A community can produce an army. DSA chapters train members to canvass, raise small dollars, run meetings, master ballot rules, and endure the tedium of local politics. Their activists can be deployed across the country to knock doors for a favored candidate, then return home with sharper skills and deeper loyalty. They become cadres.

 

No one has benefited more from that infrastructure than Zohran Mamdani. His importance to the movement extends far beyond whatever he can accomplish as mayor of New York. Governing will force compromises and expose contradictions. But his symbolic purpose is to strip “socialism” of its stigma and make a once-marginal ideology seem youthful, convivial, and inevitable.

 

Elsewhere, candidates can adapt the movement’s agenda and rhetoric to local conditions. A swing-state politician such as Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed can disingenuously disclaim the socialist label while benefiting from the same activist ecosystem. In more conservative territory, candidates such as Nebraska “independent” Dan Osborn can embrace nearly all aspects of the movement’s domestic agenda, along with its anti-Western foreign policy, while trading the conspicuous cultural aesthetics of Brooklyn’s purple-haired they/them left for a prairie-populist affect. The immediate objective is to win elections. The longer project is to build an infrastructure capable of moving the boundaries of ordinary politics.

 

Who joins that infrastructure? The statistician Nate Silver recently used more than 400,000 responses from the Cooperative Election Study to identify the most Democratic-voting educational and income group in America: people with postgraduate degrees but with relatively low household incomes, between $30,000 and $60,000. This is also close to the DSA sweet spot. In the organization’s 2021 membership survey, more than 80 percent of members 25 and older held at least a bachelor’s degree, while 45 percent of all members reported household incomes below $60,000. Teachers, nonprofit employees, social workers, academics, health-care workers, and public employees were heavily represented.

 

These people are the opposite of classic proletarians. Nor are they necessarily poor. They are better understood through the political scientist Peter Turchin’s theory of “elite overproduction.” A society can mint more people with shiny credentials and expectations than it has prestigious, well-compensated roles for them to fill. Those who lose the competition do not feel like ordinary members of the middle class, who know they will face ups and downs and struggles on a long path to stability and success. These left-behinders feel as if the high towers of the academic and cultural elite guaranteed them continued standing that they no longer possess. Their education has furnished them with the language and confidence to challenge the social order, while their frustration gives them the motive. Some become what Turchin calls counter-elites: ambitious organizers who mobilize popular resentment against the system that denied them the standing they believe they’ve earned.

 

Reihan Salam (who runs the think tank where I work) has shown how neatly Mamdani fits this pattern. Mamdani grew up amid extraordinary cultural achievement; his mother is a celebrated filmmaker, his father a prominent Columbia professor. Matching their success would have been difficult for anyone, and he spent his 20s getting nowhere, toying equally with hip hop and radical politics and speaking in different accents as he did so. His story resonates with a generation for whom the promise of automatic upward mobility has weakened. Among Americans born in 1940, 92 percent earned more than their parents had at the same age. Among those born in 1984, only half did.

 

Yet, as Salam notes, Millennials as a whole are not an immiserated generation. Their median household income at a comparable stage of life is higher than Generation X’s was in the 1990s, and their median wealth has risen quickly. The discontent is more culturally specific. It is concentrated among educated urbanites who compare themselves not with the country at large but with their parents and peers. They may earn far more than the median American and still be unable to buy an apartment in the neighborhood where they believe people like them are supposed to live. Their hardship is often less a real form of material deprivation than it is the expression of frustrated expectation.

 

In an article entitled “Why Do Rich Kids Love Socialism?,” Tyler Austin Harper argues that dwelling on the contradictions inherent in his title distracts from a more interesting question: Why have so many members of the educated professional class lost faith in capitalism?

 

There is something to this. You can think the way these people think without being a hypocrite or a spoiled brat, if your set of convictions is consistent and serious. Affluent people can sincerely support socialism, and beneficiaries of capitalism can legitimately criticize its failures. An heir may sincerely favor higher taxes on inheritances. A professional who has prospered within the existing economic system may still believe that a different one would serve the country better. Political arguments should be judged on their merits rather than the speaker’s pedigree.

 

But this acknowledgment that such opinions might genuinely derive from serious consideration and deep study actually requires a demonstration of that seriousness and studiousness. Without it, what we’re left with is people whose personal behavior is not only unserious but often contemptible. The criticism of Gordillo centers on how he assumed the garb of working-class authenticity, misrepresented his own record, and believed himself justified in stiffing ordinary people to whom he owed money—even as he lectured others about greed and privilege. Anyone may work within a system while seeking to reform it. But if you are going to traffic in moralistic denunciations, you bear an additional obligation. The person issuing them should accept the same rules he seeks to impose on everyone else.

 

More broadly, many affluent socialists engage in what Jonah Goldberg calls a “prolier-than-thou” performance. They pose as authentic tribunes of the working class, speak of wealth and profit in moralistic terms, and treat their own upper-class conceptions of false consciousness as evidence that ordinary people require political reeducation. Their money presents no inherent problem. Their eagerness to stigmatize others for pursuing prosperity while shedding remarkably little of their own creates the contradiction.

 

***

 

Capitalism is neither sinless nor a complete moral order. Mammon is, indeed, a false god.

 

But so is politics.

 

The danger of a religion substitute is not that its adherents believe in something. Human beings need belief, obligation, and belonging. The danger is that it takes a limited human enterprise and makes it absolute. A political movement that becomes a church develops a creed that explains all suffering, a doctrine of sin that divides oppressor from oppressed, rituals that certify righteousness, and heretics whose arguments need not be answered because their moral corruption has already been established. It offers redemption not through repentance or grace but through power.

 

This is why the Jewish condemnation of idolatry offers a key to understanding our present moment. The temptation to idolatry extends far beyond the primitive act of bowing before a statue. It arises whenever human beings take something partial—wealth, nation, appetite, ideology—and grant it ultimate authority. An idol is attractive precisely because it is tangible. It tells us whom to blame, what to do, and with whom we belong. Because it is made by human hands, it reflects human vanity and demands human sacrifice.

 

Judaism answers that temptation through theology and a dense architecture of life: study, prayer, meals, mourning, celebration, obligation, peoplehood, history, and ritual. These practices give ordinary people what radical movements promise—community, identity, purpose, a calendar, a moral vocabulary—while freeing politics from the burden of salvation.

 

Consider the Sabbath. It is a rebuke to the workaholic striver culture that has left many young Americans exhausted and spiritually thin. For one day each week, production stops. The phone goes dark. Families and friends eat together. Human worth is detached from output. The commandment extends rest beyond the powerful to workers, strangers, and even animals. It imposes a limit on the market without pretending that the state can perfect mankind.

 

This insight now travels well beyond traditional Judaism. Ezra Klein, a secular man of the left, has spoken on his New York Times podcast about Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Sabbath as a radical critique of the speed and acquisitiveness of modern life. Charlie Kirk, a devout Christian of the right, devoted his final book to the same subject, describing Sabbath observance as an answer to anxiety, distraction, and the barrenness of constant work. Their convergence is instructive. People across the political spectrum recognize that a life organized solely around labor, consumption, and online combat is insufficient.

 

The answer to the DSA, then, cannot be another thin political identity, much less a sanctification of capitalism. It must include stronger communities that meet the human needs the DSA has learned to meet. This is why Jewish parents should ground their children in the substance of Jewish civilization: its faith, certainly, but also its language, nation, history, life cycle, rituals, texts, and obligations. Belief in God cannot be transmuted into a social policy; this connection to the divine goes beyond such temporal concerns, and true faith is all but impossible for many people to achieve. But institutions can teach young people that they are heirs to something older than the discourse of the moment and that they’re members of communities whose bonds transcend political agreement.

 

A lonely society will manufacture gods. A generation denied durable sources of meaning will find them in movements that promise total explanations and instant fellowship. The Democratic Socialists of America get this better than most of its opponents, and that is why the movement is a force to be reckoned with—even if some of its leading voices make fools of themselves trying to justify their own resentments and weaknesses.

Who Wants to Get Rid of Billionaires?

By John Fund

Sunday, September 20, 2026

 

The Golden State is trying to impoverish itself. This November, Californians will be voting on Proposition 40, which would impose a (supposedly) one-time 5 percent wealth tax on any resident whose net worth exceeds $1 billion.

 

Rarely have a ballot proposal’s shortcomings been so visible. At least six billionaires left the state before the end of 2025 to avoid the tax, which would apply to anyone who has lived in California at any time after January 1, 2026. These are Sergey Brin and Larry Page, co-founders of Google; Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir; famed Hollywood director Steven Spielberg; Don Hankey of the Hankey Group; and Craft Ventures founder David Sacks. A study by economists at the Hoover Institution found that these six tax refugees alone have already removed “$536 billion, or nearly 30 percent of aggregate billionaire wealth, from the tax base.” And because these individuals will no longer pay any income tax in California, the wealth tax is expected to lose almost $25 billion in net revenue in present value terms.

 

There are roughly 200 billionaires in California. Many of them believe that, if Proposition 40 passes, the retroactive application of its 5 percent levy will be struck down as unconstitutional. It’s likely, however, that many more will head for the exit to avoid any of its future implications. The latest poll on the proposition was conducted between September 4 and 10 by the Public Policy Institute of California. Disturbingly, it found that Proposition 40 enjoys majority support, with 52 percent of respondents in favor. There is a precedent for it. A measure that added a 1 percent surcharge on taxable income over $1 million was passed in 2004, and two measures subsequently raised rates on high-income earners.

 

And yet, Proposition 40 is such an awful idea that even many of the state’s leading Democrats — including Governor Gavin Newsom — oppose it, as do some reliably leftist labor unions such as the California Teachers Association. Sponsoring the measure, however, is SEIU United Healthcare Workers West, whose leader, Dave Regan, one of the masterminds behind the proposal, might have been using thuggish tactics to build support for it. SEIU International authorized independent investigations into allegations of extortion against Regan. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Regan is alleged to have “violated the SEIU Constitution by threatening and defaming certain union leaders as part of his campaign to secure endorsements for the Billionaire Tax.”

 

Joel Pollak, the opinion editor of the California Post, says, “Regan has been using Proposition 40 as his power play among the union elites. But even the unions have had enough. Union leaders don’t like being bossed around by Dave Regan any more than business owners or health clinics do.”

 

The vote this November will have profound consequences. It may just decide whether California can still be viewed as a desirable place to do business and accumulate assets. It will also send a clear signal about whether the state is under the thrall of thuggish special interest groups such as Regan’s union. If that’s the case, it won’t be just billionaires fleeing. It might also accelerate the departure of the state’s middle class.

Californians Shouldn’t Tax Away the State’s Prosperity

National Review Online

Friday, September 04, 2026

 

As hundreds of thousands of residents flee to states with lower taxes and friendlier business climates, one might think California would try to compete. Instead, the state may dig itself a deeper hole this November.

 

On the ballot is Proposition 40, which would impose a purportedly onetime wealth tax of 5 percent on all personal net worths in California above $1 billion. That levy would apply to roughly 200 billionaires. Revenue would be funneled overwhelmingly into low-income health-care spending.

 

This initiative was sponsored by the largest labor union of California health-care workers, SEIU-UHW, which projects that the tax could raise $100 billion over five years. The need for new revenue, the union claims, stems from the federal reconciliation law passed last year that requires states to shoulder more of their Medicaid expenditures. California should have taken the opportunity to slim down its bloated entitlement bill. Thirty-eight percent of state residents are dependent on Medicaid — compared to a national rate of 26 percent — despite California’s typical poverty rate.

 

Most of the problems with the billionaires’ tax are the same as when wealth taxes are floated nationally. The net worths of wealthy individuals are notoriously hard to pin down and can fluctuate wildly year to year. Most of billionaires’ assets are tied up in equity stakes in valuable enterprises, not liquid cash sitting ready to be wired. That wealth is being put to work, not “hoarded.” Should it work as intended, the levy would function as a staggering penalty on investment — on top of existing income taxes — thereby weakening economic growth and hitting job creation, the very opposite of the sort of measure a labor union should support. (Indeed, a number of private-sector unions oppose the tax.) Adding injury to injury, the tax is quite possibly unconstitutional.

 

Good news for the nation is that billionaires and the companies they fuel can move out of California. But that is why a state-level wealth tax is especially foolish, as it drains a jurisdiction of its most productive residents. Much of the damage is already done. Several men collectively worth up to $1 trillion have preemptively left California, taking $27 billion in lost income-tax revenue with them. The Stanford-based Hoover Institution calculates that this exodus will result in the wealth tax raising $40 billion, not $100 billion, and will cost the state $25 billion in net revenue.

 

Thus, the health-care union is not only targeting billionaires, but threatening to yank money from other parts of the state government. That is why other influential unions that rely on public funds, such as the California Teachers Association and United Domestic Workers in home and child care, are rallying against SEIU’s proposition. Even progressive Democrats are deeply split. Both the current governor, Gavin Newsom, and his presumptive successor, Xavier Becerra, oppose the wealth tax. Nancy Pelosi withheld an endorsement. This week, the San Francisco Democrats — not usually a meek bunch — joined the chorus for fear of threatened revenue.

 

Most fundamentally, wealth taxes are immoral per se in any republican government. The American founders believed that justice is the end of government. California would turn that purpose on its head, making the government into an instrument of naked injustice by confiscating the property of a particular group. That is precisely the kind of oppressive measure the constitutional order was designed to protect against.

 

Voters may still slow California’s descent into economic suicide, if not reverse it. Should the billionaire tax pass, however, they risk killing the Golden State’s golden goose — the limitless spirit of building that erected Hollywood and Silicon Valley — by snuffing out the fuel of incentive.

Prolier Than Thou

By Jonah Goldberg

Wednesday, August 26, 2026

 

“Everyone’s trying to dunk on me for being a progressive from a privileged background but like have y’all never heard of noblesse oblige?”

 

– Lulu Lenin

 

I can’t get enough of Lulu Lenin.

 

That’s not my nickname for her. Sen. John Kennedy coined the term, but Grace Ryan, who graduated from college this year, has apparently embraced it.

 

She’s one of the new rich-kid Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) members making the news these days (thanks in no small part to the New York Post’s admirably aggressive coverage). The daughter of a wealthy chocolate mogul, she sees no contradiction in posting glamour shots from her relatively lavish lifestyle that is not paid for with her salary as an organizer for democratic socialist Brad Lander (if she’s got a salary at all).

 

Gustavo Gordillo is another one. He’s the 38-year-old co-chair of the NYC DSA, and he lives in a $1.5 million pad his father bought for him. He used to tout how he was an electrician, but it seems that might have been a bit of prolier-than-thou embellishment.

 

The Atlantic’s Tyler Austin Harper, one of my favorite writers these days, has come to the defense of the spoiled socialist scions of capitalism. He concedes that the phenomenon is real. “If the Democrats are having a Tea Party moment, as The New York Times recently suggested, it is a revolution powered largely by disaffected, college-educated people, many of whom are comparatively well-off.”

 

Harper also concedes that the “aspersions cast at socialists such as Gordillo—who champion radical politics in public while contributing to the gentrification of Brooklyn in private, and whose commitments to being working-class seem dubious—are understandable and often amusing.” But, he cautions, “focusing on the many contradictions of rich-kid leftists is also a way of ignoring a more interesting and potentially more illuminating question: Why are so many ‘privileged’ Americans drawn to a politics that seeks to dismantle the system that they have benefited from?”

 

New class redux.

 

We need to pause here for some eggheady nitpicking. OK, we don’t, but I do. If you’re not interested in this stuff, scroll ahead. Harper correctly notes that this isn’t a new phenomenon. But he suggests the observation and the trend being observed are more recent than they are. He writes:

 

“In a 1977 essay for the magazine Radical America, Barbara and John Ehrenreich coined a term for America’s growing population of college-educated knowledge workers: the ‘professional managerial class.’ The authors noted that members of the PMC tend to have jobs that create and maintain capitalist culture and its associated values.”

 

This struck me as … odd. My understanding is that the intellectual most associated with the idea of the managerial class is James Burnham, whose most important book was The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941. George Orwell was obsessed with The Managerial Revolution, and it played no small part in inspiring his own more famous book: 1984. The Ehrenreichs were familiar with The Managerial Revolution. There’s a dissenting reference to it in a footnote, in which the authors insist that “PMC (or the managerial portion of it) has not become a new ruling class (as Berle and Means, Burnham, Galbraith and others have suggested).”

 

As that parenthetical admirably concedes, this is a very old conversation. I had a phase when I was obsessed with various “New Class” theories. We won’t get into the weeds, but if you can get your hands on it, Josh Muravchik’s “Theories of the New Class” is a fantastic survey of all of the different schools on this topic.

 

One of the great debates within this field is whether a “New Class” is an actual new class or merely a faction of elites claiming to represent a new class so it can gain power. Alexis de Tocqueville, anticipating so much of this stuff, offered a theory in The Old Regime and the Revolution for why lawyers and other “men of letters” became the new radical political leaders. They’d been locked out of the ancien régime, and lacking any real experience in the details of governing, gravitated to more and more abstract theories of how to run a society. High intellect with no responsibility is a perfect recipe for radical politics. The irony is that their radical egalitarianism accelerated as France became richer and, well, more egalitarian.

 

But that’s a distinction we can explore another time. The most important, or at least most relevant, thinker in this field is probably Joseph Schumpeter. In his classic Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, he argues that pretty much every system will invite factions getting the short end of the stick to mobilize in one way or another. But capitalism is unique in that it must and always will generate anti-capitalists:

 

“Broadly speaking, conditions favorable to general hostility to a social system or specific attack upon it will in any case tend to call forth groups that will exploit them. But in the case of capitalist society there is a further fact to be noted: unlike any other type of society, capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.”

 

I agree with Jerry Z. Mueller that Schumpeter’s inspiration for this insight was Friedrich Nietzsche’s theory of ressentiment. But wherever he got it, he was right. It’s one of the great ironies of modernity that the children of wealthy, or at least comfortable, people have always been the vanguard of anti-capitalist rebellion. Vladimir Lenin’s father was a relatively prosperous administrator. Leon Trotsky’s dad was a prosperous landowner. Fidel Castro’s dad was a wealthy sugar plantation owner. Che Guevara’s parents weren’t super rich, but they were provincial aristocrats who could afford to send their son to medical school. Peter Kropotkin and Mikhail Bakunin were from prosperous aristocratic families with large serf holdings. Mao Zedong’s dad wasn’t rich, but he was a prosperous merchant and farmer (ditto Pol Pot’s). Karl Marx’s dad was a successful lawyer and Marx’s co-author, Friedrich Engels, was from a crazy rich textile manufacturing family (which profited from American slavery). That’s why he could afford to subsidize Marx. Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Robert Owen, William Morris, and most of the famous American progressive anti-capitalist reformers and writers—Jane Addams, Lincoln Steffens, Randolph Bourne, Herbert Croly, et al.—came from bourgeois-or-better families. The same goes for many of the members of the terrorist organization Weather Underground. Bill Ayers’ dad was the chairman and CEO of Commonwealth Edison.

 

Now this isn’t an iron law or anything. Joseph Stalin grew up legitimately poor (did that make him more noble?). Many of the Weather Underground crew were “red diaper babies” or the like. Some were merely children of the “PMC.” The leaders of the Students for a Democratic Society mostly came from middle-class, highly educated backgrounds. I think the opening line of their Port Huron Statement gets credit for its honesty: “We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.”

 

Finally, I should note that a version of all of this was foretold in The Communist Manifesto itself: “Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands.”

 

Democratic Frauds of America.

 

OK, let me pull out of the rabbit hole.

 

Harper’s argument can be summarized: Today’s PMC, and the activists drawn from it, have real gripes about the economic status quo, and we shouldn’t just write them off as hypocrites. He runs through a bunch of defensible examples: “A student who takes out burdensome loans to get a degree that is no longer a guaranteed ticket to a middle-class life”; “A teacher who has to buy his own school supplies,” etc., and then says:

 

“What do you expect them to think? And why is it considered hypocrisy, rather than a defensible moral position, when some members of the PMC decide that the ugliness they encounter in their workplace, corporate office, and daily life is symptomatic of a system that deserves significant, even systemic, reform?”

 

He then concludes:

 

“A political lesson could be learned from Mamdani, who, with his smart suits and easy eloquence, makes no effort to hide his social position or fancy liberal-arts degree. Rather than elevating leaders who pretend to be working-class, socialists and left-leaning populists might be better off unapologetically presenting themselves as what many of them are: worried, frustrated, and often justifiably angry members of the educated professional class.”

 

To which I say, fair enough. I have no problem taking arguments on the merits without trying to discredit them by pointing to wealth, race, or family background of the person making them. I also have no problem with the government trying to solve problems, within the constraints of sound policy and constitutional limits.

 

But hold on.

 

The first thing that comes to mind: A lot of the reformers he’s talking about are literally pros at discrediting arguments based on the person making them. We are now decades into lectures, struggle sessions, and reeducation efforts built entirely on the concept of “privilege.”

 

If you’re white and support race-blind policies, at best you’re simply defending “white privilege” and, at worst, you’re just racist. If you’re wealthy, your defense of capitalism is explained by your greed. And don’t even get me started on what people say to Jews who defend aid to Israel, or even to Ukraine.

 

Vast swaths of socialist argumentation rest on the idea that the most noble thing the proletariat can do is politically organize around their class interests, but anyone else who defends their interests is sinful, or suffering from false consciousness, or simply doesn’t understand their own interests.

 

Then there’s the other problem with Harper’s defense: A lot of the things these self-styled friends of the poor and oppressed want to do are bad for the poor and the “oppressed” or are simply dumb ideas. Rent control is idiotic. Government-owned grocery stores are idiotic. You know who would be hardest hit by defunding the police? Poor people. Black people. “Marginal communities.” The millionaires and billionaires will do fine with private security.  who make up the majority of crime victims. Indeed, there’s never been polling to support the idea that “communities of color”—even a sizable fraction of them—want to abolish the police. The well-fed “Subaru socialists” (Jay Caspian King’s phrase) who defend that policy in the name of a constituency they do not have are not just wrong, they’re frauds.

 

They’re frauds for a number of reasons, starting with the fact that for every Lulu Lenin who admits her privilege, there are a dozen who hide it.

 

But the more relevant example of bad faith—if “fraud” is too harsh for you—is that they don’t argue for their positions based upon their real constituencies. Harper is correct that the base of support for the “Subaru Socialists” isn’t the poor or the working class, but instead aggrieved, often downwardly mobile, middle- and upper-middle class college-educated professionals. But the “Subaru socialists” don’t typically talk that way. They oppose charter schools and school choice in the language of the underprivileged children, when their actual constituency is teachers, education bureaucrats, and public-sector unions.

 

Some of these people talk about—and march against—gentrification as “genocide” and oppose evil corporations and private equity firms getting into housing construction. No doubt there are poor neighborhoods that don’t like gentrification, but the social base fighting for their hipster neighborhoods isn’t the lumpen proletariat.

 

I am sure many believe there are sound arguments for extremely high minimum wages, but the energy behind these pushes often has to do with the fact that unions peg their higher wages to the minimum wage. (We should also note that the original Progressive Era champions of minimum wages at the University of Wisconsin supported the idea precisely because it would freeze out Chinese and black labor by offering a respectable “white wage.”)

 

This crowd also works on a bizarre assumption—even more bizarrely shared by many on the new right—that all of the problems with the status quo, which they define as “capitalism,” are the product of “unfettered capitalism.” Capitalism has a lot of fetters on it, my friends. The problems with the healthcare system are not wholly unrelated to problems with the market, but that market is wildly fettered in too many ways to even list here.

 

I agree with Harper that the new radicals of the Democratic Party should be honest, I’m just not sure they have it in them. They need to see themselves as heroes of the less fortunate, not defenders of their own class interests and status. They need it primarily, in my opinion, for psychological reasons. But they also need it for political reasons. If they told the truth about the interests they are defending—spoiled rich kids, bureaucrats, public-sector unions, academics with useless degrees, and of course PMCs generally—the constituencies they claim to be fighting for would vote for them even less than they already do.

Spare America from the ‘Noblesse Oblige’ of This DSA Duchess

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Wednesday, August 26, 2026

 

Grace Ryan is a rich-girl devotee of the Democratic Socialists of America who has for some reason decided to spend the better part of her 20s dressing up as Pierre-Marc-Gaston de Lévis. “Everyone’s trying to dunk on me for being a progressive from a privileged background,” Ryan said recently, after she was criticized for being a stereotypical Lulu Lenin, “but like have y’all never heard of noblesse oblige?”

 

Ah, there it is.

 

Ryan’s argument has become rather popular among DSA types of late. Chafed by the realization that their enemies’ characterizations are true, the group’s leading lights have begun to embrace the critique and insist that they have no choice but to help the peons: Oui, je suis un gosse de riche, mais je t’aiderai volontiers du haut de mon perchoir! After all: What, besides smash up the system that conferred their privilege, is a decent privileged person supposed to do?

 

Well, I’ll tell you: Go away. Scram. Quietly ride off to the summer house. Grace Ryan asks whether I have heard of noblesse oblige? Yes, I’ve heard of noblesse oblige. But I don’t want noblesse oblige, because I don’t want . . . well, noblesse. Noblesse is French for “nobility.” Screw that! I daresay that Grace Ryan would enjoy sitting on the noblesse side of that equation, while the undifferentiated mass of subordonnés takes a vow never to fall too low or to rise too high. But I, for one, want no part of it. I am for ambition, for movement, for risk. I am for innovation and for making mistakes. I am for Going West, young man. I am a free American, and I want the chance to improve myself, not to be rewarded for my inertia by the suffocating stewardship of Grace Ryan and her buddies. When I was a teenager in England, my father told me that he had always been confused by the people who assumed that, because he had grown up working-class, he ought to have disliked Margaret Thatcher. “Dislike her?” he asked. “She was the first politician who talked as if I could make it in life without being helped at every stage by the government.” “Margaret Thatcher,” he said, “was the first politician who talked as if I had free will.”

 

Naturally, having been a young adult in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s, my father also didn’t believe that the government could help him make it in life. Which meant that, in practice, he thought that those who favored socialism were effectively pulling the ladder up behind them. Are they not? Grace Ryan’s father became wealthy by buying up a struggling chocolate company and turning it into a viable business. That was a capitalist act, achieved by a capitalist, within a capitalist system. For his daughter to propose that capitalism isn’t working — and, worse still, that it should be abolished! — is not only absurd, but unconscionably selfish. “I have a moral obligation,” insists Grace Ryan, “to use my advantages to help those who are struggling.” And perhaps she does. But if so, she ought to use her advantages to achieve this, rather than use the government to wreck the method by which those advantages were accrued. It seems that Ryan’s parents gave her a nice car. If she sold it and replaced it with a Camry, she could buy an awful lot of books.

 

Were Grace Ryan’s approach to prevail, the cultural consequences would be catastrophic. Invariably, figures such as Ryan fail to understand the link between hard work and success, because, invariably, figures such as Ryan were not the ones who did the hard work that led to that success. At one level, I suppose I can’t blame them. Grace Ryan is a useless person, but she’s also very rich. Of course she thinks that the economy is a lottery. For her it was! She did nothing of value — indeed, she has never done anything of value; she lives the life of Riley, nevertheless; ergo, life must be a game of chance.

 

There are, alas, many such people among America’s radicals. Consider the difference in outlook between Abigail Disney and Walt Disney. Compare the approaches taken by Ro Khanna — another thoroughly useless person, who did nothing to obtain his fortune and who has done nothing directly to grow it — and Mark Cuban. Contrast the presumptions of your average DSA-affiliated heiress and the guy who runs your local plumbing firm. Their views are irreconcilable, and for good reason: One is building Rome, the other is staring at the columns and complaining that they didn’t sprout from the ground evenly across the city.

The Democratic Socialists of America Hate Billionaires — Except Fidel Castro

By John Fund

Sunday, August 23, 2026

 

We all know that the Democratic Socialists of America hate billionaires. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani says they shouldn’t exist. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), the diva of the Democratic Socialists, says: “You can’t earn a billion dollars. . . . You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they’re worth, but you can’t earn that.” But there’s one billionaire that the DSA does celebrate — the late Fidel Castro.

 

On the occasion of what would have been Castro’s 100th birthday this month, the DSA praised him as “an organizer, a fighter, and stalwart symbol of anti-imperialist struggle and self-determination,” while bizarrely denouncing U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for supposedly committing genocide against the Cuban people.

 

The DSA leadership has refused to walk away from its statement of admiration for Cuba. Former Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos pressed DSA national co-chairs Ashik Siddique and Megan Romer on whether they regard Cuba — as well as Venezuela and Nicaragua — as a dictatorship. Neither would say so. Romer, in fact, claimed that “Cubans have access to their democracy in a way that we do not.” She apparently believes that the Cuban government is more democratic than the American. Siddique invoked the familiar dodge of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, as if that is to blame for Cuba’s problems rather than the fact that Castro was a committed Marxist. Siddique added, “It’s hard for us to judge other countries being dictatorships when we have Donald Trump as president.”

 

This kind of moral equivalency infuriates many moderate Democrats. Florida Representative Jared Moskowitz, who defeated a DSA member in a primary election this month, told CNN that he has many people in his district who escaped socialism during the Mariel boatlift, a mass exodus of refugees from Cuba in 1980. He says they find it inexplicable when they see the DSA “embrace 100 years of Fidel Castro,” or when media commentators such as DSA favorite Hasan Piker dress up as Mao Zedong and praise the Soviet Union.

 

Castro was a master at exploiting Cubans, ruling over them with an iron fist for over half a century while 90 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty. One of his bodyguards, Juan Reinaldo Sánchez, who defected, wrote a tell-all book in 2016, The Double Life of Fidel Castro: My 17 Years as Personal Bodyguard to El Lider Maximo. He detailed Castro’s 29 luxury homes, four yachts, and his private island (Cayo Piedra), which featured a dolphinarium, a floating restaurant, and a helipad.

 

Monica Showalter, who used to report on the world’s wealthiest individuals for Forbes, says that in 2006, the magazine’s research listed Castro’s wealth at $900 million and growing. His extended family now sits on cash reserves of $18 billion, with many of its members living in Europe and the U.S. She expresses contempt for the DSA’s take on billionaires, noting that the organization views uber-entrepreneur Elon Musk as “the bad guy,” while Castro, “who stole and hid his wealth is the hero.”

 

She adds:

 

They don’t hate billionaires at all. They like them if what they do to become billionaires is steal from the public, not serve the public. That is what they like: lionizing bandits while raining hatred on anyone who produces things of value.

 

Is it possible for the DSA to go any farther down the path of depravity to make excuses for dictatorships? Apparently, yes.

 

The Sunday Times reports that five high-ranking activists of the DSA visited China last year on a trip organized by Chinese officials. Among their stops was a parade attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Dee Knight, a DSA member who sits on its China working group, reported that “Beijing buzzed with excitement” during the parade. He has also been an apologist for China’s ruthless treatment of the Uyghur population. Reportedly, after a previous visit to China, he insisted that he “found nothing to support western accusations of slave labour.” According to the Times, Alexander Reid Ross, a professor at Portland State University who studies extremist politics, says of the DSA’s pro-China wing:

 

It looks like what they’re doing is laundering an authoritarian state’s preferred narratives in exchange for VIP treatment. In my view that opens up serious vulnerabilities regarding who they’re working for and to what effect.

 

Is North Korea next on the hit parade of the DSA’s favorite foreign tyrannies?

The DSA’s Leaders Are Tireless in Their Avoidance of Honest Work

By Jeffrey Blehar

Thursday, August 20, 2026

 

Readers, allow me to introduce you to one Gustavo Gordillo. Young Gus may be a familiar face to some of you already, seeing as how he is co-chairman of the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and has used his newfound notoriety to partake in several recent high-profile media interviews, all of which bring to mind that meme of the shady fellow offering you a trade proposal. (YOU RECEIVE: A time card to punch at the rectal probe factory. GUSTAVO RECEIVES: A dacha.)

 

In fact, Gordillo’s interview on Fox News with Martha McCallum is as good a place as any to start — and end — with Gustavo, as right off the bat he signals the depths of his commitment. Gordillo opens by discussing his personal background as the son of Peruvian refugees from the revolutionary Marxist organization Shining Path. When McCallum queried him about the irony of his parents fleeing Marxist terrorists, Gordillo saw none at all. Peru’s troubles were, he claimed, caused by American imperialist capitalism — and that, he further claimed, is why so many people immigrate to America: to express their discontent with the system that dislocated them. Later, he caused McCallum’s jaw to drop when he blithely declared that if city-owned grocery stores brought down prices so much with artificially subsidized pricing that they drove privately owned supermarkets out of business, “then maybe they shouldn’t have been in that business in the first place.”

 

Gordillo is thus, in his own way, an ideal ambassador for Democratic Socialism, insofar as he perfectly embodies the sorts of people who seek power from it. Some other biographical details about Young Gordillo that didn’t make it into the interview:

 

·         Gustavo went to Yale to learn his Democratic Socialism — more specifically, he majored in literature and returned there after graduation to get an MFA in sculpture.

 

·         He has never held an actual job; he claims membership in the IBEW Electricians Union Local 3 — for that essential touch of working-class cred — but as it turns out, has never worked a day in his life. (He was fired from his apprenticeship after failing to show up for work and classes.)

 

·         That’s okay though, because he managed to squeak by: He made a passionate speech to his local DSA about how The Man had oppressed them, and they voted him a $95,000 sinecure.

 

·         Even if had that fallen through, Gustavo wouldn’t have to worry about making rent — he lives in a $1.5 million two-story Brooklyn condo purchased for him . . . by his father.

 

Ladies and gentlemen: This is your modern DSA, embodied. A movement whose intellectual forefathers are Marx, Lenin, and Che has no need for explanation as to why it is populated top to bottom by Gustavo Gordillo types. These are the well-heeled radicals who have always powered left-wing discontent: disgusted by their economic privilege yet supremely dependent on it, contemptuous of anything that resembles manual (or even intellectual) labor, committed exclusively to the social and aesthetic pleasures of “activism.”

 

And they are in the vanguard of our changing politics. Laugh them off if you please — there is plenty to laugh at. But do not doubt their sincerity. There are few dangers greater in politics than sincere fools.

The Illusion of European Prosperity

By John Gustavsson

Thursday, July 16, 2026

 

For Europeans who have long endured jabs from Americans about their relatively lower salaries and standards of living, the recently released Global Wealth Report by the Swiss bank UBS made for delightful reading: According to the report, Americans are not only not wealthier, but indeed significantly poorer than people living in even southern European countries like Italy and Spain. Predictably, the report was picked up by left-wing American commentators, who used it to take shots at the state of wealth in America. In reality, these numbers do more to highlight America’s strengths than its weaknesses.

 

Among the 58 countries ranked, America ranks second on average net wealth (assets minus debts) per person but drops to a humbling 28th spot for median net wealth. To the left, and to many a gleeful European, this is proof that while America may have a lot of money, it is all concentrated in the top, among the likes of Elon Musk and Donald Trump. For ordinary people, their reasoning goes, Europe’s system is clearly better.

 

As a European, I can only wish it were so. Unfortunately, the left’s interpretation has some serious flaws.

 

First, let’s talk about the demographic elephant in the room: While America has an aging population, it is not aging as fast as Europe’s. The average American is 39 years old. The average German, Italian, and Spaniard are all between four and ten years older. This “age gap” equals several additional years to accumulate assets. If America was a European country, it would be the youngest second only to Albania. On a related note, American families are still on average larger than European ones, and for all their blessings, children have a way of reducing their parents’ net worth.

 

Second, there’s debt — and Americans have a lot of it. Since liabilities are deducted from assets when calculating wealth, this effectively reduces the wealth of average Americans. This is, in part, due to medical and student debt, two issues that are either non-existent or barely register in the vast majority of OECD countries. While debt forgiveness would be both a logistical and morally hazardous nightmare for reasons other commentators have already outlined, conservatives stateside must take the issue of reducing both educational and medical costs seriously.

 

And there are two additional factors at play that are related to debt: Americans are, as evidenced by a multitude of behavioral studies, less risk-averse than their European counterparts. This translates into a greater appetite for consumer debt, which Europeans are less keen on.

 

The other factor is that the United States economy, contrary to popular belief, has fared extremely well since the financial crisis compared to the rest of the West. It may seem paradoxical that net wealth could fall as the economy booms, but rising wages and stable employment induce consumers into taking on more debt, as they — and their creditors — are more confident in the future of their cash flows.

 

Not a single country in the western and southern EU has outperformed the U.S. in real wage growth since 2008. To reiterate, this is wage growth and does not account for the much-maligned capital incomes of billionaires from the booming stock market. Ordinary people have, even with inflation deducted, seen their salaries rise faster than anywhere in the western and southern EU, and just about anywhere else in the OECD.

 

For comparison, in Australia, which comes in as a very strong third in the UBS median wealth ranking, real wages are lower today than they were in 2012. This is also true for Japan, the Netherlands, and Italy, which all outrank the U.S. on median net wealth. In fact, in Australia and Japan, real wages are actually still dropping. Under these circumstances, it is no wonder that consumers prefer squirreling away whatever they can over taking on debt.

 

It is true, however, that America has a high degree of both income and wealth inequality, and that inequality has grown since the financial crisis. What Europeans and left-wing Americans fail to understand, though, is that this is directly tied to America faring so much better for ordinary people.

 

Unlike the EU, America has a booming tech sector that accounts for a great deal of the stronger American recovery from the financial crisis, and the subsequent higher growth. This boom did not just turn Elon Musk into a trillionaire but also made high-earners and even millionaires out of perfectly ordinary Americans willing to educate themselves and work hard. The increased spending and investment of these people subsequently enriched not only their families, but the economy as a whole.

 

It is not just true of the tech sector. America’s inequality allows American doctors to earn 2.5 times their British colleagues, and that’s before taxes. Fewer than one in five British doctors still work full-time today, as marginal tax rates make it not worthwhile. This has resulted in deadly waiting times, and the number of Brits choosing to pay for private health care — on top of paying for the universal system through taxes — has almost doubled in just two years. Britain’s obsession with fairness has successfully reduced income inequality to levels lower than the Soviet Union’s, but at the expense of not just its tech sector, but also its flagship welfare state achievement, the National Health Service. And the rest of Europe is not far behind.

 

The recent focus on Europe’s lack of air conditioning has unfortunately served to distract from stronger contraindicators, such as the aforementioned flight from public health-care systems, that dispel the idea of Europe as a utopia for the ordinary man. Our homes do not simply lack air conditioning, but they also lack space: The average home in the EU is just over half as big as the median in the U.S. Even in Luxembourg and Belgium, which rank No. 1 and No. 2 respectively on median net wealth, average dwellings are 25 percent smaller than the American median.

 

None of this is to say that America does not have real economic issues. American net wealth has dropped since 2020, and real wage growth has also been very much tepid since then. But if America wants to get its groove back, it should not look longingly across the Atlantic Ocean but rather understand that it already possesses the recipe for success. The greatest threat to another late 2010s real earnings boom is not wealth concentration, but technophobic opposition to data centers and European-style preemptive regulation of the AI sector.

 

Properly read, the UBS Global Wealth Report neither indicts America nor flatters Europe. The gap between America’s average and median wealth rankings tells us more about demographics, debt habits, and growth than about who is truly better off. Imperfect though it may be, the low-tax, free-market system that has characterized America has allowed it to channel talent into high-productivity sectors, and it is the reason America today offers a better life for ordinary people. To get out of its funk, Americans should embrace and expand upon this proven concept, not chase illusory European prosperity.

The Plan to Confiscate AI Company Stock

By Daniel J. Pilla

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

 

For years, socialist advocates of Big Government have pushed wealth taxes as the next step in redistributing the fruits of one’s labor and enterprise. Their premise is that government has a superior claim to the wealth accumulated by successful individuals and businesses, even after the payment of taxes incurred in the creation and consumption of that wealth. Whether the target is high-income earners, inherited wealth, or unrealized capital gains, those advocates’ objective has been to transfer private assets (beyond mere “income”) into the hands of the state.

 

Leftist U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders’ proposed American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act (introduced in the Senate on June 19 but yet unnumbered) crosses a line that previous redistributionist lawmakers didn’t reach. Sanders’ scheme goes beyond simply taxing wealth. It compels business owners to surrender ownership of the company itself that creates their wealth.

 

The distinction matters.

 

I’ve written before about proposals such as Minnesota’s wealth tax proposal, which would punish the accumulation of capital by taxing assets that were built through years of investment, creativity, innovation, and risk-taking. Those proposals are economically destructive, but at least they leave ownership of the income-producing assets in private hands.

 

Sanders’ proposal is fundamentally different. Instead of merely taxing successful businesses, it would require qualifying artificial intelligence (AI) companies to transfer half of their ownership interests directly to the federal government, to be controlled in a so-called “sovereign wealth fund.” The federal government would become a major owner of private companies, but not because it invested capital, developed technology, assumed entrepreneurial risk, or purchased stock in the marketplace. They would become owners because Congress ordered the transfer.

 

While the mechanism is labeled as an “excise tax,” the tax must be paid by transferring company equity in such an amount that “immediately after the tax has been paid, the [federal government] shall hold 50 percent of all outstanding equity interests” in the company. That’s not taxation. That’s outright theft by government of private assets carried out under the socialist concept of compulsory state ownership.

 

Sanders’ motivation is driven by the same philosophy that drives all modern socialists: free markets are unfair in that they end up vesting substantial wealth in the hands of just a few. Sanders’ remarks in the proposed act justifying the theft of private assets include: “The 8 richest Americans — all AI oligarchs — together have more than $2.9 trillion in wealth, more than bottom 59 percent of U.S. households combined.” Beyond that, the “findings” of fact presented in the introduction to the bill itself declare that artificial intelligence “is a public resource” chiefly because “a small number of oligarchs have essentially stolen the creative work of hundreds of millions of people” in order to create it.

 

To Sanders’ way of thinking, the alleged theft of intellectual property by AI developers justifies government theft of half the stock of AI companies. The bill asserts that the wealth generated by AI “must benefit humanity.”

 

Sanders portrays his proposal as allowing every American to “share in the wealth” of the AI revolution. He ignores the fact that every American already has the right to “share in” such wealth. All one has to do is buy stock in any AI company that is publicly traded. But the truth is this proposal is not about providing opportunity to the common citizen. It’s about the Marxist idea of transferring ownership of private property into the hands of the state, by force when necessary.

 

Under the legislation, a government-controlled “sovereign wealth fund” would receive the value of the transferred ownership interests, and all Americans would purportedly receive annual dividend payments, estimated at roughly $1,000 per person. Sanders claims that eventually, “the wealth that it generates could be used to ensure that every man, woman and child in the United States has a decent and dignified standard of living, including the right to health care, education, housing, and a healthy and habitable environment.”

 

But the proposal is that just 5 percent of the wealth of the fund would be used for direct payments to Americans. What would the balance of the 95 percent be used for? The answer is government-sponsored welfare programs, including “access to health care, education, and housing.” In other words, programs that create even more dependence on government.

 

Who doesn’t want free money from the government? But that promise ignores the most fundamental principle of free markets: Those who receive the rewards should also bear the risks. Investors purchase stock with their own money. Entrepreneurs mortgage their homes, invest their savings, sometimes go without paychecks, and spend years building businesses that often fail. They devote their careers to creating products that consumers voluntarily purchase. Every dollar earned represents risk assumed by someone. The recipients of these proposed government dividends have assumed none of that risk. They invested nothing. They sacrificed nothing. They stand to lose nothing if the enterprise performs poorly. Sanders affirms this very fact, claiming that “If the value of these companies goes down, as others have suggested, the companies would bear the losses, not the federal government.”

 

And there’s the rub. The federal government stands in the unique position of an uninvested “partner.” It would acquire ownership without purchasing it. Unlike every legitimate shareholder in the marketplace, Washington would obtain its interest by legislative fiat entirely without risk.

 

There is a world of difference between earning ownership and confiscating it.

 

Moreover, once the federal government has control of the income generated by its 50 percent ownership interest, there’s simply no restriction on what it can do with it. As we know from the long experiment with the Social Security benefits program, future Congresses can change the law any way they wish with just 51 percent of the support of sitting legislators and a willing president. As years pass, future citizens might get a dividend payment, but they might not.

 

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the proposal is its governance structure. The legislation contemplates an “Independent Commission for Democratic AI” to manage the public’s interest. The commission would consist of seven unelected members (nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate) selected from a list of candidates provided by Congress. The commission would exercise voting authority over government-owned shares and participate directly in corporate governance.

 

The irony is rich. Sanders is concerned that currently, just eight individuals in the private sector control substantial amounts of American wealth. Instead, he would substitute that for seven unelected bureaucrats and political hacks exercising forced control over the operations of private businesses. That concept should alarm anyone who values free enterprise.

 

Businesses exist to develop products, satisfy customers’ needs, innovate, and earn returns for those who invest their resources. Government exists to establish reasonable rules to prevent one person or business from unlawfully converting the income or assets of another through force or by fraud. Those are entirely different functions. Once political appointees begin participating in the management of private enterprises, business decisions inevitably become political decisions. And you can be sure that depending upon who happens to control Congress and the While House, about one half of the population will vehemently disagree with those decisions.

 

History demonstrates that governments are remarkably poor at efficiently allocating capital. Bureaucrats respond to political pressure, election cycles, interest groups, and ideological agendas. Entrepreneurs respond to the wants and needs of consumers. Their free purchasing decisions (or not) in the marketplace control the success or failure of a particular business. Government should never be involved in such decisions.

 

The commission would not be bound by factors that ensure the best interests of the company’s investors or customers. Rather, the commission would be “mandated to promote the goals of worker welfare, public safety, fair competition, environmental sustainability, and financial solvency.” These politically motivated concepts are entirely undefined. Moreover, the money in the fund could never be used to provide “financial assistance to, or for the benefit of” any AI company from whom the wealth is confiscated. Thus, the proposal is, in every sense of the word, a one-way street.

 

Even more concerning is the unique nature of the companies targeted by this legislation. AI is rapidly becoming one of the principal means through which Americans obtain information, conduct research, communicate, and create and operate businesses. Government ownership of substantial voting interests in these companies raises obvious concerns.

 

To be clear, the legislation does not expressly authorize government officials to determine what information Americans may access via the AI platforms it would partly own. But it is not unreasonable to ask where that path may lead. If political appointees possess and exercise meaningful influence over the governance of companies that increasingly shape information, communications, and technological development, today’s corporate governance authority could become tomorrow’s influence over product design, content policies, or access to emerging technologies. It is not a wild leap to suggest that government’s direct control of boardrooms could turn into direct control over the nature of the information Americans are allowed to use and consume. Remember the Disinformation Governance Board, created in 2022 within the Department of Homeland Security during the Biden administration? Here we go again!

 

This is precisely the potential worst-case scenario that Americans should examine before granting government unprecedented ownership authority over the nation’s most innovative private enterprises.

 

This proposal also creates a dangerous precedent that could extend far beyond artificial intelligence. If Congress can require AI companies to surrender half their ownership because the industry has become so “systemically important,” what prevents the next Congress and president from applying the same reasoning to pharmaceutical companies, energy producers, home builders, financial institutions, insurance providers, food producers, biotech firms, or car manufacturers? Aren’t all of these sectors systemically important? Once compulsory government ownership of private enterprise is accepted as legitimate, the list of future targets becomes a matter of political preference rather than constitutional principle.

 

This is an open, brazen Marxist attack on private property itself. Private ownership is not merely an economic arrangement. It is one of the principal safeguards of individual liberty. When citizens own property independent of government, they possess a measure of independence from government itself. As government ownership of the means of production expands, private independence necessarily contracts. The end result is total dependence on government for one’s daily needs. There is no leverage in changing another’s opinion or compelling his support greater than that of being the provider of the daily sustenance that person needs to live.

 

That is why proposals like Minnesota’s wealth tax are so troubling. They gradually erode the connection between effort and reward. Sanders’ proposal goes even further by weakening the connection between ownership and investment. America did not become the world’s leader in innovation because unelected bureaucrats directed the activities of private enterprise. It became the world’s leader because entrepreneurs risked their own fortunes, investors voluntarily supplied capital, and consumers — not bureaucrats — determined which ideas succeeded.

 

The American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act turns that formula upside down.

 

It allows politicians to acquire substantial ownership of successful companies without risking taxpayer capital in the marketplace. It allows millions of Americans to receive investment returns from businesses in which they invested nothing, and for whose failures they bear no financial responsibility. It places government appointees in positions of influence over some of the most strategically important technology companies in the world with no accountability to the marketplace.

California Is Still Doomed

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, June 30, 2026

 

The State of California probably deserves its own sub-annex at the Carnival of Fools, to honor its MVP presence in our little institution’s history. Imagine a tiny circus tent adjacent to our main hall, with calliope music playing on a loop and Gavin Newsom starring as The Man Who Juggles Chainsaws, Incompetently. (It beats playing the geek — we gave that role to Swalwell when he came begging around, desperate for a job.)

 

However, Governor Newsom is about to suffer sharply for his incompetence; now those razor-edged interest groups that he’s juggling are actively gassed up and running. On June 25, it became official that the so-called Billionaire Tax will be on the ballot in California. The ballot initiative was circulated by the SEIU–United Healthcare Workers West union, and it will be backed by its organizing power in November.

 

It is an impossibly bad idea with obvious negative economic implications: a “one time” extractive tax of 5 percent on every billionaire in the state. A full 5 percent of each billionaire’s total worth above $1.1 billion (including items of estimated historical value) will be automatically expropriated by the state. (It will apply retroactively to anyone who lived in California on January 1, 2026 — so there is no escape now.)

 

Many had assumed it would be withdrawn from the ballot after some kind of backdoor arrangement between Newsom and the unions, at taxpayer expense. Instead, no deal: The deadline has now passed, the proposal is on the ballot, and there is every reason to think it could win in an environment where progressives are lurching to the left so hard and so fast that even Mao Zedong, were he alive, would be sounding cautionary notes. (“Whoa there, you might want to take a step back and rethink that whole abolish-the-prisons thing.”)

 

So now, Newsom has to put on a new act: A California-only billionaire tax is a terrible idea, he says, but since the voters of his state are going to march off the cliff (and his state is so obviously important), the rest of the nation owes it to California to also commit suicide — because we’re all in this together as a country, aren’t we? In a political pivot truly worthy of a man with his head on a spindle, Newsom now argues that we need a nationwide billionaire tax: “It’s time for a national billionaires’ tax and a new social contract. 10 percent of Americans own two-thirds of the wealth. It’s time for an economic reset for America.” His logic is clear: Those dastardly billionaires who want to flee the wreckage of California should not be allowed to save themselves by moving to Florida or Texas. (That way, he hopes, they’ll simply stay where the weather’s great and contribute to his state’s tax base.)

 

Leave aside what will happen to California if this tax passes — a quick infusion of money followed by the collapse of the state’s tax revenue — and imagine Newsom running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028 with the legacy of the complete implosion of the Golden State’s finances. There is a reason I am offering him a starring role in the Carnival of Fools, if he wants to take it.

 

And if he doesn’t, I’ll feature him here anyway.

 

Scott Wiener Can’t Go Home — Until After November, at Least

 

Let’s zero in on San Francisco, where it’s going to be yet another beautiful breezy 70-degree day today, as it has been all month. It’s undeniably true that, once you set aside the abundance of human waste, discarded needles, and junkie criminals covering its streets, S.F. remains one of the most gorgeous cities in America — its residents don’t deserve weather and land that lovely, and they demonstrate it daily.

 

They did so once again this weekend. On Friday, State Senator Scott Wiener — currently representing California’s eleventh district and seeking its congressional seat (about which more later) — was confronted on camera by a mob of angry pro-Palestinian queer men, chased out of Mission Dolores Park, and prevented from attending the yearly San Francisco Trans March. Why? Has San Francisco suddenly taken a page from Chicago and become MAGA country? No, it’s merely because Wiener was a day late to calling Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide.”

 

Since you’re reading NR, I can guess what you’re probably thinking: something between “That’s a shame” and “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.” And yes, Wiener is a bête noire for conservatives nationally, who have been familiar with the notably queer antics of this exceptionally aggressive left-wing culture warrior for years. (His notoriety, despite his only having been a state senator, speaks for itself — Wiener has courted the spotlight on LGBTQ+ issues in a way guaranteed to raise the hackles of all conservatives.)

 

But watch the video of the confrontation anyway (linked above and proudly posted by its off-camera instigator, a man named Dimitry Yakoushkin). Listen to its inherent theatricality, as Yakoushkin’s voice calculatedly evolves from a normal tone into a hoarse, hysterical rant. “How can you do this to San Francisco?” he wails disconsolately, as if making a direct appeal to the heavens. Quote of the afternoon, heard loudly from a man (?) near the end: “You stopped being queer the moment you started supporting Israel, you piece of sh**.”

 

And all because Wiener acknowledges Israel’s right to exist and hesitated to call Israeli operations in Gaza a “genocide.” (He does now, but his failure to do so quickly enough apparently reveals the depraved Zionist traitor to queer values lurking within.) My esteemed editor Rich Lowry wrote about the strange reality of queer activists who have become militant about the issue of “genocide” in Gaza. It is a “sympathy for the underdog” logic as irrational as it is inevitable.

 

But there’s also a fair amount of grubby campaign politics involved in all of this. Wiener is locked in a bitter congressional battle, which may come as a surprise to NR readers who live outside the state and assume he’s a shoo-in: It is all too easy to forget that California’s “top two” system tends to set up brutal intra-Democratic slugfests in its many ultra-blue districts and local races. California’s eleventh district in particular, composed 100 percent of the city of San Francisco, is obviously one of the bluest in the nation. It has been insulated from California’s Democratic turf wars since 2012 for one reason only: It is the seat occupied, for now, by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

 

And Pelosi has endorsed someone else in the race. Wiener has a statewide and national profile, but apparently that has come at a cost to his local roots, and so Pelosi has thrown her considerable power behind Connie Chan, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. What makes this endorsement even more significant is that Chan is regarded as the more progressive candidate of the two: In the fun house that is city and state politics, Wiener’s prominent “YIMBY” affiliations have perversely opened him to charges of associating with “capitalists” and “developers” against the environment. Wiener is still favored to win — he is practically an LGBTQ+ celebrity among San Francisco’s resoundingly progressive electorate — but given that the leftmost candidates in Democratic-only races across the nation are surging, and since the dean of the Democrats has endorsed his opponent, he cannot take his race for granted.

 

Now guess whom the man who videotaped himself rousing a mob against Wiener is supporting? Connie Chan, needless to say. Yakoushkin, who describes himself as an activist — the theatrical public pleading was a tip-off — was basically doing a freelance oppo hit on behalf of the progressive left. In a race where Wiener is a cultural celebrity, petty differences suddenly become urgent and unbridgeable divisions, and Chan’s campaign will need to drive every wedge it possibly can.

 

The irony remains rich, nevertheless. Wiener has been everything the queer community has ever asked for in a legislative champion — to the point of insanity — and his reward is to be ostracized by the worst of his own people, at least so long as there is a race to be won or lost. You know what? It’s a shame; it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

 

Trump Is Back — in Passport Form!

 

Donald Trump slapped his name on the Kennedy Center, our nation’s 250th-anniversary celebrations, and America’s annual national park passes. So it’s really no surprise that, after adding his signature to all new paper money, our endlessly egotistical president has done so to U.S. passports as well. Over the weekend, he announced a commemorative “patriot passport” that features his own hulking visage, looming threateningly over the Resolute Desk, on the first page.

 

It’s yet another pathetically hilarious Trump trifle — the self-tributes will not cease until he leaves office — and it’s not going to become the standard-issue passport design, thankfully. But Trump doesn’t seem to be quite sure what passports are for: He proudly showed off the new design to the world on Truth Social with the incoherent advertisement, “The U.S.A. New Passport, which says, ‘Welcome, but be good!” I don’t know what Trump uses a passport for, but I don’t need or use mine to hang around my own country. I use it to visit other countries. This matters acutely to me, because I have to get my passport reissued, and a Trump-branded one seems like a great way to signal to any foreign airport worker that you would appreciate as much “extra” customs screening as possible.

 

But what if Jonathan Last has been right all along and Trump really is a secret Stalin? What if this betokens the backdoor introduction of a Soviet-style internal passport system? Newsom, at least, would certainly appreciate the value of forbidding internal migration. But imagine if I were legally enserfed as a taxpayer to the Chicagoland Oblast? Most of my colleagues have long assumed that I already am.