I learned about Patriotic Millionaires years ago from a member of the staff whom I had gotten to know through her work in other organizations. I was attracted to the group because its values and goals are consistent with my long-time activism for social and economic justice:
- I was a founding board member and former Chair of Keystone Progress, a Pennsylvania-based organizing and progressive communications organization.
- I’m a member of the ACLU finance committee.
- I have been a member of Voices for Progress, a national, multi-issue political and policy advocacy group.
- I’m in the national leadership circle of J Street.
- I’m a board member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Action Fund.
- I’ve donated, fundraised, door-knocked, rallied, phone-banked, and organized for candidates from Maine to California who share my vision of a more just society.
To put it plainly, this isn’t my first venture into trying to make change.
Why did I need another channel for organizing and activism, given all the things I’m already doing? Because Patriotic Millionaires is different. When other groups organize around issues of social justice – racial justice, women’s equality, voting rights, immigrant rights, LGBT+ rights, reproductive freedom, disability rights, environmental justice, and other issues – they’re really focusing on symptoms, not the disease.
The disease that is at the root of all these problems is economic injustice: the fifty-year experiment with neoliberal economics that has created a $50 trillion upwards wealth transfer. This economic model has decimated the middle class, further impoverished the working poor, and made our upper echelons incredibly, unsustainably, and unjustifiably wealthy. Patriotic Millionaires works to directly attack this disease, with the expectation that, if successful, they will address the various symptoms that stem from it.
My path to becoming a Patriotic Millionaire was different from most. I hold two degrees in Engineering from a prestigious university, which qualified me to get several well-paid jobs; but my financial success really started when Africa entered my life.
Thirty years ago, the company in which I worked and was a minor shareholder, discovered an opportunity for our kinds of services in the energy sector in Africa. From the moment I got off the plane, I knew that this was my future. For the next 24 years, we built a business from two people to more than 300, with offices in 6 countries, providing engineered products and services to the African subsidiaries of some of the largest multinational companies. I spent 15-20 weeks every year in Africa, visiting our offices and customers and working with the regulatory agencies.
The work also gave me years of first-hand experience in so-called “Third World Countries,” countries with low scores on the Human Development Index. These countries are characterized by very small, very politically-powerful upper classes, small and struggling middle classes, and huge underclasses. These underclasses cover a large spectrum of people, from those who are barely keeping themselves fed and sheltered to the millions living on the streets or in shanty towns, but all share despair and lack of opportunity. In contrast, the powerful upper classes have the access and influence to make sure the rules always favor themselves, that their taxes are low and often uncollectable, and that they grow richer by exploiting the underclasses.
About twenty years ago, something occurred to me. The political economy of the United States was becoming more and more like a third-world country every day. The building blocks of neoliberalism – deregulation, globalization, privatization, financialization, and deunionization – made those at the top rapidly wealthier, while those in the middle and bottom fell further and further behind. Concentrated wealth created concentrated political power – which resulted in the rules being rigged to make the richest few richer and the system becoming more and more unequal. Living in Pittsburgh, I watched the once prosperous industrial base of the country decline in real time. Factories and businesses that had once been my customers closed, and with those closures, lives were upended and families fell from financial security to financial precarity. We were becoming a third-world country.
One African capital that I frequently visited built a new city within the city that housed the new parliament and other government buildings, as well as the local headquarters of multinational companies and banks, embassies, and luxury housing. In plain sight of the new development, barely a mile away, is one of the biggest slums in the world, where more than a million people live in shanties and tents, without electricity, roads, or running water, and where the paths between the dwellings are open sewers. That capital city often tops the UN list of the worst places in the world for children to live, despite the opulent wealth that the oil economy created.
In the US, we see tent encampments outside of Union Station in Washington, a short walk from the Capitol, the center of political power of the free world. In downtown Pittsburgh, I see tent encampments two blocks from City-County Building. Are we really that different from the African capitals, or do we just have a veneer of modernity over our third-world existence?
As a person already involved in social justice causes, I felt the need to do something. I spent my limited spare time over the next decade supporting and participating in both grassroots and grasstops organizations, often with frustrating results. The neoliberal mindset is so ingrained in our system of government that the mere suggestion of change was often met with cynicism or dismissal, even from many of the purportedly progressive elected officials. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting better outcomes is the definition of both insanity and the US Congress.
That’s why I’m grateful to have found and joined the Patriotic Millionaires. The organization has given me the opportunity to contribute to attacking the virus of a rigged economy head-on. Those of us who can afford to pay more should feel compelled to do so, and to use our privilege to convince our elected leaders of the necessity of the wealthy paying their fair share. We must also ensure that working people earn livable wages. We want to live in a more just and more sustainable society, and I want to do my part.
Ritchie Tabachnick is a retired energy industry entrepreneur. From 1996 to 2020, he was President of Equipment & Controls Africa Group, a privately-owned group of engineering service companies that works in the energy sector in Africa. He also served as a partner in, and board chair of, Breen Energy Solutions, a technology company that developed and marketed environmental technologies for the power industry in the US and abroad.
Ritchie is available to speak to the media about the Patriotic Millionaires’ general work and mission, taxes, and excessive wealth and inequality.
To get in touch with Ritchie, please contact Emily McCloskey, Deputy Communications Director, at [email protected].