Happy New Year! We hope that you and those close to you have had a wonderful start to 2025.
We might be millionaires, but we’re no different than most when it comes to setting New Year’s resolutions. We think goal setting is important in any year and season, but especially this year as Republicans assume their “trifecta” of control in both chambers of Congress and the White House in less than two weeks.
With a contentious year ahead, the Patriotic Millionaires’ New Year’s resolution for 2025 is to stand firm in defense of our three main priorities – tax the rich, pay the people, and spread the power – and champion the interests of working people in what we can only expect to be a tumultuous and chaotic political era.
For this week’s Closer Look, we’d like to do a deep dive into our resolution by reasserting our three priorities and also giving a rundown on some of the key developments we expect to see on our issues in the new year.
TAX THE RICH
Our first priority as an organization is to tax the rich. For too long, millionaires like us have gotten away with paying far lower tax rates on our fortunes than working people like firefighters, nurses, and teachers do on the money that they make through their blood, sweat, and tears. Thanks to a maze of special loopholes, exemptions, and deductions, billionaires actually manage to pay lower tax rates than all other income groups. This is wrong and unfair, and why we’re demanding lawmakers at all levels of government work to ensure that wealthy people like us finally start paying what we owe the country in taxes.
But the reason why we want higher tax bills isn’t just because it’s fair – we’re also deeply concerned about the dangers of extreme wealth concentration. Inequality has gotten so out of control that it has reached heights not seen since the Gilded Age, which is a recipe for disaster for the stability of our economy, democracy, and shared planet. That said, we believe that lawmakers must use the tax code to put a check on extreme wealth before it’s too late.
Here are some key movements on taxes that we have an eye out for in the new year:
- GOP tax proposals: President-elect Trump and congressional Republicans promised a lot of tax changes to voters on the campaign trail last year. Their proposals include the following: extend and expand many of the individual provisions of the 2017 GOP Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that are scheduled to expire at the end of the year; exempt certain types of income (overtime pay, tips, and Social Security benefits) from taxes; reduce the corporate tax rate from 21% to 20%, or to 15% for companies that make their products in America; and introduce tariffs on imported goods. Now that Republicans have a trifecta of control on Capitol Hill, there’s a chance that they could make all these dreams come true on the tax front, which taken together would result in a tax hike, not cut, for everyone in America outside the top 5% of earners. Time will only tell, though, how Republicans will be able to navigate their razor-thin majority in the House and quell factions within the party that have different priorities.
- Tariffs: Since his victory, Trump has doubled down on his intention to institute tariffs on imported goods. Trump has said that one of his first orders of business as president will be to institute a 25% tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico and an additional 10% tariff on goods from China. He is so determined in this regard that he is even considering declaring a national economic emergency. Trump claims that his proposed tariffs will benefit the country, but he’s got it all wrong: tariffs will hurt consumers by hiking prices on everyday goods and disproportionately burden low-income earners.
PAY THE PEOPLE
Our second priority is to pay the people. We live in the richest country in the history of the world, yet 40% of the nation – that is 67 million workers – earns less than the median cost of living for a single adult with no children ($44,844 annually). And while CEO and executive pay continues to skyrocket, the federal minimum wage has been stuck at just $7.25 an hour since 2009, which is just plain wrong.
We’re not afraid to admit that we’re a bit selfish here too. We want workers to be paid fairly not only because it’s morally and ethically right, but also because it’s what’s best for business and the broader economy. When workers make more money, they will spend it on products and services, which will boost the bottom lines of business owners like many of us, create jobs, and spur growth. In line with this, we also support every worker’s right to join a union and collectively bargain with their employer for proper wages, benefits, and working conditions.
Here are some key changes on wages that we have an eye out for in the new year:
- Minimum wage increases: We’re happy to report some good news, for a change. On January 1, 21 states and 48 cities and counties raised their minimum wages. No fewer than 9.2 million workers will consequently see their pay rise by a total $5.7 billion. Some states like Florida and Oregon are also set to raise their minimum wages later in the year.
- NLRB and unions: Now, for the bad news…the National Labor Relations Board achieved remarkable strides for workers under President Biden, but when Trump comes back to the helm, the agency is poised to revert back to having a pro-business, anti-union outlook. Senators Manchin and Sinema certainly didn’t help the cause for workers’ rights last month when they voted against confirming Lauren McFerran, President Biden’s nominee, to serve another five-year term on the NLRB, paving the way for Republicans to have a majority on the Board. Unions know the road is going to be bumpy over the next four years: just yesterday, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announced that it would join the AFL-CIO, which will bolster its ability to fend off attacks from a hostile Trump administration.
SPREAD THE POWER
Our third and final priority involves spreading the power. In the last election, 18% of the total funds raised by President-elect Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris came from 144 billionaires; Trump in particular received roughly a third of his funds from billionaires, with Elon Musk alone spending at least $260 million. Arguably no election is as high profile as the presidential race, but even down-ballot races tend to share this domination by big-dollar donors. This has unsurprisingly resulted in a government that responds disproportionately to the interests and preferences of the wealthy over and above those of average working people.
This isn’t how a democracy is supposed to function, but it sure does resemble an oligarchy, which is a government run by a few elites, who are typically wealthy and corrupt. In addition to taxing the rich to rein in extreme wealth, the path to getting us out of this mess involves, among other things, major campaign finance reform and more stringent voting rights protections.
Here are some key issues related to democracy that we have an eye out for in the new year:
- Trump’s billionaire oligarch “buddies:” The oligarchic circle of billionaires around Trump continues to tighten. Billionaires are climbing over themselves to get in Trump’s good graces by giving record amounts to his inauguration. Trump continues to stand by the numerous billionaires that he has chosen to serve in his administration. Elon Musk continues to exercise vast influence and control as Trump’s self-proclaimed “first buddy” and, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, is poised to try to usher in cuts to vital social spending as the Co-Lead of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). And we can only assume a bad situation will become worse here when Trump officially takes office.
- Expanded executive power under Trump: It’s worth reiterating the various ways that Trump has said he wants to expand executive power during his second term in office. He has said he wants to be a dictator on “day one.” He wants to fire hardworking and dutiful civil servants and replace them with loyalists. He wants the Justice Department to go after his political enemies. He won’t hesitate to target and sue journalists he doesn’t like.
- Republicans’ power grabs and attacks on voting rights: Earlier this week, the Republican justices on the North Carolina Supreme Court voted to block the certification of incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs as the winner of her state Supreme Court race while her Republican opponent raises dubious challenges over the validity of 60,000 votes. We can expect to see a lot more of these sorts of power grabs from Republicans in the coming year.
Conclusion
In closing, we’d like to share a quote from the late President Jimmy Carter, who was laid to rest today. In a July 2015 interview, in response to a question about the Supreme Court and money in politics, Carter said, “Now [America’s] just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”
That was ten years ago, but sadly, Carter’s words ring even truer today than they did yesterday.
We won’t sugarcoat it: we’re concerned about what the country will look like after January 20th. But as we’ve said before and as we’ll continue to say again and again, you can rest assured that we’re not going anywhere. The Patriotic Millionaires will continue to fight to tax the rich, pay the people, and spread the power. We’ll continue to fight to create an economy and political system that works for everyone, not just wealthy people like us. And we won’t give up on our New Year’s resolution until the job’s done.