‘Good’ or ‘Bad’: Americans debate billionaires and taxes

For years, the American public policy debate around billionaires has revolved around questions of wealth inequality, with hardline critics arguing that billionaires should be taxed out of existence to raise living standards for all Americans and center-left leaders like former President Biden instead proposing a milder 25% “billionaire tax.” But that debate is even further divided between party lines.

Republicans have argued for lower taxes on the very wealthy and express less concern over economic inequality than Democrats do, while Democrats have argued for additional tax brackets for the wealthiest Americans and have consistently ranked economic inequality as one of their top concerns.

Recently, that debate has overlapped with concerns about the actions of one man, Elon Musk. Musk has played a definitive but controversial role in President Trump’s new administration after spending at least $277 million to help him defeat Kamala Harris in the U.S. 2024 presidential race, inadvertently recentering the debate on economic inequality and the role of money in U.S. politics around himself.

Musk’s support of other far-right parties in nations like Germany has also prompted foreign parliaments and heads of state to take action to secure their own political systems against the kind of influence that Musk now exerts in the United States.

Watch the above 22-minute episode of America Speaks as pollster and political analyst Dr. Frank Luntz asks a group of Americans to share their perceptions of U.S. billionaires, Elon Musk, tax policy, and the role of billionaires in U.S. politics and economics.