Anonymized tax data shows roughly 3 million private business owners, dubbed 'everywhere millionaires,' average $25 million in wealth and collectively hold over 13 times the wealth of the Forbes 400. Driven by 1980s tax reforms, pass-through entities like S corporations and partnerships now comprise 95% of American businesses and represent the primary driver behind the top 1% wealth expansion.
While public discourse emphasizes elite education for upward mobility, tax data indicates business ownership is far more effective. Among children who rose from the bottom 20% of the income distribution to the top 20%, about 10% achieved it through owning a business, whereas only 1.3% did so by attending an elite college.
Since the late Middle Ages, the accumulation of extreme wealth was justified socially by treating the rich as private reserves or 'barns of money.' Communities expected wealthy individuals to bail out the public during crises like wars, famines, or plagues through extraordinary taxes and forced loans. Today's wealthy risk losing social legitimacy by resisting emergency fiscal contributions.
Philanthropy is not an adequate replacement for taxation because it often represents historical 'magnificence'—performing great deeds that assert an implicit claim to rule—rather than genuine munificence. Just as Cosimo de' Medici leveraged funding to establish de facto rulership over Florence, modern charitable giving can allow the super-rich to covertly acquire societal and political power outside democratic governance.