Is Billie Eilish right about billionaires?

BILLIE: “There’s a few people in here who have a lot more money than me…I’d say if you have money, it would be great to use it for good things and maybe give it to some people that need it.”

Billie is spot on. And she had the courage to say this in front of a crowd of powerful billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg.

Billionaires love to claim that they need to keep their vast fortunes so they can continue donating to good causes. We should be grateful for their charity!

Many of them point to the Giving Pledge as an example — a pledge signed by dozens of American billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg, promising to give away at least half their fortunes. How’s that going? Only nine of the 256 signers have successfully followed through on the promise since signing — and Zuckerberg’s wealth has increased nearly 3,500%. 

In total, America’s billionaires today collectively worth an estimated $7.5 trillion — but they’ve only pledged or donated just a little over 3% of their wealth in the last decade. Meanwhile, billionaire wealth has exploded by 188% in that same time period. 

And when they do donate, it’s not necessarily out of the goodness of their hearts. Billionaires already pay a shockingly little amount in taxes. Thanks to the charitable deduction, they can whittle down their tax burden even further by writing off their multi-million dollar donations. This is effectively a government subsidy for any cause they deem worthy. 

So if a group of billionaires decides to curry favor with Trump by giving “charitable” contributions to his ballroom, their taxable income decreases by that amount — which means you, and I, and every other taxpayer have to fill the gap. So when Trump claimed that his vanity project wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime, it was yet another lie.

Billionaires’ splashy philanthropic announcements can also serve as valuable PR to distract from problems they are creating. I mean, if Jeff Bezos donates over $11 million to address homelessness in the D.C. area, who really cares if nearly half of Amazon warehouse workers struggle to cover housing costs because they’re paid so little?

Now, here’s the part of Billie’s speech that you really need to pay attention to.

BILLIE: “If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?”

I’ll tell you why. It’s because they use their vast fortunes not to donate to important causes, but to lobby for policies and bankroll politicians that keep our rigged system in place — all so they can keep amassing wealth and power.

Since the Supreme Court’s disastrous Citizens United decision in 2010, billionaire political spending on elections has increased 160 times over. In 2024, just 100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion — one out of six dollars spent by all candidates, parties, and committees on that election.

And they got a big return on that investment — in the form of tax cuts for the wealthy and the big corporations they own, regulatory rollbacks, dropped investigations, diminished antitrust enforcement, fewer worker protections, and more corporate subsidies. 

Not surprisingly, the 10 richest billionaires have seen their wealth soar by nearly $700 billion since Trump retook office.

Meanwhile, to pay for the latest round of tax breaks for the wealthy, Trump has made devastating cuts to the social safety net, including Medicaid and food stamps. Don’t for a minute expect charitable contributions from billionaires to fill the gap.

Now, there are some billionaires who are staying true to the Giving Pledge — like Mackenzie Scott, who has donated billions to nonprofits and historically Black colleges and universities. And you could argue that any donation is better than nothing.

But if we actually had a tax system that properly taxed billionaire wealth, we wouldn’t need their charitable giving to begin with. We should not have to rely on their charitable whims to fund services or causes that address our nation’s biggest problems — especially when billionaires are responsible for many of those problems in the first place. That’s why we pay taxes.

No matter how big the donation, billionaire charity is not a substitute for a robust social safety net, a living wage, and a just economy.

The solution here is not more generous billionaires. The solution here is for no individual to amass so much wealth and power in the first place.