Hamill: Rethinking what the rich owe in taxes

A 1989 ad campaign used models saying, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.” Let’s examine that phrase.

The implication is that hate flows from jealousy. But do we really hate beautiful people?

Before the 1981 tax act changes, the top tax rate for individuals was 70%. Our current rates are low by historical standards.

In 1993 Bill Clinton raised the top rate to 36%, with a 10% surtax on “millionaires.” This made the top rate 39.6%.

I placed millionaires in quotes because that is the term used by Clinton. In fact, the top 39.6% applied to those making less than a million dollars.

Tax policymakers are careless with the term millionaire, generally referring to those who make a million dollars or more a single (tax) year.

Most people with a net worth of a million dollars (actual millionaires) make substantially less than a million dollars per year.

When members of Congress say that the top tax rate should be raised for millionaires, they fail to define the term at all.

I suppose we could say they mean “rich people,” although that term is no more precise.

But I am puzzled at how broad and deep the blowback seems to be when it is proposed that such people pay a higher tax rate.

Why am I puzzled? Because most of us are neither beautiful nor rich. That’s why it can be implied that the majority hate the beautiful and the rich.

Perhaps there is contempt for the ultra-rich. In the United States, this may require that one be a billionaire.

The U.S. has, according to Forbes, 902 billionaires in 2025, the most of any country in the world. This number is up from 813 a mere year earlier.

Consider what it means to be a billionaire. One could invest at a 3.65% savings fund rate and generate $100,000 per day of income.

This magnitude of wealth exceeds even that of the “Jazz Age,” a time recorded by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Beautiful and the Damned.”

Fitzgerald said that, “In any case, the Jazz Age now raced along under its own power, served by great filling stations full of money.”

Most of the Jazz Age was, like today, accompanied by relatively low top tax rates. One could keep most of their filling station of money.

The two main characters in Fitzgerald’s novel were hedonistic. It was not difficult to have contempt for them, hence the “damned” part of the title.

I do not believe that “we” share this contempt for the ultra-rich of this generation. Asking that they pay a tax rate above the current top rate is not evidence of contempt.

Most of the ultra-rich in the U.S. made their money in finance, technology or real estate. Unlike Germany, No. 4 in billionaires, most in our country did not inherit wealth.

I do not mean to require that one be a billionaire to be included in the “ultra-rich.” In fact, I do not know what the threshold should be for this description.

If the issue is to propose a higher tax rate for the ultra-rich, then let the policymakers in Washington, D.C, who pass such legislation define the affected group.

My point is simply to suggest that “we” should have a rate higher than the current 37%.

Is this contempt? No. It is because the group that I reference, however defined, has been “ultra” beneficiaries of this magnificent country.

They may be smart. They may be hardworking. But they are primarily beneficiaries of a country that has the greatest financial system in the world.

A country that has a system to protect and defend the value of intellectual property rights. One that will not have a government that might expropriate real estate assets.

One proposal in Congress creates a 40% rate for taxable income above $2.5 million (single) or $5 million (married).

Is this contemptable? You decide. But there are no proposals to have a 40% rate for $100,000 of taxable income.

Will the rich move to [wherever]? No, they won’t. Because they never would have become so rich living in [wherever]. And their wealth won’t be protected as well there.

They may be smart, and they may be hard working. But their wealth came from a system created and nurtured only in America. Is it contempt to ask them to pay for that?