It’s time to block reckless AI IPOs and tax billionaires | Naomi Klein and Ilana Glazer

It’s time to block reckless AI IPOs and tax billionaires Naomi Klein and Ilana Glazer We cannot let the billionaire class take unprecedented risks with our future

A merica is a divided country in crisis. Despite the sunny economic forecast coming from the Trump administration, millions of Americans are struggling to find and keep jobs, getting crushed under the rising cost of living, and losing health insurance when they need it the most.

Meanwhile, via corporate consolidation and political corruption, the billionaire class is getting richer faster than ever before: a 40% increase in wealth in just the last two years. Today, the combined wealth of nearly 3,000 global billionaires equals one-fifth of the entire world’s yearly output . Nearly 1,000 billionaires live and do business in the United States.

The tools of their domination are tax loopholes, corporate mergers and, in the tech world where many of these billionaires exist, IPOs . When a company goes public, its founders and investors win the capitalist lottery. And instead of paying their fair share of taxes and redistributing resources back into society, most turn around and fund even more corporate consolidation and political corruption to extend their dominion.

Elon Musk became an instant trillionaire when SpaceX went public earlier this year, on the backs of workers’ pensions – and is bankrolling the Republican midterm campaigns with a small percentage of his egregious gains. Oracle’s Larry Ellison – currently seventh on the Forbes billionaires list – backed the Paramount-Warner Brothers merger that is destroying the film industry and the livelihoods of the Americans who labor in it. Google’s Sergey Brin spent $100m opposing California’s Prop 40 , a one-time wealth tax that would put the funds toward healthcare and other public services.

To pay for essential services, we must tax billionaires, and pass legislation to do so starting in California and New York, but that is clearly not enough. We cannot allow more billionaires – or trillionaires – to be made in this country, further expanding the inequality chasm that’s turning a dignified life into a luxury in this country. We must also block the impending tech IPOs and preserve what’s left of our economy and our society.

Problems with a private company or its products become problems for everyone invested in that company once it goes public, whether they’ve made the choice or not. And when the speculative investment bubble pops – such as with the 2008 crisis – regular people end up holding the bag.

It’s no secret that the AI companies Anthropic and OpenAI are intending to go public in the near future. Both of these players also had major security flaws exposed recently, and openly acknowledge mind-bogglingly huge amounts of debt. If these companies are allowed to go public, their cofounders and investors – some of whom are already billionaires – will rise to whole new strata of private wealth.