Let’s Talk About That ‘Oligarchy,’ Mr. President

Amid the teleprompted lines of a generally congenial farewell speech — invoking scenes of the Statue of Liberty and standing strong for freedom across the world — President Joe Biden couldn’t help but take a swipe on the way out the door.

His attack, five days before his last day as White House resident, was at the Left’s favorite boogeymen of late:

Billionaires.

In his farewell address from the Oval Office tonight, Biden warned of an emergent “oligarchy” in America — no doubt a slight at the DOGE advisory position Elon Musk will take in the new administration, while titans Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg begin to cozy up to Team Trump. Add this to the usual, mistaken assumption that Republicans are the party of the rich and powerful, while Democrats are the undisputed champions for the systemically poor and victims of social injustice.

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights, the freedoms and the fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said. No specifics were given by the president.

Biden’s minimum income tax on billionaires only went so far in furthering the socialist goal of redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor. To the contrary: the Biden-Harris record will show it favored policies that empowered the powerful and further lined the pockets of the rich, while working Americans suffered under record inflation and illegal immigration trends.

Below are some examples of how Biden only contributed to the “oligarchy” he supposedly fears.

Honoring George Soros with a medal
Biden presented ultra-left financier George Soros with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and for vaguely stated reasons. Soros, a Hungarian-born investor, is perhaps best known for his role in financial markets, making $1 billion in profit by short-selling the British pound in 1992. His most recent purchase: a network of former CBS Radio affiliates, sparking fears of a powerplay against conservative-leaning talk radio.

Tapping billionaire donors for ambassadorships
Although Biden took a shot at this longstanding practice during his 2020 campaign, he did it anyway. Biden appointed ambassadors to countries such as Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Greece, Kenya, Malta, and Slovenia from his rolodex of influential donors.

Corporate welfare
Think what you want to about the strategic importance of bringing more silicon semiconductor manufacturing to the U.S., Biden’s embrace of the CHIPS Act only adds to his record of support of corporate welfare. CHIPS is another example altering the market to further a policy goal — in this case, making up for a shortage of chips that caused automobile prices to temporarily skyrocket, and raising national security concerns. As a result, Texas now has more chip manufacturing plants on the way than Silicon Valley currently hosts. In the places where these new plants are going up like sunflowers in summer, residential home prices and rent is increasing, agricultural workers are having to quickly offload crop and grazing land, and pre-existing issues with empty office buildings is exacerbated by the sudden construction of ginormous facilities. Biden has spent the last two months scrambling to distribute CHIPS funds before the Trump-Vance Administration is set to begin.

Massive expansion of tax collectors
A Trump plan to double number of personnel auditing gift and estate tax returns was brought to fruition by the Biden Administration. Add this to supporting 86,000 new IRS employees. This may have some benefit of helping the average taxpayer get customer support, but it also raises the likelihood of getting dinged for not following every jot and tittle of the tax code — expanding the regulatory minefield that discourages entrepreneurship and punishes businesses on the margins of profitability. Millionaires and billionaires can usually afford their own people to handle the additional tasks. Mom and Pop’s Cafe and Tackle Shop, not so much.

U.S. millionaire population grows along with welfare rolls
In 2023, the last available figures tell us, the U.S. added half-a-million new millionaires to the economy — a 7.3% increase. Meanwhile, billionaire (with a “b”) wealth is up by 88%. Blaming Trump-Pence only goes so far here. A Pew Research study in released last year found that just over half of Americans live in “middle-class” households — down from 61% in 1971. Over half of Americans are dependent on some variety of government entitlement subsidy, a figure that is perpetually on the uptrend thanks to funneling.

Joe Millionaire
According to the New York Post, Senator Biden used to brag about being “one of the poorest members” of Congress. But as Vice President and after, his bank account burgeoned thanks to book deals, speeches, and kickbacks from his brother and younger son, according to text messages from Hunter Biden’s laptop and a congressional probe. “In 2016, his last year as vice president [Biden] reported between $291,000 and about $1 million in assets and income outside his vice presidential salary of $230,700. He also claimed between $780,000 and about $1.6 million in liabilities, according to his 2016 personal financial disclosure form,” the Post tells us. And who knows how much “the Biden Crime Family” has successfully scuttled under the carpet that we’ll never know about?

Doing nothing to reduce the national debt
The CBO now expects the debt to be $7.2 trillion higher than it had projected when Trump left office — “all because of Biden’s reckless spending,” Heritage reported. Although Trump 1 did little to reduce the debt or the deficit, we cannot lose sight of the fact that additional debt slows economic growth and cools investment by raising interest rates, growing inflation, and lowing confidence in the dollar. That’s less competition for the existing billionaires. Economics 101, there.

Picking winners and losers of the economy
“From student debt cancellation to green subsidies,” a libertarian magazine wrote, “the White House is giving handouts paid for by hardworking lower-wage Americans.” Interest rates would have to rise by an additional 50 to 75 points to counteract the added inflationary effect of these handouts to certain college graduates, thus harming those who already paid their own college bills, did not go to college, or who do not qualify. With home ownership down and bank loans back to the stratosphere, we wonder where the next generation of business successes will come from?

“Warn” us about the coming “oligarchy” all you want to, Mr. President. But let’s not pretend you and your handlers weren’t part of the alleged problem. It’s going to take a lot more than the same ol’ politics of the last half-century to truly revive the American economy.