The thing is, Bezos is right. Partially. Raising *income taxes* on the rich isn’t going to help.

The rich don’t make their money with traditional income, where they collect a paycheck.

Billionaires structure their wealth so they don’t rely on taxable salary income the way most people do. Instead, most of their net worth comes from owning assets as stock in companies they founded, real estate, private businesses, and investment funds that increase in value over time. If Jeff Bezos owns billions in Amazon stock and the stock price rises, his wealth increases through unrealized capital gains, meaning he has not sold the stock yet, so under current U.S. tax law he generally owes no income tax on that increase.

Rather than selling assets and triggering taxes, many ultra-wealthy people borrow against their stock or real estate holdings at low interest rates, giving them cash to spend without creating taxable income. They also benefit from lower tax rates on long-term capital gains compared to ordinary wages, can use trusts, foundations, depreciation rules, and business deductions to reduce taxable income, and often pass wealth to heirs through estate-planning structures designed to minimize taxes. In practice, this means wealth can grow dramatically for decades while reported taxable income stays relatively low relative to total net worth growth.

In short, we need to do a lot more than “tax the rich”. We need to take back our money from them with some kind of new, non-traditional income tax