There is not an agreed collective noun for billionaires: an abundance … a bubble … a privilege … an avoidance.
Newly reinstated as president of the US, Donald J Trump has surrounded himself – or finds himself surrounded by – a retinue of some of the richest people ever to walk the face of the Earth.
The images have been striking. Prominent at Trump’s intimate indoor inauguration sat the three wealthiest people on the planet: X’s Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg.
Flanked by other members of the billionaire’s club, they sat centre of a single row of people worth more than a trillion dollars, perched on fold-out chairs.
This is the new elite, the new president’s praetorian guard. To some, including former presidents, this is an emerging oligarchy.
The billionaires jostling for position in Trump’s inner circle already wield immense power.
“But I think getting close to Trump is about extending that economic power, that media power up to direct political power, and in a sense, breaking down the traditional boundary between the private and the public sphere,” argues Prof Carl Rhodes, professor of organisation studies and dean of the Business School, University of Technology Sydney. Democracies, he says, have long observed a distinction between the democratically governed public sphere, and the personal and corporate realms.
“This is the final big step in erasing that barrier so that private interests can benefit from political power. And that’s why it’s so dangerous.
“Of course, this has been going on for a long time, with lobbying and donations and other forms of direct contributions. But this now, is just so brazen. It’s not even pretending to be covert.”
The Trump presidencies have already proved themselves beneficial to the super-rich: Trump’s cuts to corporate tax in 2017 – from 35% to 21% – added billions to company profits and to the personal wealth of America’s richest. Income tax cuts skewed to the top 0.1% of households helped billionaires pay a lower rate of tax than the working class for the first time in American history.
Had Trump not been re-elected, those tax cuts were set to expire next year. But the reinstalled president has promised, instead, more cuts to corporate rates, and personal cuts for the “highest earners”.
“You’re rich as hell,” he told a donor dinner on the campaign trail. “We’re going to give you tax cuts.”
Business titans wanting the ear of a president is no new phenomenon in US politics.
What is categorically different about Trump’s cohort is the influence they wield independent of the bully pulpit of the presidency.
Many own and control social media platforms and tech companies that reach billions across the planet daily: they have an unprecedented capacity to sway public opinion. Many of these platforms have been crucial in spreading misinformation and disinformation around the globe.
Musk, the world’s richest person, has been a conspicuous constant, omnipresent at the side of the president: at Mar-a-Lago, at rallies, and at the inauguration day events. He poured a quarter of a billion dollars into getting Trump elected.
Perhaps even more critically, his social media platform X, was slavish in its support of Trump’s campaign: credited by analysts as a key factor in his decisive election win.
Musk has made erratic forays into global politics too: demanding UK prime minister Keir Starmer be jailed, and endorsing Germany’s far-right AfD party. In Australia, prime minister Anthony Albanese pre-emptively warned Musk off interfering in elections this year: “Australian elections are a matter for Australians”.
The lead-up to, and the wake of, November’s presidential election saw a steady stream of the super-wealthy make the pilgrimage to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, to be granted an audience to quietly pay obeisance, or a seat at the apparently joyless dinner table in which to publicly declare fealty.
Zuckerberg and Bezos arrived to kiss the ring, as did Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sergey Brin, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
“Some of the business people who have been cozying up to Trump represent companies that get a lot of government contracts or are worried about government regulation,” Darrell West, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, observed to Reuters.
And seeking a seat at the table too – literally and figuratively – have been Australian billionaires.
James Packer came for dinner. Gina Rinehart and Anthony Pratt displayed their loyalty with effusive full-page ads in newspapers in Trump’s home town.
Gina Rinehart’s wishlist was strikingly transparent.
“To the Outstanding Leader,” she addressed her missive, “who understands that high government tape, regulation and taxes do nothing to encourage investment.”
She backed it up in interviews with uncritical media in Australia, saying she hoped Australia would be “inspired by Donald Trump” and urging Australian governments to adopt his policies: “We should set up a Doge (department of government efficiency) immediately, reduce government waste, government tape and regulations”. She said she was “wanting to invest more billions in the US”.
“We see the US will become, under President Trump’s leadership, an outstanding investment opportunity.”
Anthony Pratt was similarly oleaginous.
“I’m honored to support your call to Make America Great Again by bringing manufacturing jobs back home,” he told Trump through the pages of the New York Times.
Pratt, whom Trump notoriously called “a red-haired weirdo from Australia”, has long sought to cultivate the president: he has invited him to factory openings (Pratt’s US company operates 70 sites across the country), and gave $US10m to MAGA Inc, a super-pac supporting Trump, in the days before the election.
After Trump’s victory, Pratt hosted a party for 700 people at Mar-a-Lago (Trump wasn’t there). He also donated more than $1m to the president’s inauguration fund.
Joe Biden, in his farewell address from the Oval Office that is now Trump’s, warned America of “the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people, and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked”.
“Today,” Biden said, “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms.”
Rhodes, the author of Stinking Rich: the Four Myths of the Good Billionaire, concurs with Biden’s assessment of the US, and argues the same risks exist for other liberal democracies such as Australia.
“The question is: is Australian culture robust enough to see through it? It’s kind of characteristic of Australian culture to question these things, to not be duped by this sort of colonisation. Can Australian culture withstand this new expansion of influence?”
Trump is useful too, Rhodes argues, to billionaires seeking to justify their vast wealth in a world of widening inequality.
He describes the myth of the “vigilante billionaire”, one with an admirable disrespect for the law and convention and who, faced with a social ill that government is unable or unwilling to fix, “comes in and single-handedly fixes it and then rides off into the sunset”.
It’s the moral case, Rhodes says, the billionaire makes for the billionaire, the demagogue for the demagogue.
“When Trump talks about ‘draining the swamp’ and dismantling government bureaucracy: it’s him and only him who can save America.
“If you listen to Elon Musk, when he bought X, it wasn’t because it was a good business deal, it was because he wanted to be this messianic saviour of democracy.”
Rhodes argues the myth is used as a self-justification for actions and policies that entrench inequality.
“That’s why I say it moralises billionaires because it makes them look good: they’re the heroes.
“But what this myth does is mask the fact that they’re sequestering increasingly large proportions of the world’s wealth when many others are going hungry. It’s a means of preventing moves towards a more equal and fair society.”
