A Win for the Superyacht Class

Congress's "big beautiful bill" is not so lovely to behold

Princeton’s Geo-Exchange system which uses the consistent heat of the earth to replace its fossil-fuel heating and cooling plants, vastly reducing energy costs and greenhouse-gas emissions. Why would America squander such innovation? © James S. Russell

Is it really coincidental that turning the city of Venice into a catering hall in service to the marriage of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez happened just as the passage of the huge US tax and spending bill by Congress became inevitable?

Only in a world where a mob of the monied was supremely confident in the future of their wealth and power would the billionaires of tech and finance along with wealthy celebrities dare rub the noses of the world in such a spectacle of superyachts, helicopters, bulbous jewels, ultra-luxe fashion, and parties of royal splendor. This is not a couple who are defined by the good deeds they have done nor their philanthropic generosity but simply by the pots of money that Bezos has made.

Big and beautiful its proponents called the inflation-bloating tax cuts and dubious billions in new spending passed by Republicans, but if it was so lovely to behold, why was it hustled through with next to no debate in a week that many people hoped for a holiday respite from the drumbeat of political outrages? Stuffed with gifts to monied people and companies while snatching wealth and opportunity from ordinary earners and people with the least means, the threats to any senator or representative who questioned such repellent priorities shows that the centimillionaires and billionaires seeking even greater riches are in charge.

Like so many others, I have asked why Republicans who have been skeptical if not outright appalled by the bill’s provisions did not belatedly develop a spine but have instead taken the knee and let this bill pass.

That’s easy for me to say. I am not threatened by the same billionaires and their minions who have made it clear that naysaying members of Congress will pay a heavy price to their election prospects, not to mention their personal reputations and perhaps the security of their families, if they did not sign on.

This bill was rushed through before most Americans could take in its implications. (Though, apparently, it polls badly, even among those who will not be made destitute by the lack of ability to pay for food and healthcare.)

For those who want to understand the bill’s effects, the New York Times has published a list of how the dozens of provisions will affect different people, and also this story which usefully categorizes the giveaways and take backs. This grab-bag of tax benefits is beautiful to the lobbyists adept enough to get their wish-list items into the bill since many, if not most of its provisions would not pass if offered and debated by the whole Congress separately. (Many of the most egregious giveaways are found under the category of “other tax provisions.”) Thus, for most of us, much is ugly. I highlight a few areas that deserve more attention.

Homes will be even less affordable

The big costs of the bill are in the much-touted tax cuts but note that they include lucrative rewards for real-estate investors. The favoritism to real estate drives investment dollars into the housing market that would not naturally go there. Lushly rewarded corporate investors and private equity don’t build for any but the luxury market while buying up housing that would otherwise be available to families hoping to buy for shelter. (More on this here.) That will keep housing out of reach for anyone who is not affluent. The massive debt incurred by the bill may also push interest rates up should the foreign investors that buy much of America’s debt get skittish over just how irresponsible the level of US debt has become. Higher interest rates are a bane for shelter buyers.

Instead of worsening the supply of housing, the bill’s great size could have significantly addressed America’s housing shortfall—a major issue to voters last November, and one that Trump and the rightists in Congress pledged to fix.

Killing Green Industry

As many have pointed out, eliminating clean energy subsidies and tax credits will kneecap clean technologies, a key future-focused economic sector, in the process dirtying air and water and delaying action on climate change that will inflict extra pain in coming decades. That cannot be forgotten or forgiven. (I find myself turning to “Heated,” a Substack by Emily Atkin that monitors climate-change developments and helps people understand the implications of policy.)

Failing to consistently enable clean technologies has ceded innovation to other countries. It’s not just about solar and wind, though that’s all that pundits talk about. America already imports a wide range of products that could have been mainstreamed here: high-efficiency insulation, windows, lighting, heat pumps, batteries, among many others. China’s BYD would wipe out the American electric-car industry but for high tariff barriers.

Why do we keep failing in this way? (Chinese gained solar-panel leadership as Reagan-era cuts in support for solar cleared the way. China’s electric-car leadership sprung from intense focus and strategic support. America could have done that.) These are the industries America needs and could be competitive in, creating high paying jobs in both design and manufacturing. In a searingly competitive world, it won’t happen by accident.

The Trump nostalgists are obsessed with obsolete tech, like coal, shipbuilding, and steelmaking that don’t make economic sense—not to mention environmental sense—in America anymore. Instead we will see the economic and cost-saving benefits of the clean-energy economy drain rapidly out of America to other countries not blinded by ideology.

Killing Aspiration

Student loan limitations will cause more students to defer college even as employers complain that young people are not experienced or well educated enough to be employed in many jobs. This is a mess partly made by states that underfund education, but Congress could have forged a deal that encourages states to do their part.

Somehow the education debate has devolved into how to finance training programs that deliver human automatons to industries too lazy or inept to mentor and teach. Why can’t government reduce barriers to education at every level? Specialized training programs that are applicable to multiple industries should be available to everyone. So should community college, so should college. In recent years, fraudulent “schools” charging high fees for worthless certificates have been snuffed out. Trump (whose own bogus university had to be closed) and Congress have welcomed them back.

Murdering innovation

Through this bill and other means Trump and Congress have produced dramatic reductions in research and development spending on biotech, medical research, epidemic prevention, and vaccines, as well as global economic and health aid related to the “woodchipping” of USAID. This is already shattering the world-leading, globally connected, US hubs of academic, nonprofit, and for-profit innovation that, taken together, has grown an economic sector essential to the future—a sector America led. This cluster is among the US’s largest employers, behind only tech and finance.

This disaster deserves greater attention. The cuts affect high-end elite centers disdained by the Trump/MAGA/Project 25 ideologues in places like Harvard, but also Houston’s gigantic medical-research and treatment complex (entirely a creation of the federal government), and federally enriched state-university academic and medical complexes across the country.

These cuts won’t just hit scientists, but the vast support systems these centers require, the pharma they pioneer, the hospitals and clinics they serve. The cuts will deprive America and the world of needed health diagnostic and treatment tools. People suffering from various neurological diseases despair now that promising research piggybacking on human-genome research and other breakthroughs are being rolled up, with labs closed, and the firing of irreplaceable technicians and post-docs. The enormous economic impact in jobs lost and companies forced to close or layoff staff may quickly become evident.

Wretched Excess

And all this for . . . what? To preserve and enhance the multi-generational wealth of people earning millions per year. The rarified class worth tens of billions realize that they could not possibly spend or give away such vast fortunes in their lifetimes. How would even greater riches matter? Yes, some of the super wealthy underwrite the invention of transformative products and services, or make meaningful philanthropic gifts. Others exploit human labor to expand their fortunes, or deploy unearned wealth for selfish ideological ends or, like the Bezos’s, lavishly spend on orgiastic displays of self aggrandizement. Most pay little in tax already.

It was spectacles akin to the Bezos-Sanchez wedding that turned Americans against the Gilded Age “economic royalists” of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (In those days, millionaires could be more amusing, too: Isabella Stewart Gardner is said to have walked tigers in a zoo on leashes. She danced with gigantic jewels bobbing in her hair.)

Disgust with wealth deployed in excesses of display and in the cruel exploitation of labor led to trust-busting that broke up monopolies in railroads, oil, and steel in the early 20th century. It led to income tax rates on the wealthiest almost double what they pay now. (I read Matt Stoller’s fascinating Substack to see just how pervasive resurgent monopoly is today.)

In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt, no enemy of wealth, saw the power of the Gilded Age monopolists as a threat to democratic rule. Do we understand the same threats today?

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