Trust-fund politics

Trust-fund kids are in the news.

David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance just completed the $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, thanks to billions in support from his father. Now, along with control over two major Hollywood studios and streaming networks, Ellison sits on top of CNN and CBS News.

Jared Kushner is serving as Middle East envoy for his father-in-law, taking the seat of someone who might know what they’re doing. He promises that his business deals in the region do not present a conflict of interest.

And of course the ultimate trust-fund kid is sitting in the White House, throwing geopolitical tantrums because he doesn’t (always) get his way.

The pathologies of that privilege—the casual assumption that everything is free because someone else is paying—have infected our political life in this era. Trust-fund politics tells us that we can draw down our national inheritance without investing and building for the future.

There’s a version of it on the left, and a MAGA version. It’s worth talking about both, but to be absolutely clear, there is no equivalence. One of them I have some disagreements with. The other is devastating the nation.

On the left, I see it in plans for expansive social programs and regulation without serious consideration of how to pay for them or what they might do to the economy over the long term. These plans come from seeing the economy as something to extract value from, rather than something to cultivate.

I want dignity and care for everyone; that’s the main reason I vote (and ran as a Democrat). But I want to see investment in economic growth, because we need it to sustain the progress we make and to think even bigger. Capacity is essential to care and to justice.

So a politics that’s all about spending with no plan for building is half-baked. Still, for all the fear-mongering about socialism, big plans without a plan to pay for them are not new in American politics. We can do better, but we can also do much, much worse.

That brings us to the MAGA version.

The country I was born into was the work of generations. They built democracy and civil society that allowed a growing share of us to live in freedom. They built an economy that created opportunity and the resources to take care of one another—never enough, but steadily more. They built a global position that allowed Americans to enjoy security and prosperity and, at our best, help others enjoy them too.

None of that was easy or inevitable. It was accomplished with the genius, toil, and blood of millions. I was taught in school to recognize that and celebrate it, not just in the famous names of history, but in the ordinary Americans who did the work.

That was still the nation MAGA was entrusted with at the beginning of this administration, and they’ve spent every second of this term spending it down. Out of spite, out of greed, and out of sheer ignorance they’ve squandered our democracy, our economy, and our national identity. It’s not worth detailing how; open the newspaper and you’ll find fresh examples.

Maybe they don’t recognize the value of what we’ve been given. Maybe they think it will always be there, an endless account to draw upon. Maybe they don’t care what happens to America because, like always, somebody else will pay the bill.

Maybe this is inevitable. There’s a trope that family wealth is cyclical; one generation earns it, one or two maintain it, and then one burns it down. Nations rise and fall, and often their own self-satisfaction is at the heart of their decline.

I don’t believe that has to be our fate. I want us to honor what we’ve been given by building on it. We need a generation of leaders ready for that work, and a generation of citizens who demand it.