On Feb. 25 in CEMEX Auditorium, the speakers series class “Democracy and Disagreement” discussed wealth tax, particularly an additional 1 or 2% levied on the top 0.1% of the population. The speakers were Emmanual Saez arguing for the tax and Larry Summers, who once served as Chief Economist for the World Bank and as Secretary of Treasury, taking the opposing stance.
Before his speech, Summers placed his hands on the podium, leaned into the microphone — and was cut off. A group of non-Stanford affiliated protestors jumped onto the stage laden with banners reading “Tax the rich,” “Larry Summers, your time is up” and “Toxic mess.” A woman rallied the group and shouted to Summers, “What have you done with all of your influence? … You have repeatedly traded in our planet and my future, all of our futures, for the sake of profit.” Ignoring efforts to silence them, the protestors spent 10 minutes referring to Summers as a “climate criminal,” citing his endorsement of crude oil exportation and the U.S.’s subsequent rise as the largest producer of oil. Overall, they condemned his work as “exactly what led to the corporate oligarchy” and repeatedly chanted “Tax the rich, tax the motherfucking rich!”
Sitting in class during the exchange, I shared my peers’ shock and confusion. However, my shock soon became directed at those peers: students shouted at the protestors in animosity, snarling “sit down” and “fuck you,” laughing and booing. Another group began a “let him speak” chant to rival the protestors’, attempting to drown them out until security arrived and the protestors voluntarily left.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised — this is Stanford, where in 2017, 17% of its student population hailed from the top 1%. And of course, the protestors’ actions were disruptive. Still, there was a glaring irony in the students’ lack of empathy. In this same class two weeks earlier, a discussion about the infamous law school protest in which students shouted down and insulted guest speaker Kyle Duncan, naturally arose. One of the invited guest speakers of that week, Brian Lowery, criticized the protestors not for disruption or even disrespect — rather, for their ineffectiveness. My peers around me had snapped their fingers and nodded their heads as he argued the historical necessity of disruption for social change. Yet here, my peers seemed to forget their conviction that interruptions can create change, and are necessary components of successful protest and social progress.
I do not assume these protestors were or will be successful in convincing the Stanford community and the larger audience of affluent leaders to support a wealth tax. Given the wealthy’s political influence and our current administration, it is unlikely that a wealth tax will pass when only advocated for by small demonstrations like this. Still, I commend these protestors for the attention they have drawn to the issue and their contribution to what could be a larger fight.
In Saez’s lecture’s argument for a wealth tax, Saez cited the travesty of hugely disproportionate wealth distribution. The Federal Reserve reported that in 2024, the top 0.1% held almost 14% of the entire country’s wealth, with the rest of the top 1% holding an additional 17%. The influence of wealth in politics is obvious with the widespread use of Super PAC funding in political campaigns (with over 2,000 organized groups and $5 billion in donation receipts as of 2025) and, this year, with Elon Musk’s involvement with Trump and DOGE.
Defending the rich, Summers repeatedly drew attention to his status as a Democrat and asserted that both parties are subject to monetary influence. In saying that “the idea that you’re going to stop ‘bad oligarchy’” is not “terribly compelling,” he distinguished so-called “bad oligarchy” from its implied logical alternative ‘good oligarchy,’ which would presumably mean wealthy Democrats using their influence for ‘good.’ But why should we accept an oligarchy of the rich in any party’s hands? This isn’t Democrats versus Republicans; this is about the 1%, or even the 0.1%, using wealth to buy their way into politics through Super PACs, lobbying and private connections. This is the vast majority of us versus the vast minority of them.
Apart from oligarchy, extreme wealth inequality is a problem in and of itself. I’ve heard many times from members of the middle and lower classes that we shouldn’t tax the rich because they’ve earned it. Spoon-fed the American dream fresh out of the womb and lied to by the puppets we call politicians, they seem oblivious to the reality that most billionaires start out with money and all billionaires increase their wealth at their employees’ expense. Hard work isn’t enough: you need a hunger for exploiting the labor of the working class.
Take Elon Musk. Americans think of him as a brilliant entrepreneur who founded Tesla, but Musk was born into a wealthy family and grew up in an affluent white-dominated suburban community before he bought his way into Tesla through investments in the company before joining its board of directors and later becoming its CEO. As the richest person in America with an estimated net worth of $244 billion, he pays a production worker at Tesla an average of $20 per hour. Billionaires like Elon Musk grow their wealth from initial capital via exploitation. They then take that money and feed it into the mouths of ever-greedy politicians (via Super PACs) in hopes of finding it transformed into policy. While leveraging their wealth, the billionaire class pays their employees minimum wage (or if we’re lucky, a livable wage) to paint pictures and then premier them as their own art, laughing at us the entire time.
How long can we allow such a glaring injustice? How long can we wait for a steadily drying trickle of wealth, trusting those who claim to know better? Something needs to be done. In an argument against the tax, Summers cited high tax evasion among the rich in our existing system and instead suggested we “audit rich people who don’t pay any [taxes].” This argument presents a glaring circularity — if we can solve the current problem by enforcing the taxes currently owed by the rich, couldn’t we enforce an additional tax? Feasibility may be difficult, but this is too important to be abandoned at any challenge. The majority of us, workers under employers, must put more pressure on people in power until they either pass laws restraining the ultra-wealthy or snap under our weight.
The protestors were interrupting. They were rude. One user on Fizz commented, “appreciate the sentiment of the protest but wrong time wrong place.” But when is the ‘right’ time? When has social change ever come from sitting on our hands until we can quietly and politely make our point? How long are we going to bear this burden?
Year after year, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We are seeing an unprecedented death of the middle class and watching, frozen, as our political leaders feed on the teats of billionaires day by day. Taxing the rich seems like a moderate proposal to me. It seems like the bare minimum. Still, it’s something to fight for, as these protestors were — and harder.