Shut Up and Take My Money

“The nonprofit Patriotic Millionaires has lobbied Congress to make changes for more than a decade. Its members see inequality as a danger — they worry big money is corrupting politics and driving civil unrest. But they haven’t had much success. President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts largely benefited the wealthy, and even when Democrats controlled the Senate in 2021, they failed to pass a bill to raise the minimum wage. ‘We hit a wall,’ says Erica Payne, the group’s founder. ‘We have hammered them on both sides of the aisle for 12 years, OK. It’s time to go to the people who hand them their power.'” Meet the millionaires want to tax the rich. Lobbying didn’t work. So now they’re going grassroots.