Arab writers have a tough job these days. Here, I’m talking only about those of us in the US. (Although this affects us all.) Whether poets, journalists, novelists or comedians, we have an extra responsibility to record our pain, unite …
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The Geopolitics of Elite Insanity: Teetering on the Brink of Armageddon, The Danger of Nuclear War
By , December 11, 2024
In the latest, most significant development, NATO-produced and guided weapons were fired from Ukraine to attack …
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It seems as if we are constantly hearing about so-called Christian nationalism, critiques from the ideologues of the Left and, strangely, proposed as a healthy alternative by a small cadre of non-mainstream academics on the Right. It is the arguments of this latter group that I will focus attention on, but first we must look at the history and meaning of the word “nationalism” and then the phony, anti-Christian pseudo-history being promulgated by the Left. This latter is the real threat as progressives brand American Bible-believing, theologically orthodox Christians as fascistic ‘Christian nationalists.’ Whether on the Right or the Left, the use of the term is bad terminology, bad history, and bad theology.1
This essay begins with four different ways of looking at nationalism: (1) the classic approach rooted in the disciplines of history and the social sciences; (2) the recent framing of a fascistic, Right-wing Christian nationalism; (3) the confused embrace of the term by some patriotic Christians in America; and, finally, (4) the academic Christian nationalism of a small group of theologically orthodox American scholars. Because any form of contemporary nationalism is typically statist, the critique and way forward of the final section focuses our attention on Christian Realism’s emphasis on human sin, institutional fallenness, and, therefore, the need for limits on state power. An alternative to any form of state-mandated religion is the robust religious freedom of America’s founding, and this is both a moral good in accord with human nature and a necessary check on state power.
Nations, Nationalism, and U.S. History
The term “nationalism” is largely alien to the American context. Nationalism is an idea coined in the 1800s to describe the movement by cultural-linguistic groups seeking political autonomy. Perhaps the best expression is Ernst Renan’s famous 1882 lecture, “What is a Nation?” The basic idea was that a religious-cultural-ethnic-linguistic group, a group of people with a shared history and culture, should have an independent polity. When Lord Byron died at the siege of Missolonghi, he was participating in the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire. The unification of dozens of smaller principalities into the modern German state (1871) and the unification of the Italian peninsula into modern Italy (1861) were examples of cultural and political – national – cohesion into a single polity. So too was Norway’s independence from Sweden in 1905. All of these national movements looked to geography and the mists of ancient history for symbols, often pagan in origin, to emphasize ethno-nationalist distinctiveness. Thus, arts and literature abounded with mystical and folk themes (Romanticism) tying blood and national consciousness to non-negotiable geographical sites, from the Teutonic (German) themes of Wagner to the most famous of them all, Biedrich Smetana’s symphonic poem, The Moldau, from his masterwork My Country (Má vlast), which he called, “musical pictures of Czech glories and defeats.”
World War I was the death-knell for Europe’s large, multi-ethnic empires: the sprawling Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman Empires shattered, resulting in new or revitalized governments based primarily on ethnic identity, including independent nation-states for the Finns, Hungarians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Bulgars, Romanians, Serbs, and others.
The contemporary study of nationalism, with a focus on the break-up of some countries and ethno-nationalist and ethno-religious rivalries, took off after the fall of the Soviet Union, and especially, the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. In the 1990s there was a host of new work on localism, national religious revivalism, cultural nationalism, and even civilizational forms of shared identity. Wars in places such as Azerbaijan-Armenia, the successor states to Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and elsewhere suggested a new, virulent nationalism based on blood and soil.2
Does any of this sound like the United States of America? No. “Yankee Doodle went to town … and called it macaroni…” is just not in the same cultural universe as the nationalist anthems of Europe. For instance, the song most associated with the movement for Italian Independence, the “Royal March,” declares:
All of Italy puts her faith in you, believes in you,
glory of our race, sign of freedom,
of freedom, of freedom, of freedom.
When the enemy comes seeking
our flourishing fields
where heroes fought
in the bygone ages
as long as our fervent patriotic love lasts
as long as our civilization reigns
The American War for Independence resulted from the colonials defending their customs and rights “as Englishman,” not as something different. The American sensibility, as it deepened and expanded, was and is a nation of ideas, not of blood and myth. It has always been forward-looking, not resting its legitimacy on fables from pre-history. Those who share the ideas and values found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are eligible to voluntarily join the American nation, regardless of blood, language, or religion. As John Adams famously wrote, the war was not the American Revolution. Rather, the real revolution was a “revolution of the mind,” a centering on key ideals of freedom, ordered liberty, and equality.
Mainstream America, despite some radicals on the extremes, has not been chauvinistically hyper-nationalist. Indeed, if one looks at the statements of our great leaders, from Washington and Lincoln through Grant, Cleveland, Coolidge, FDR, Truman, Reagan, and Bush, one simply does not find the language of ‘nationalism’ because it is not part of our way of thinking about our national identity. The ideas of rightful patriotism, perhaps best described by C.S. Lewis in his The Four Loves, is a better way of thinking about American national identity and patriotism.
Progressives’ anti-American Re-Write of U.S. History: Chauvinistic Nationalism
Fast forward to 2006. As Mark David Hall has documented, in recent years, a group of progressive academics have willfully rewritten US history to say that American Bible-believing Christians have been a regressive, anti-equality, anti-freedom force, akin to fascists. I witnessed this first-hand at a scholarly conference in France, at which an academic got up and told a fabricated saga of American history that started with rabid slave owners and racists in the 1600s and led directly, from 1619 to the Civil War and segregation to Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich. It was a masterful conspiracy theory akin to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion featuring white, male Christian dominance as a three century-long project of exclusion, patriarchy, militarism, and racial hierarchy. However, it was entirely without serious historical references and citations. This cottage industry of false history is represented by a plethora of pseudo-histories and conspiracy theories. One of the worst examples, criticized by renowned historians such as Allen C. Guelzo, is the widely discredited, yet still in print, 1619 Project, which is buttressed by pseudo-social science justifications found in “new theories,” including critical race theory, queer theory, and the like.
All such “critical theories” and alternative histories emphasize some form of Christians-as-the-boogeyman. According to writer Andrew Whitehead, Christian nationalism is an existential “threat to American democracy and the Christian church in the United States.” Andrew Seidel, vice president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, claims that it is an “existential threat” to this country. Amanda Tyler, president of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, contends that Christian nationalism is the “single biggest threat to America’s religious liberty.” Finally, and many additional examples could be given, Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry recently informed us that white Christian nationalism is a “threat to American democracy.”
Perhaps the most famous of these writings is Taking America Back for God by Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry. They define Christian nationalism as
An ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of American civic life with a particular type of Christian identity and culture [that] includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism.
Upon a closer look, this misuse of labels and data has a partisan character with strong anti-Christian overtones. For example, Whitehead and Perry’s research, based on flawed survey results, seems to suggest that if someone believes Biblical teaching to be true, then that person is a potentially violent Christian nationalist. Such a conclusion brands hundreds of millions of faithful Protestants and Catholics across the Western world as fascists.
Here is a recent example: the character assassination of Mike Johnson. In autumn 2023, Congressman Mike Johnson of Louisiana, an evangelical Christian who previously served as an attorney for the faith-based legal firm, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), became Speaker of the House of Representatives.
A Washington Post opinion headline said, “Mike Johnson is a pro-gun Christian nationalist. Yes, be afraid.” The author says Johnson’s “ideology” may encourage violence. A New York Times opinion piece calls the friendly, smiling Johnson “The Embodiment of Christian Nationalism in a Tailored Suit.” The bogeyman created by radical progressives is a blend of racism, militarism, and fascism. Thus, we should not be surprised to find Whitehead and Perry writing the following in TIME magazine: “When we say Speaker Johnson is a Christian nationalist, we mean he provides a near-perfect example for each element.”
As scholar Mark David Hall has written, although there is a small minority of Americans who do hold expansive views about the role of Christianity in American public life, very few are white supremacists or militarists. He reports on survey data from Pew, PPRI, and Brookings, none of which suggests a mass movement rooted in Christianity that is violent and fascistic. Indeed, such caricatures simply do not correspond to the generations of charity, compassion, and liberty movement initiatives that have Christian roots, from humanitarian groups such as the Salvation Army and World Vision to the abolition movement.
Christian Nationalism vs. the Patriotic Christian
Thus far we have seen two uses of the word “nationalism,” one from the academic social science and historical literature, and a second that is a recent polemical war against people of traditional Christian faith in America. Both are problematic in that the first is a powerful explanatory tool for understanding European and other histories, but its “blood and soil” approach is far from the American experience. The second is a caricature of the type of Christian people who have been part of mainstream American society since the seventeenth century, and thus, equally problematic.
With the attacks, since 2006, on American history and the role of Christian people and institutions in that history, a third problematic use of the term “Christian nationalism” has arisen. This is when patriotic Christians, who are genuinely worried about the direction of the country, own the label given to them by the progressive Left. In other words, as more than one friend has said to me, “I love this country. Isn’t ‘Christian nationalist’ just another label for ‘Christian patriot?’ Don’t they mean the same thing?”
There are three reasons that it would be better for Christians to avoid self-identifying as “Christian nationalists.” The first is a simple matter of semantics. The word “Christian” should always be used as a noun: it is a label of identity meaning “Christ follower” or “Christ’s disciple.” It is far weaker to use the word “Christian” as an adjective when we are thinking about identity. One is not a “patriot” or “nationalist” first, but a Christian first and foremost. Second, it is not useful to play into the hands of Christianity’s critics by trying to appropriate a label that they have turned into a brand of derision. Why play into their hands? I think that doing so is particularly confusing when one is trying to discuss patriotism and religious faith to students and young adults. It is a far harder battle to get down to serious business when there is all the clamor about “nationalism” in the press.
Third, it would be best to focus attention on the Christian and rightful patriotism, or one might call, for lack of a better term, being a “patriotic Christian.” As noted earlier, C.S. Lewis’ discussion of rightful patriotism in The Four Loves can help us.
As I have described in more detail elsewhere, Lewis describes several ways we can think about love of country.3 At the bedrock of this is love of home.4 Home means all that is familiar, from familiar faces to familiar places. Home is the sense that I am part of a community. I share life and experiences with my neighbors and kin. Such love of our immediate neighbor helps us recognize that our primary obligations are, first and foremost, to those closest to us. God put us in a specific time and place to reflect Him and serve others. We simply cannot exercise the same degree of neighbor-love to everyone, everywhere, all of the time. To do so would be to neglect those for whom we are responsible at home. At the same time, our love of the neighbors should, according to Lewis, elevate our view of our fellow man as bearing the image of God. It should help us lift our eyes away from narrow parochialism to lovingly see God’s design in all of humanity.
Lewis argues that we have expanding circles of what is shared, and part of this is our common national story.5 This is a building block of patriotism. That story helps us to understand where we came from and how we got here. It is a narrative that looks at our history with a sense of thanksgiving but also with an eye of critical discernment. We should be inspired by what is noble and special in our nation’s history and ideals while striving to overcome our nation’s shortcomings.
Love of home and love of country should not be culturally chauvinistic. C.S. Lewis says that we should recognize that just as it is right for me to love my home with its idiosyncrasies, so we should naturally expect a Frenchman to love and be proud of his home and the Japanese to love and be proud of their homeland.6 Rightful patriotism includes respect for difference.
Appropriate love of one’s homeland differentiates proper patriotism from inappropriate or even violent forms of nationalism. The term “nationalism” has become confused in recent years. It used to mean the simple idea that the cultural identity of a people was or should be tied to a specific geographical place, such as the Kurds in Kurdistan or Koreans in Korea. But when nationalism goes beyond that simple idea to embrace some form of chauvinistic ethnic or ideological political program, it is badly misdirected. These forms of love-my-clique are sinful because they categorize the ‘Other’ not simply as different, but of lesser moral value or worth. This is a gross violation of Christ’s command to love one’s neighbor.
We can see how the sin of hyper-nationalism is related to a form of political idolatry. Many extreme social and political “isms” such as Communism, Fascism, hyper-nationalism, or ethnocentrisms such as India’s violent Hindu nationalism are idolatrous in putting a government, ethno-religious identity, or ruling ideology at the center of meaning and existence. Making a political ideal the centerpiece of worldview is a theological move, one that displaces God and his transcendent moral order in favor of human power and will for a particular place and time. Hyper-nationalism whitewashes the sins in a nation’s past. This is collective self-adoration, whether expressed at Babel, or the hubris of Athens and Rome, or the idolatrous systems of the French and Russian Revolutions. These are wrong loves.
It is not surprising, therefore, that in places such as China, North Korea, and elsewhere today, Christians are seen as obstacles for their unwillingness to bow to the maximizing demands of the state. Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego all faced this challenge of allegiances. Christians in Rome faced this when confronted with mandatory emperor worship. Today’s Christians in Communist countries face it when restricted from worshipping or when government policy mandates abortions. The Christian may love his community and love his country, but his or her highest allegiance is to something above the political party or the government. A Christian’s first allegiance, his or her first love, is devotion and obedience to Jesus Christ. Love of Christ, informed by the Holy Scripture and led by the Holy Spirit, must be the essential loyalty and animating motivation for the Christian.
It is not only right but also admirable to appropriately care for the good of the community and nation where God has placed us. Patriotism loves what is good in our own country and respects the patriotism of others. Our nation should never be set up as the ultimate center of truth and authority. That is reserved for God and his Word. The lyrics of “America” (“My Country ‘Tis of Thee”) express this affectionate balance well:
My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims’ pride,
From every mountainside let freedom ring!
My native country thee, land of the noble free, thy name I love.
I love thy rocks and rills, thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture thrills like that above.
Our fathers’ God to Thee, Author of Liberty, to Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright, with freedom’s holy light,
Protect us by Thy might, Great God our King.
Christian Academics Espousing a Confessional State
Should we be worried that a chauvinistic, racist, anti-woman Christian nationalism is taking over our churches? The answer is “no.” Recent surveys, by those who are not necessarily friendly to orthodox Christians such as The Brookings Institute and PPRI, nonetheless demonstrate that only a small percentage of Christians in America embrace the term. In fact, most people who signal support for the term “Christian nationalism” are simply trying to argue that they are patriotic Christians who are deeply worried about the moral fabric of our country. Christian leaders and intellectuals have a responsibility to inform them of what it means to be a patriotic Christian while clarifying the problems with hyper-nationalistic rhetoric.
Nonetheless, there is a tiny group of academic Christian nationalists, many of which identify it as an intellectual project for moral renewal. Although there is a potentially wide spectrum here, from Catholic integralists to proponents of a fusion of Church and State (the historic Christendom model), those who are making the argument that is most likely to capture the evangelical imagination are those like Stephen Wolfe and his allies, who argue for a confessional state. Here is a brief overview of that argument.
This form of academic Christian nationalist, found in some seminaries and Christian college campuses or writing without peer-review in online magazines, typically make this form of argument. In sum, although the institutions of religion (the Church) and societal government (the State) are distinct institutions with their own spheres of influence, nevertheless both have overlapping roles in promoting law and morality in society. In contrast to those who say that the Church is responsible for the first table of the law (e.g. love God, refrain from idolatry and blasphemy) and the State is responsible for the inter-personal relationships of the second table of the law (do not steal, lie, or murder), these academic Christian nationalists argue that the government has a role to play in enforcing all of the Ten Commandments.
Let’s take a step back and think about some of the presuppositions here. Most Protestants and Catholics recognize that society has a number of natural institutions such as the family, the church, and government (see Romans 13). Due to human innovation responding to the cultural mandate to steward the earth, we have developed a number of other institutions and social sectors over time. Abraham Kuyper called these “spheres” and his model of “sphere sovereignty” remains a useful description for thinking about a healthy society, where different sectors (spheres) have their own models of governance and expertise, such as the agricultural sector, the economic sector, the education sector, the government sector, etc. The family and the religious sector are indispensable institutions for society. A society needs all of these sectors, working like the gears of a clock in cooperation but with some independence, to function well. Each of these institutions or sectors, and the people that make them up, are responsible to use their God-given talents and abilities, for the glory of God and for the betterment of mankind.
Moreover many Christians, particularly American Christians, also embrace some form notion of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity, an important term in Catholic social ethics, is the idea that the responsibility for handling problems should happen at the most local of levels, e.g. the family, the neighborhood, the local community, the nearby church. Larger issues that need more collective power, such as law enforcement and military defense, should happen at different levels of collective authority.
I mention sphere sovereignty and subsidiarity because we typically think quite differently today about Christian political ethics than Luther and Calvin did. In the early decades of the Reformation, those thinkers typically wrote about the jurisdiction of just two entities, the institutions of Church and State. This was largely a reflection of the key issue of their time, as the medieval consensus was breaking down and Christendom models of Church-State fusion were being challenged.
Today’s academic Christian nationalists draw their inspiration from those early decades of the Reformation, particularly places such as Calvin’s Geneva. Their view of societal renewal means a far greater integration of the institutions of Church and State.
The American model, developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is far different. It suggests that church and state, or to put it in more comprehensive and realistic terms for a large society like that in the U.S., the religious sector and that of [political] government, which has as its primary duty to protect and defend the citizenry, should be distinct spheres, even if they inform one another. America’s Founders understood, as George Washington wrote, that “religion and morality” are indispensable for society and the elements of Christian religion would inform our politics and laws but without the national establishment of an institutionalized church or by imposing a theological orthodoxy by force. John Adams concurred that a society of ordered liberty was rooted in religion and morality: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
To be fair, those academic Christian nationalism proponents such as Stephen Wolfe do not seem to be arguing that the Church should take over the State nor that the State should take over the Church (e.g. theocratic Iran), but that both spheres have a role to play in a mutual reinforcing way to propagate, defend, and even punish on behalf of both tables of the law. In other words, the government should punish wrongdoers when it comes to matters of faith and worship, such as in matters of apostasy or blasphemy. They envision a confessional state, one where there is a majority religion that has the power of the state to enforce religious worship and religious dictates. One could imagine a constitutional monarchy being laid out upon these lines, or, as many of the proponents argue, something resembling Calvin’s Geneva. Religious dissent, non-conformism, and agnosticism would all be criminalized.
These self-styled academic Christian nationalists are responding to a real problem. That problem is the decadence and the degradation of Western civilization. They, like Catholic Integralists, suggest that the emphasis of the American Founders on limited government and a reliance on the family and religious institutions to promulgate righteousness was misplaced. They argue that a more explicit state-sanctioned Christianity, with mechanisms for promoting and defending the faith, is necessary to overcome the immorality and social disintegration of our time.
Christian Realism Counters Christian Nationalism: Limited Government and Religious Freedom
This form of Christian nationalism-as-a-confessional state is deeply problematic and it is the anti-thesis of an approach called “Christian realism.” Christian nationalism is a utopian, idealistic vision. Like any utopian vision, it requires revolutionaries who are willing to “do whatever must be done,” such as burning down the old order and imposing a new one by force. To be clear: the only way to get to the Christian Nationalists’ view of a Christian society is to follow the advice of Vladimir Lenin. A small group acts as an “elite vanguard” to seize power and then use the police, the military and the courts to impose their views on society. Idealists must use coercion, exclusion, or exile to push out those who refuse to conform. They must purify society for the sake of the revolution.
What we have found throughout history is that the accumulation of power into the hands of a small elite never ends. Well. This is how the French, Russian, Chinese Communist, and other revolutions, led by a small elite zealously committed to their blueprint for the world, imposed it by force on their fellow citizens. This is not authentic Christianity.
There is a long tradition of anti-utopian Christian thinking, from the Bible through Augustine, Aquinas, and many other thinkers in our present day. We often call this way of thinking “Augustinian” or “Christian realism,” and many important thinkers have operated from this general approach over the past several decades when thinking about politics from a Christian worldview, including Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Ramsey, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Carl Henry, George Weigel, and many others. For specialists, I have laid out a longer explanation of Christian Realism here.
Christian realism is the antithesis to the Christian nationalist vision. Christian realism is authentically Christian and realistic in that it recognizes the sinfulness of humanity, both in terms of individuals and our institutions. We are sinners and we live in a fallen world. The solution is not to put more power into the hands of a small group of flawed people. Indeed, Christian realists recognize that what we must do is divide and separate power, creating balances of power through mechanisms that we in the United States call separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, elections, the distinction between government and the private sector, and the like.
Christian Realism counters Christian Nationalism, because Christian realism emphasizes a rightful patriotism that does not idolize the state, an ideology, a party, or a demagogue. Christian nationalists are prone to fall into all of these traps. Whether by anointing a secular prophet, such as a candidate or office holder, or a political party, or even an individual Christian mega-star as having all the answers for law, politics, and society, Christian nationalists run into the problem of putting tremendous power into the hands of sinful human beings. In contrast, Christian realism recognizes that there are a number of potential unintended consequences and unforeseen outcomes by the accretion of power, particularly when that power is justified by a revolutionary ideology, even one that is rooted in religious conviction.
In the American context, the principle of religious freedom has been championed by those who clearly operate from the perspective of Christian Realism. These are people, from many of the Founding Fathers to contemporary writes such as Jean Bethke Elshtain, George Weigel, Robert P. George, Marc LiVecche, J. Daryl Charles, and many others, who have articulated a patriotic Christianity bounded by a realistic approach to human fallenness and the need for limited government. Interestingly, in every case that makes them great champions of religious freedom as a social good and as a check on government power.
According to Thomas F. Farr, religious freedom “the right of all persons to believe, speak, and act – individually and in community with others, in private and in public – in accord with their understanding of ultimate truth.” Farr’s capacious view of religious freedom is particularly important as we think about its theological, philosophical, and prudential foundations. Note his four dimensions: individual, community (institutional), private, and public. Farr writes that religious freedom is an individual right “to believe, or not to believe, in religious truths without coercion. Those who do believe have the right to order their lives in accord with religious truths, without undue coercion from the government or any other human agent.” But, it is also an institutional right: “the of right religious communities to establish and gather in churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and other houses of worship without undue interference. It also entails the right of individuals and communities to found and run religious organizations such as schools, universities, homeless ministries, adoption and foster care agencies, hospitals, clinics, and more consistent with their faith tenets.” In practice, then, religious freedom is both a private and public right. Farr concludes, “Religious freedom encompasses the right of religious individuals, institutions, and communities to express religious truths in their private lives, and to bring those truths into political life through their respective claims about justice, peace, equality, and freedom on a basis equal to all others in society.”
To be clear, religious freedom in American history and culture is far different from academic Christian nationalism. It has been both a social good and a check on power. Religious freedom has allowed for a vast space for faith-based organizations and charities to serve the common good. At the same time, the fact that there is an authority and morality above and beyond the state is a limiting principle on government. Both have been important in U.S. history and culture.
In conclusion, we have looked at four different ways of thinking about the term “nationalism” in contemporary political discourse. Much more needs to be done in our churches, schools, and civil society to reconnect with how past generations defined love-of-country, rightful patriotism, just statecraft, ethical thinking on justice and public defense, how doctrines of human sin and human potential should affect our sense of public responsibility and much more. We also need faithful witnesses to how calls to impose Christian government always end up as anti-Christ tyranny. Just look at the example of the Spanish Inquisition. The good news is that only a tiny minority accept the idea of a powerful statist Christianity in our time. A better approach is a robust, hopeful, sober Christian realism, founded in the fundamentals of Christian doctrine, defending the value of the human person and calling for human responsibility, and attuned to the realities both spiritual and temporal, of the world in which we live.
Democracy exists to give every citizen a voice; the alternative is a consolidation of power to a handful of ultrawealthy and well-connected people. Healthy democracies, combined with conscious-minded, empathetic citizens, actively prevent oppression and political violence. That is their primary function.
Since the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the subsequent response from the American public, I have done some reflecting on the state of our country. As a humanitarian and Christian, I cannot and will not condone or encourage taking a life. This is reflected in my staunch opposition to the death penalty, even for people convicted with 100 percent certainty of the most heinous offenses. It is why I have spoken up and will continue to speak up for those in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, and anywhere else injustice is happening. These values are also why I have fought tirelessly for many policies, including single-payer health care.
Over the past few days, like many Americans, I have read many stories from working-class Americans about their experiences with our for-profit health care system. This is not a Democrat vs. Republican issue; it is a “do you have the money to afford getting sick or hurt” issue. In other words, it is about class.
Currently, 60 percent of Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck, which means they cannot afford unexpected expenses and continue to pay their bills. The number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States is medical debt. As a single-payer advocate, I have long made the point that for-profit health care is immoral. Someone who is diabetic and needs insulin to live cannot go without it — it is either pay an outrageous amount for your insulin or die.
A Gallup poll recently showed that 62 percent of Americans believe the federal government is responsible for ensuring health care for Americans. Despite this public opinion, anytime those of us who advocate for single-payer health care speak up, we are called “radical” or “far-left” by the political establishment of both parties and even by some in the media.
The news of Thompson’s killing and the subsequent response from the general public surprised many in the political class and the media. As someone who travels this country and has deep conversations with working-class Americans, I am not surprised. For many Americans, their experience with our for-profit health care system is either themselves or their loved ones going broke because they got sick or hurt. At worst, some have seen their loved ones die as a result of our health care system. The response from the American public is not one of theory; it is one of tangible experience.
Our reality in America is that roughly 68,000 Americans die each year due to lack of health care. The number one cause of bankruptcy in America is medical debt. Yet our elected officials do nothing. Neither major political party supports single-payer health care in their platforms; both parties take millions of dollars from health insurance companies. The inaction of our elected officials is bought.
Our government is supposed to protect its citizens. They are currently working on behalf of insurance companies. When insurance companies make decisions in the boardrooms that increase profit while hurting people, that is an act of violence. It is our government’s responsibility to step in and protect us.
While insurance companies legally bribe our elected officials, it is nearly impossible for Americans to have their voices heard and represented to hold these companies accountable. It is time for our political parties and elected officials to wake up to the danger of the erosion of our democracy. When insurance companies can bankrupt and kill Americans for profit while elected officials condone it, that is the result of the erosion of our democracy.
We must come together, not as Democrats and Republicans, not as liberals and conservatives, but as working-class Americans to demand our elected officials stop taking corporate money. Because if that does not happen, and desperately needed reforms on issues like health care continue to be blocked, I am concerned that political violence will continue to escalate. As President John F. Kennedy once said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
A handful of federal elected officials reject corporate money, but they are far too few to make tangible policy impacts. We need more. In the past few days, I have felt hopeful as I have seen statements calling out this problem from some elected officials who have historically taken corporate money.
Congressman Dean Phillips (D-MN) wrote on Twitter/X, “Americans don’t have health care. We have sick care. And it’s fixable with a little courage from Congress.”
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) wrote on Twitter/X, “The next DNC Chair should absolutely refuse to take corporate PAC money. If we are the party of the working class – and we are – then let’s raise $$ like we mean it.”
The American people deserve a democracy — a political environment where we can take issues to the ballot box and see our opinions reflected in the actions of our representatives. To do that, our elected officials must rid our politics of corporate and dark money.
I want an America free from political violence and vigilante justice. I want an America where our government serves the people, not the ultrawealthy and special interests. That is America’s promise. We can have it, but it will take constant moral pressure from the American people and intestinal fortitude from our elected officials to stand up to their wealthy donors and advocate for the working class.
The following article is a preview from the Winter 2025 issue of Jacobin, “Bye Bye Biden,” which is out next week. Click here to subscribe to receive the entire issue in print and online.
As his presidency comes to an end, Joe Biden’s term will be immediately remembered for its political failure to prevent the return of Donald Trump. The better aspects of his economic vision, however, will perhaps leave a lasting legacy.
Biden’s decision to nominate Lina Khan to chair the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and his executive order in July 2021 to promote competition in the American economy weren’t accompanied by much fanfare. But they were two of the most significant actions of his presidency. For members of a resurgent anti-monopoly movement, this was the true heart of Biden’s proclaimed paradigm shift in economic policy.
Biden’s move to encourage more competition in the land of free enterprise has antagonized corporate America in ways not seen in decades. Under Khan’s leadership, the FTC has challenged proposed mergers and helped advance antitrust lawsuits against monopolies such as Amazon and Google. Its numerous investigations and rules, meanwhile, have doubled as public service announcements about what counts as anticompetitive or predatory practice. This is an unusual turn for the 110-year-old bureaucratic agency, yet it is in line with the crusading spirit behind its creation under President Woodrow Wilson and Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis. Like them, Khan believes educating consumers and workers about the law and their rights is central to the FTC’s mandate.
The thirty-five-year-old Khan seems to have almost single-handedly renewed the Democratic Party’s once celebrated anti-monopoly tradition. During the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama eras, Democrats were largely amenable to megafirms, having acquiesced to the “consumer welfare standard” propounded by the jurist Robert Bork and neoliberal economists. Bork and his acolytes sought to radically diminish the scope of antitrust doctrine, arguing that business concentration wasn’t a threat so long as economies of scale furnished efficiencies that bolstered the nation’s wealth. Khan’s tenure, combined with actions taken by Jonathan Kanter at the Justice Department and Rohit Chopra at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, marks a promising break with this laissez-faire interpretation.
Her adversarial approach has rattled a tech- and finance-dominated business establishment that otherwise regards the Democratic Party as less disruptive than a Trumpist GOP. The donor class has so far tolerated industrial policy and fiscal stimulus due to the enormous business incentives contained in Biden’s flagship legislation and uncertainty around a new Trump term. But they’re very aware that stronger oversight of their business practices has the potential to popularize anti-monopoly politics and decisively overturn the discretion large firms enjoyed in the neoliberal era.
Central to Khan’s arguments against companies that abuse their market position is the belief that markets must be guided by norms other than simply delivering goods and services. That by itself has alarmed several companies that together control much of the postindustrial economy. Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and other firms have responded nervously to Khan’s policing of their actions in the name of fair competition. Criticism reached a fever pitch this summer, with one prominent venture capitalist, Vinod Khosla, publicly describing her as “not a rational human being” and someone who “doesn’t understand business.” According to the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly think tank, the Wall Street Journal has published 122 pieces attacking Khan’s FTC.
Of course, the capitalist class exaggerates Khan’s capacity to toughen the rules of democratic capitalism and punish predatory behavior. Even proponents of antitrust enforcement liken their efforts to a game of Whac-A-Mole. Victory in one case doesn’t necessarily prevent monopolistic or coercive behavior in others. Nor is it always clear how enforcement will widely benefit consumers and workers. Competition policy is often justified to promote innovation, and in that sense effectively perpetuates the cycle of capital formation and growth that leads to new firms gaining market share. Today’s challenges, moreover, are uniquely formidable. Technological leaps and globalization have made other types of regulation, such as capital controls, even more difficult.
For much of the twentieth century, the anti-monopoly tradition undergirded American liberals’ abiding faith in “moral capitalism.” As it evolved through the postwar era, this movement sought to put a leash on market power rather than radically transform capitalism. Building state capacity to plan or otherwise intervene in the economy was always well beyond the imagination of the antitrust movement’s mainstream.
For a left that still aspires to build a strong welfare state and expand public ownership, antitrust action can seem incidental to, and perhaps even at odds with, transforming our systems of production and distribution. What, then, should we make of Khan and the anti-monopoly legacy of the Biden administration? And what will become of the movement after Trump assumes power in January?
The spotlight on Khan has been relentless since well before her term as FTC chair began in June 2021. Several profiles have recounted that, in 2017, at age twenty-nine, she published a widely circulated paper for the Yale Law Journal that explained Amazon’s exercise of monopoly power across a range of market roles, from retail distribution to the expanding realm of technology and media services. Lengthy coverage of her arguments followed in the New York Times, the Atlantic, and other major publications as more business journalists began to probe how the economy’s digitization had led to new concentrations of wealth.
By the Trump era, it was clear that flatlining wages, deindustrialization, declining union membership, and tax cuts for the rich were only part of the story. As Khan and others in the neo-Brandeisian movement saw it, a new crop of monopolies had captured the digital infrastructure on which most Americans now depended to meet their routine needs. Firms as different as Amazon and Uber could engage in systematic predatory pricing at a scale and pace previously unknown. Platforms designed to manipulate users and extract additional revenue hurt consumers while intensifying the “gigification” of labor. But in some cases they also squeezed competitors and effectively set up barriers to market entry. The result was an increasingly oligopolistic system in which economic development could not take place outside the channels controlled by Silicon Valley and Wall Street.
Khan’s intellectual rigor undoubtedly propelled her ascent among policymakers hoping to reestablish a modicum of government oversight after the deregulatory zeal of the Trump administration. Yet it is her understanding of what markets ought to do that has distinguished her time in government. Echoing past reformers who believed markets must serve society, not the other way around, Khan has reclaimed a more expansive definition of the public interest that has the potential to appeal to Americans across partisan divides. In an era marked by hyperpolarization, this talent has made her an even more dangerous foe for Big Tech, venture capitalists, and private equity. Indeed, few other appointed officials have crystallized what many people suspect to be true of the postindustrial economy into language that so consistently illuminates how monopolies endanger our rights as citizens.
Her FTC leadership broadly reflects an attempt to combine the principles of consumer protection and fair competition. As advocated by Senator Elizabeth Warren and other modern anti-monopolists, prudently regulated markets generate three positive outcomes: just prices, prohibitions on fraud and predation, and restraints on ruinous competition to protect smaller enterprises and support local wages and employment. In essence, the goal is to maintain an equilibrium wherein consumer purchasing power is generally maximized without undercutting the benefits of decentralized markets.
As a result, this school advocates a broad conception of consumer welfare. Consumer well-being, according to this view, cannot be reduced to paying the lowest potential price for a given product or service at a specific moment in time. Rather, it means having some basic agency and flexibility to organize one’s household economy according to one’s wants and needs. That in turn requires not being wholly dependent on just a few businesses. When firms get so large that they eliminate existing rivals and preclude the market entry of future competitors, “consumer choice” becomes entirely contingent on the decisions of monopolists.
The seller’s inflation that fueled price hikes during the COVID-19 pandemic’s supply chain shocks was a stark reminder of how large firms with captive customer bases can become rapacious price fixers. They likewise could pad profits by lowering the quality of their goods, hence confirming the ardent belief of trustbusters that unrestrained corporate concentration harms living standards in the long run.
During her tenure, Khan has tried to prevent a repeat of this behavior by putting her far-ranging consumer protection doctrine into practice. To deter both extreme offenses and routine chicanery, she has wielded the FTC’s powers of investigation and rulemaking liberally.
Guided by the conviction that fair competition and transparency go hand in hand, she has devoted considerable firepower against data-driven rent-seeking. Algorithmic surveillance pricing and opaque junk fees are just two of the techniques Khan has flagged as being responsible for stealth increases in prices. Though commonplace, as seen in the travel industry and online retail, such practices have left many Americans worse off without them always realizing why they feel poorer. In other cases, Khan’s FTC went after a corporate landlord who forced illegal evictions during the pandemic, helped bring down the cost of inhalers by challenging bogus patent listings, and sued pharmacy benefit managers for inflating the price of insulin.
More than any one accomplishment, this record of stepped-up oversight has made several industry leaders irate, even as Khan has won plaudits from some businesspeople, including liberal voices in the so-called Little Tech sector. It’s all made for a sensational media narrative, particularly given Khan’s age and Pakistani family background as well as her adroit interview skills.
Individually, however, the FTC’s scattered victories are only minor dents in the armor of global capital. Khan has expressed confidence in deterrence, noting, for instance, that some companies facing scrutiny have abandoned proposed mergers. But the FTC, despite its more militant turn, can only do so much. For example, while it may impose civil penalties for certain illegalities, conduct studies that could provide blueprints for congressional legislation, and sue companies, it doesn’t have the police power to seek large damages or directly break up monopolies. Efforts to actually restrict and eliminate specific types of anticompetitive behavior, moreover, can easily get bogged down in the lower courts, where conservative judges take a dim view of challenges to corporate liberty.
The FTC’s efficacy is also limited by what it can detect. In practice, this typically means Khan’s team and its counterparts at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Justice Department are pursuing redress in the wake of significant economic harm, sometimes inflicted over months or years. That process of information gathering is no doubt integral to developing robust legal cases for violations of consumer protection and antitrust law. But as the FTC’s ramped-up oversight reveals, behemoths like Amazon aren’t the only businesses guilty of monopolistic and anti-worker practices.
In one of the more egregious examples recently highlighted by Khan, a woman who suffered sexual harassment at her restaurant job was sued by the owner for breaking a noncompete agreement after she quit and started working at another restaurant. Cases like this suggest that a distinct rot pervades the economy, raising the perennial question of whether our laws have been subverted by wrongdoers or if they intrinsically favor domination over justice.
Despite the FTC’s limited authority, Khan’s champions hope her actions will help spark a national reckoning over economic coercion and exploitation. But there are structural impediments the media plays down. The broad depoliticization of the economy between the 1980s and 2000s, coaxed along by the credit card industry and followed by the explosion of app-based consumerism in the last decade, has resigned millions to constant financial extraction that in the past would have incited agrarian radicals, municipal socialists, and consumer advocacy leagues. Outcry on social media over specific injuries like high food prices and unfair airline fees continues to give way to broader currents of apathy.
There are signs that Khan traces the roots of such apathy to the disempowerment of US workers. Earlier this year, she extended her mandate to labor issues by attempting to ban noncompete clauses. The move directly appealed to the ideal of free labor, battered yet still ingrained in the American psyche. Though it was blocked in August by a conservative federal judge in Texas, Khan’s rule signaled how the anti-monopoly tradition can align with workers’ rights advocacy.
“Noncompete clauses systemically drive down wages, even for workers who aren’t bound by one,” she explained last year in an op-ed for the New York Times. “If employers know their workers can’t leave, they have less incentive to offer competitive pay and benefits, which puts downward pressure on wages for everyone.” As has proved characteristic of Khan’s public statements, this argument effectively makes the case that curbing coercion isn’t just a matter of fairness but is critical to fighting inequality and improving the nation’s economic health. She holds that the oppressive noncompete status quo, which directly affects some thirty million workers, blunts innovation and hurts the economy.
These arguments suggest that a more radical anti-monopoly tradition is at play in Khan’s thinking. While the FTC’s purview may seem intrinsically limited to piecemeal reform, Khan likely sees her responsibilities as part of a larger egalitarian project. “Markets,” from this standpoint, are not a euphemism for capitalism, if the latter is simply understood as a system of profit maximization and accumulation. Instead, they exist and are justified insofar as they meet social ends: the provision of goods that sustain shelter, sustenance, health, education, and culture. In other words, markets are an instrument of mutual development between citizens and their communities — but only so long as an egalitarian ethos prevails. When labor becomes ensnared by the dictates of monopolists, Khan suggests, the foundations of development deteriorate.
That vital understanding of labor power distinguishes anti-monopolism from Friedrich Hayek’s libertarianism and other pro-market schools of thought. As told by antitrust revivalists, the fight against monopoly power throughout US history has been more than a battle to preserve economic liberty for those without privilege or political favor; the goal is to realize the ideal of economic self-government in virtually every sector and dimension of society.
Several elements of this vision are broadly compatible with democratic socialist thought. The principles of noncoercion, decentralized production, and republican self-determination that form the bedrock of anti-monopolism have factored into debates about how to transform the economy to provide social protection, good living standards, and the relative freedom to use one’s labor as one wishes. Admittedly, these aspirations are not easy to reconcile, but they do reflect an overarching quest for egalitarian development — that is, a system that enables every participant in society to contribute to the general welfare and to benefit from it without fear of fraud or subjugation.
Anti-monopoly politics has been part of the United States since its founding. A critique of concentrated economic power persisted throughout the nineteenth century. Andrew Jackson, speaking to his small proprietor base, warned in 1837 of the encroachment of “money power,” and on the eve of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln’s Republican Party rallied free labor against the concentrated interests of the slaveholder class.
Anti-monopoly sentiment resurfaced again at the end of the nineteenth century, a period of fervid labor militancy and agrarian radicalism. High interest rates in the agricultural periphery charged by eastern financiers, state capture by the trusts, industrial combinations whose new economies of scale displaced artisans and other small producers, and merciless strikebreaking, particularly in mining and steel, led to a Gilded Age that culminated in depression by the mid-1890s.
The newly formed People’s Party, or the Populists, confronted the avarice and exploitation permitted by the political economy of the day. But while their grievances echoed those of their predecessors, the Populists’ approach went further in advocating an alternative development paradigm. The campaign for inflationary monetary policy, business regulations, public utilities, cooperative ownership, rail nationalization, progressive taxation, and agricultural subsidies transformed anti-monopolism into a movement that demanded more significant and aggressive state intervention.
This profoundly shaped the anti-monopoly tradition’s subsequent trajectory. Between the 1820s and the Progressive Era, anti-monopoly politics morphed from a romantic conservative vision of self-reliance into a framework to remedy the social ills generated by the capitalist economy. Despite quickly fading after their alliance with the Democrats in the 1896 election, the Populists showed that anti-monopolism was no longer merely a basis for political agitation and grassroots organizing; it offered concrete approaches to market governance that the New Deal state would later adapt. In short, it represented a new synthesis of freedom and positive government that the party system could no longer ignore.
Following its radical zenith, anti-monopolism was gradually absorbed into the very corporate order it had sought to tame. The result, spread over several decades, has been a source of scholarly debate ever since. Did the corporate liberalism of President Wilson, business progressives, and, later, Cold War liberals enervate anti-monopoly politics by prioritizing targeted antitrust enforcement over other goals? Did antitrust doctrine become a tool that primarily aided market growth, technological breakthroughs, and entrepreneurs in emerging sectors? And did this technocratic turn consequently push alternative ownership ideas to the margins?
These questions are frequently raised by those on the Left who see anti-monopolism as occasionally radical in rhetoric but ultimately confined to seeking solutions within market society. The corresponding worry is that anti-monopolism remains a mission to make markets fair and competitive when, in our current moment, democratic capitalism seems beyond resuscitation. Emboldened regulators like Khan may be able to deter some of the worst market abuses, left-wing critics grant, but anti-monopolism has no comprehensive answer to the crisis of underdevelopment and inequality. The battles between Khan and corporate power, then, amount to an intellectual drama for Beltway journalists — one that is patently unable to stimulate the kind of mobilization witnessed in the 1890s.
A more forgiving interpretation suggests anti-monopolism is not so disconnected from its radical past as it seems. Encouragingly, contemporary proponents tend to regard anti-monopolism as the hidden fulcrum of the New Deal’s more progressive aspects. The development of the South and the West through federal programs and the construction of public power, including the Tennessee Valley Authority, they note, would not have been possible without the ideas and advocacy of anti-monopolists. The same holds for the spread of energy and agricultural cooperatives. Meanwhile, if it did not always cohere with the aims of the labor movement, assertive antitrust enforcement nevertheless coincided with the high tide of union membership between the 1930s and ’70s. Before the crises of that ultimate decade, mid-century liberals generally believed that regulated markets, development programs, collective bargaining, and expanded welfare benefits could be pursued together. Most of today’s prominent anti-monopolists likewise view these goals as compatible and critical to democratic renewal.
Perhaps the best indication that anti-monopolists are channeling the movement’s roots is their iron sense of purpose. Khan has withstood the onslaughts of the business press and vocal Democratic donors like billionaire Mark Cuban and venture capitalist Reid Hoffman. Though she has to appear even-keeled and relatively nonideological as an appointed public servant, she and other anti-monopolists in the Biden administration evidently relished their mission. Such determination arguably reflects the long view of the tasks at hand: that the stakes in our current political environment are urgent but not definitive. No single defeat in court — or unfavorable shift in party power, for that matter — is likely to dishearten Khan or others who frame the current fight as but the latest chapter in a centuries-long contest for true liberty.
What happens next for Khan and her cohort is less certain. In January, Trump will inherit an FTC with a recent track record of aggressive antitrust enforcement. His vice president, J. D. Vance, praised Khan as “one of the few people in the Biden administration” who has done a good job. Yet the dominant conservative view is still captured by House Oversight Committee chair James Comer, who complains that “Khan will stop at nothing to accomplish the radical left’s desired ends.”
It’s no surprise, then, that this week Trump announced that he would replace Khan with Andrew Ferguson. Attacks on “woke capital” — the main source of the GOP’s anti-monopoly rhetoric — have already served their political purpose, while reports suggest a new wave of mergers and acquisitions is imminent.
Still, Trump’s obsession with economic growth and domestic industry, along with his much stronger backing from Silicon Valley this election, may rouse demands for fair competition in unlikely quarters. As the Democratic Party struggles to regroup, the burden will fall on the Left to advance Khan’s legacy in a more radical direction.
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Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema voted to block the reappointment of Lauren McFerran to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) yesterday. Had McFerran been reappointed, her term would have run until December 16, 2029. This would have ensured that Democrats make up the majority of NLRB members until August 27, 2026, when David Prouty’s term expires. 
The NLRB membership currently consists of three Democrats, one Republican, and one vacant seat. With the blocking of McFerran’s reappointment, this will fall to two Democrats, one Republican, and two vacancies after December 16. This means that when president-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20, he will be able to immediately fill two vacancies with Republican appointees, bringing the NLRB’s composition to three Republicans and two Democrats. Trump will also immediately be able to replace General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo with a Republican appointee.
This failed vote will have a significantly negative effect on the development of NLRB law and the rights of workers and unions. When Republicans control the NLRB, they generally use that control to develop Board law in a way that is favorable to employers and unfavorable to employees. This is done by establishing new precedent or reversing old precedent in a case-by-case fashion. Because McFerran was not reappointed, the Trump Board will have four years of cases to work with rather than than two-and-a-half years of cases to work with.
Of course, it’s possible that Trump would have fired one or more Democratic NLRB members on January 20 in order to create the vacancies needed to appoint a Republican majority. Firing NLRB members without cause is prohibited by the National Labor Relations Act, but one of the conservative legal theories of the moment is that this sort of prohibition is unconstitutional. The Trump administration also seems eager to push the legal envelope in this respect. With McFerran out, this particular constitutional clash won’t even be necessary.
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As rising health care costs and inadequate insurance coverage leave one in three Americans saddled with medical debt, the nation’s top health insurers have dumped billions into enriching their executives and top shareholders through lucrative stock buybacks.
All in all, the country’s largest health insurers have invested over $120 billion into repurchasing their own shares since the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. These include UnitedHealth Group; Cigna; Elevance Health, the parent company of Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield; and CVS Health, which acquired Aetna in 2018.
Forty-four percent of buyback expenditures came from UnitedHealth Group, which covers more Americans than any other private health insurer. UnitedHealth has increased its annual share repurchasing program by 217 percent since 2010, dumping a whopping $54 billion into buybacks during that time.
These companies, along with Kaiser Permanente, a nonprofit health care organization, control over half of the commercial market share of the US health insurance industry. Since 2010, they’ve raked in a combined $9 trillion in revenue, netting more than $371 billion in profits.
Meanwhile, one in four Americans say they’ve avoided seeking health care in the past year because of the cost. Half of all US adults say they’d be unable to afford an unexpected $500 medical expense, and medical bills account for 40 percent of US bankruptcies.
Major insurers have abandoned patients for shareholder enrichment, according to former health insurance executive-turned-whistleblower Wendell Potter. “[Health insurers] corrupted the concept of managed care and turned it into something that has been really more of managing cost, but also depriving people of the care that they need,” said Potter.
Insurers “have figured out how to extract so much money out of what we spend as a nation on health care to reward their shareholders. There’s no other country in the world that has a system like this that enables middlemen to siphon off so much money from middle-class and working-class folks that need health care,” he added.
Last week’s assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth Group’s insurance subsidiary UnitedHealthcare, has resulted in an outpouring of anger and frustration toward major health insurers. Nearly two in three Americans now say they believe health care should be the government’s responsibility, according to polling organization Gallup — the highest amount in a decade.
Stock repurchases, like dividends, deliver value to shareholders and overwhelmingly benefit top investors. Corporations can boost share value in a simple game of supply and demand by buying back massive quantities of their own stock from the open market.
Data shows buybacks soared after congressional Republicans and the Trump administration slashed corporations’ tax burden through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Proponents of Donald Trump’s tax cuts argued that corporations would reinvest their savings into research and workers — but instead, buybacks exploded. Goldman Sachs estimates corporate buybacks increased 55 percent between 2017 and 2018 alone.
In recent years, top C-suites across the health care industry have authorized more spending on stock buybacks than on company research and development.
“The very people we rely on to make investments in the productive capabilities that will increase our shared prosperity are instead devoting most of their companies’ profits to uses that will increase their own prosperity — with unsurprising results,” argued University of Massachusetts economist Bill Lazonick, an expert on financialization, in a 2014 Harvard Business Review article.
Since then, corporate buybacks have only grown more common and are on track to surpass $1 trillion annually by 2025.
Executives who authorize large buyback programs are often the ones who stand to personally benefit the most as recipients of lucrative stock awards and options.
Financial disclosures from this spring reveal UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty owned more than 292,000 shares in the company’s stock, worth $156 million today. Witty took home $23 million in compensation last year, 352 times more than his median employee.
Thompson, the slain CEO of UnitedHealthcare, took home $10 million in salary and stock in 2023. Both men are among a group of UnitedHealth executives recently sued for securities fraud by pensioners who claim the officers dumped millions in stocks just months before a federal antitrust probe into their company went public.
Longtime Cigna CEO David Cordani, a public detractor of universal health care, has amassed over 1.2 million shares in the company’s stock — worth $364 million today, financial records from earlier this year show.
As of this February, Elevance Health CEO Gail Boudreaux — an industry veteran who’s also worked for Aetna and UnitedHealth — owned a massive stake in her current employer worth nearly $149 million today.
Since lawmakers passed the Affordable Care Act, top health insurers have, on average, doubled their annual buyback expenditures.
“The rich are getting richer, that’s the point. . . . And we as consumers are paying for [it],” said Lazonick earlier this year.
Meanwhile, families spent an average of 55 percent more on their health care premiums in 2020 than they did in 2010. On a per-person basis, health care spending by Americans with private insurance grew by 61 percent from 2008 to 2022.
In 2022, the United States spent $4.5 trillion on health care compared to $2.6 trillion in 2010. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal agency that manages the country’s biggest public health care program, predicts health care spending will outpace gross domestic product growth over the next decade and grow to represent one-fifth of the US economy.
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