Socialism will always find an audience because it appeals to base envy and resentment. Ginning up a mob to be mad at "oligarchs," "Wall Street barons," "kulaks" or "billionaires" is cheap and easy.

So, it was refreshing to hear Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the fourth richest man on the planet, offer unadulterated praise of the moral and economic superiority of capitalism in his recent interview with CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin.

You could practically hear progressives gasping when Bezos claimed that "the value to society and civilization from my for-profit companies will be much, much larger than the good that I do with my charitable giving."

As we've seen, billionaires are far better at dispensing capital to productive sectors of society than charity or government. The United States is better off when Bezos keeps his wealth away from Congress or Zohran Mamdani. Amazon and other similar mega-corporations create more jobs, save people more money and foster more self-reliance than any government program.

The profit motive is much more effective at improving people's lives than good intentions. This is not a moral judgment, merely reality. Bezos hatched a great idea at the right time, then parlayed and scaled that idea into a massive success. He's probably created somewhere around $11 trillion in wealth for society since he started his company. He broke no laws doing it. If you don't like it, don't use or work for Amazon.

We don't have the same luxury when it comes to the state. Leftists are convinced that bilking billionaires holds the key to solving all society's tribulations. But if I said that confiscating all of Bezos' wealth wouldn't even be enough to keep the government going for a week, it would be an understatement. Confiscating all the wealth from every billionaire in the country would only fund the federal government for around a month, probably less.

Which is why, as history has aggressively demonstrated, sooner or later, the socialist definition of "the wealthy" will include you.

"They think there's a fixed pie. One pizza and seven people, who's going to get two slices? That is not how economies work," Bezos told Sorkin. "It isn't a fixed pie. It grows." And by "they," he means people like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, double Bachelor of Arts degree earner in international relations and economics cum laude from Boston University, whose entire economic agenda is predicated on juvenile zero-sum fallacy.

Though Bezos had many excellent things to say about the morality of free markets and wealth creation, he also proposed a well-intentioned but corrosive policy idea that's gotten most of the media attention: zeroing out taxes for the bottom half of earners.

"Why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year paying more than $1,000 a month in taxes, when the best way to put money in someone's pocket is to not take it out in the first place?" Bezos asks, adding that while bottom earners only contribute around 3% of total revenue, keeping that money is "very meaningful" to an individual.

No doubt.

The contention that the wealthy don't pay their "fair share" is probably the biggest myth in American politics. The United States has the most progressive tax system in the developed world. The top 1% taxpayers pay around 45% of all federal income taxes, while the top 10% pay around 75%. Whether you think the rich can afford it or not, it's unhealthy and unstable for a country to rely on a sliver of people to prop up the government. That doesn't sound like the workings of a healthy "democracy."

The problem, though, with zeroing out taxes for around 70 million Americans isn't only about balance sheets. It's about feeding an existing moral hazard that reinforces the perception Bezos was decrying. We can't tap the wealthy to foot the bill for everything.

We are already charging much of our spending to future generations through debt. But voters, need it be said, would be even more likely to support profligate spending knowing they didn't have any federal tax bill.

Even in those Scandinavian welfare states that Sen. Bernie Sanders and other socialists mythologize and fantasize about, everyone pays. Virtually every Danish family, for instance, is on the hook for over 50% of their income in taxes — and that's not even counting a 25% sales tax on everything they purchase. Do you want a welfare state? Fine. Pay for it.

If we flattened taxes so that everyone was compelled to cough up a "fair share," we'd have revolution on our hands. It's going to be virtually impossible to fix our progressive tax code. At the very least, we shouldn't exacerbate the problem by detaching more citizens from the cost and scope of their government.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books — the most recent, "How To Kill a Republic," available now. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on X @davidharsanyi.

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