Throughout my book, I look at a very simple definition, which is the richest 1 percent or the richest 5 percent. I also look at another possible definition, which is relative in the sense that it doesn’t define the rich as those who belong to a specific percentile, but rather defines them as those who are at least ten times richer than the median wealth. The advantage of this other definition is that it allows for the prevalence of the rich to change across time.

With respect to why we should look at the rich if we are worried about our current situation, well, if we consider Western history, at least, which is the one I know better, we can easily realize that the presence of the rich in society has always led to certain possible issues and concerns, which are very similar today and in the past. By acknowledging this, I think we can change our way of looking at the challenges and issues we are facing today in order to try and solve them.

Aristotle was concerned that, in a democratically organized society — by which he specifically meant Athenian democracy — if someone possessed an excess of virtue compared to others, including access to economic resources, it would be unrealistic to expect that person to behave like everyone else. He argued that such a person would act as a “god among men,” a concept that inspired the title of my book. This idea has persisted in Western thought until today, especially from the Middle Ages onward. Thinkers like Nicolas Oresme in the fourteenth century, who translated and commented on Aristotle, echoed this concern. In fact, after the fourteenth century, the focus shifted from an excess of virtue in general to an excess of control over economic resources in particular. This issue remains relevant today, as seen in Thomas Piketty’s work on inequality, where he argues that excessive inequality of wealth leads to significant societal problems.

Indeed, particularly from the Middle Ages it became clear that the rich were often viewed negatively and seen as sinners. Theologians at the time reread the bible and emphasized some of the most severe critiques of the rich, such as Jesus’s claim that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” In reality, the issue was particularly problematic for commoners who became wealthy. The problem wasn’t really with the nobles, who, according to theologians, had their privileged access to resources as part of God’s plan for the organization of society. In theory, nobles were also responsible for protecting their subjects, creating a sort of exchange between noble and subject. The concern lay with the commoners: Why were they wealthy? Why did they accumulate wealth instead of using it to help the poor?

For someone like Thomas Aquinas, the answer was clear: they were sinners, and the goal was to prevent sin from spreading. Aquinas even advised against allowing commoners to engage in international trade, fearing that they would become too rich. What was even worse was when the wealthy gained their money through lending. Aquinas, reflecting on Aristotle’s teachings, argued that money should not generate more money — “nummus non parit nummos,” as the Latin phrase goes. Engaging in such practices, and in particular lending at interest, was essentially committing a sin because it meant making someone pay for time, and since time belongs to God, it was basically considered akin to stealing from God.

Despite the theologians’ efforts, they ultimately failed to stop rulers from allowing their subjects to grow rich, as rulers wanted wealthy people in their communities to tax and to provide funds when needed. Nonetheless, these theologians contributed significantly to the deep-rooted suspicion in our culture toward those who accumulate wealth, particularly in finance, which is still perceived as less legitimate than wealth gained through entrepreneurship, innovation, or other areas where one can grow rich.

So as I have just explained, this increase in the degree of disdain toward the rich happens very clearly by the end of the Middle Ages. The point is that these commoners continued to grow richer and richer, and nobody could stop them. Then society was forced to adapt to this reality: by the fifteenth century, it wasn’t possible anymore to simply say, “okay, all the rich are sinners.” They were there, and they were a part of society.

That’s when you start finding a reflection on how they can help society as a whole. And a very effective way of putting this is that used by Poggio Bracciolini, an Italian humanist who in the early fifteenth century writes a treatise on avarice. He basically says that the rich in a city are like a private barn of money. And they function in a way similar to the public granaries that are set up to face the threat of famine. His point is that, if you have a crisis and you need help — and in particular financial resources, because, for example, you need to pay for war and defense — you are not going to ask the poor for help, because they will not have anything to give you.

Instead, you can ask the rich, because their private resources can be used for public benefit. And you can ask them, kindly, “Can you please lend us some money?” And if they don’t, you can, less kindly, force them to lend money or tax them, or you can even expropriate them to some degree. Across the early modern period, we find that these forced loans were quite ubiquitous in pretty much all the states of Europe in times of need.

The fact is that the nobility in certain crises, like wars, have been expected to contribute, but they have basically been expected to contribute with manpower. The nobility has historically had large wealth in terms of real estate but little liquid wealth that they could actually provide immediately. So they have had to provide their own martial skills and many times their own soldiers, but they have not traditionally been taxed more than the others — they just have a different social contract.

The interesting thing is that the nobility was the component of the rich that was considered the most legitimate in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period, but not today. We have switched to a situation in which we culturally consider that wealth “made” is more legitimate than wealth that has simply been inherited. This is something that is also a feature of our Western culture today. The problem today, of course, is that even though in most countries we got rid of the nobility entirely, we have what I call “wealth aristocracies,” which do not need noble titles to exist.

I don’t think that someone like Silvio Berlusconi, who may be the forerunner of this movement of superrich individuals becoming prime ministers or presidents, and who was first elected in Italy in 1994, would have been elected to a similar position in any Western country in the 1960s. Similarly, I don’t think that someone like Donald Trump would have been elected either.

The point is that, on one hand, in the last few decades, we have seen the superrich and the most affluent in general playing a much more active and direct role in politics; on the other, it is quite clear that in the last decades of the twentieth century, we as voters have collectively become more accepting of superrich people’s involvement in politics.

In recent crises, the rich have been asked to help in much the same way as in the past. In all Western countries, there have been calls for the wealthy to contribute more, whether through exceptional contributions, enhancing the progressive nature of the tax system, or through the introduction of taxes on wealth or inheritance. However, very little has been done. We can easily see this by looking at recent fiscal reforms in Western countries, where very few have introduced significant measures to increase contributions from the rich.

Even considering all the crises — from the Great Recession starting in 2008 to the sovereign debt crisis to COVID-19 and now the war in Ukraine — there has been a consistent social demand for the wealthy to contribute more. Yet with the exception of a country like Spain, where at least some measures have been taken in this direction, this has not been translated into actual policies elsewhere. This situation raises a big question: Why has this demand not resulted in implemented policies?

Many countries increased their debt significantly during COVID-19 and even before that with previous crises, such as the sovereign debt crisis. During this period, there has also been a tendency across the West to move away from what remains of progressive taxation. If you combine these two factors — increased public debt and the move away from progressive taxation — you end up in a situation where the most affluent individuals are not asked to contribute extra to cover the costs of today’s crises. This essentially postpones the moment when the real bill for the crisis will have to be paid and, due to the less progressive tax system, it does not make the burden of the crisis fall on the richest. Instead, it shifts the weight of the crisis onto the middle and lower-middle classes to a greater extent than in the early part of the twentieth century.

Well, there are two reasons for this. First, philanthropy is an interesting modern concept that requires that you wouldn’t be getting anything in exchange from your giving. But the point is that not all philanthropy is really philanthropy. When somebody like Cosimo de’ Medici in Florence established new monasteries or the first public library in Europe, it was clear to everybody that he was making something for his city and for the state but that in this way he was also making a claim to rule. So it wasn’t a gift; it was something different. For the people of that period, that was fine. But we today are in a democracy. The point is, arguably, that part of what we call “giving” helps to build political and cultural influence; it helps to position the wealthy within society and, in the worst cases, it basically serves as a way to evade taxes. At the very least, we would like to know what exactly is the bargain we are being offered.

Then there is the second problem, and this is really something that I think should enter the debate more. It’s not just about how much you give to help but also about who decides how those resources will be used to benefit society. The kind of social contract we have doesn’t just require the rich to pay proportionally more taxes than others; it also requires them to accept that society, through its elected institutions, will decide how the money is used.

The problem arises when rich people start believing that they know better than the government how to use their money. While we all tend to think we are the best judges of how our money should be spent, we have to accept that the proper way to influence politics is by voting for the parties that will then allocate the money in a way we find acceptable — and not by trying to evade taxes to then use some of that saved money to do “good” in an area of our own choosing.

Based on what I see in the current political dynamics of the countries that I know a bit about, I think that the tendency will continue for a while. What will happen later? Well, if the tendency continues, this also means that potentially there will be a growing social concern about this. And what will happen at that point? Well, we technically live in democracies, so maybe voters will just change their preferences and start promoting parties that suggest a different way of organizing the interaction with the economy — for example, parties that are more favorable toward progressive taxation, taxation of inheritances, etc. If that doesn’t happen because, for example, politics is captured by a certain part of the wealthy elite, then what we really risk is that society becomes unstable.

This is what has happened in Western history whenever the richest part of society has been considered to be insensitive to the plight of the masses. We see this, among other examples, in the revolts of the Middle Ages and in the French Revolution. We also see this in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This is why, I think, the “In Tax We Trust” campaign [of superrich people who want to pay more taxes], which has developed in the last few years, stated in a letter to the Davos meeting that in the end the choice is between taxes and pitchforks. And it’s exactly that: nobody should want pitchforks, the rich included.