Jeff Appelhans · A proposal in development
Liberty Cap
Unrealized gains.
Real political power.
Real public obligations.
A republic can reward exceptional achievement without allowing exceptional fortunes to become private government. Wealth grows out of a society. The obligation to that society comes with the wealth. It isn’t optional charity. A fortune doesn’t have to be sold to exercise power. Calling the gains unrealized doesn’t make that power imaginary. It is time for the democracy to make its power material.
Build something
worth naming.
The obligation, the incentive, and public control belong in one plan.
Consider our current reality.
In Bloomberg Businessweek’s dinosaur story, Dan O’Dowd called a T. rex “the best trophy kind of thing you could own.”
The diamond industry reports restored U.S. tariff relief for natural diamonds cut in Europe. The administration has also opened an extra 300,000 metric tons of lean-beef-trimming imports through windows ending November 30, or earlier if the last quota fills. These are choices about whose interests get served. Ranchers and households deserve a say in the bargain too.
Alongside it, two Apple News alerts:
“How D.C. became America’s new billionaire boomtown.”
“How the 13-year-old car became America’s new normal.”
Well, if Musk wants to spend $600 billion restoring the Ogallala Aquifer and call it the Ogallala Musk Aquifer, fine—show us a project that can actually deliver water. We get water. You get a trophy few can own. The name can be yours. Control of the water stays public.
AI is here. Workers need
a path into human work.
Private fortunes compound. Public capacity should too.
Build clean power. Restore forests. Make water reliable. Organize community pools of skilled nurses. Provide child care. Fairly paid, voluntary work, with training for different skills and abilities. Delaware’s WPA history included care and community services. We are more than the web portal we work with.
My proposed Carpenter’s plan would use rotating panels of skilled practitioners to independently assess the public value delivered. Put up or shut up: no dead-on-arrival paper announcements and half-finished buildouts. Care, services, and maintenance need continuing verification. Value the contribution first; any extra bonus has to earn its cost.
Communities help choose. The public keeps control. Places without a billionaire still get a share through the common fund. Rates, panel rules, and bonus amounts remain to be worked out.
Put politics to a person: expose the INTERESTS that undermine our commonweal.
Three approaches.
Different obligations.
Liberty Cap, the Wyden–Coons Billionaires Income Tax, and the Sanders–Khanna wealth tax. These are proposals, not current law.
Read the comparison as text
What is assessed?
- Liberty Cap
- Accumulated net wealth above a protected $25M band. Graduated obligation; rates not selected.
- Billionaires Income Tax
- Income and gains—not a flat percentage of the fortune. Annual recognition of gains and losses on tradable assets.
- Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share
- 5% annually on the FULL net asset value once eligible—not only the amount above $1B.
Who enters?
- Liberty Cap
- Net wealth above $25M. Legal taxpayer definition and indexing remain open.
- Billionaires Income Tax
- Adjusted gross income over $100M a year OR covered assets over $1B, meeting the relevant test in each of the prior 3 years.*
- Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share
- Individuals or trusts with net assets over $1B. Married couples treated as one taxpayer; threshold indexed after 2026.
Assessment / payment timing
- Liberty Cap
- Continuing wealth obligation, not dependent on selling an asset. Valuation dates, payment schedule, and liquidity rules remain open.
- Billionaires Income Tax
- Tradable: annual mark-to-market. Nontradable: generally at transfer, with a deferral charge. First-year net tax can be paid in 5 annual installments.
- Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share
- Annual tax on year-end net asset value, whether or not assets were sold. Payment follows the bill's tax-return timetable.
How does the public benefit?
- Liberty Cap
- Common fund plus publicly governed projects: water, power, care, and paid work. Communities help choose; public control stays public.
- Billionaires Income Tax
- Federal revenue from ending tax deferral. Coons's stated rationale includes deficit reduction; no dedicated works fund in this bill. [4]
- Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share
- Federal tax-and-spending bill: rebates, health coverage, housing, child care, teacher pay, and home/community-based services.
Can a project earn credit?
- Liberty Cap
- Yes, proposed: independently verified NET contribution can meet part of the obligation. Any extra bonus must buy extra public value.
- Billionaires Income Tax
- No Liberty-style option to satisfy this tax through a chosen public project. Basis and loss adjustments are not project credits.
- Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share
- No Liberty-style project-settlement option identified. Public spending is not a credit for a billionaire's chosen project.
The distinction: tax deferred gains, assess accumulated wealth, or link a wealth obligation to verified public value. Combining mechanisms would require rules—not automatic credits across all three.
- [1] Liberty Cap: this proposal; rates, credit shares, and panel rules remain open.
- [2] S.2845 (introduced Sept. 17, 2025), §101: proposed §§491–492, 495, 497–498.
- [3] S.3956 (introduced March 2, 2026), §101: proposed §§2901–2904; spending titles II–VIII.
- [4] Coons's August 31, 2026, office announcement explains his deficit-reduction rationale.
*Wyden thresholds shown are the headline individual tests; married-separate and trust rules differ. Wealth is not cash. A borrowing strategy does not erase ownership or make these three mechanisms identical.
A few details.
A long time coming.
The estimate.
Our estimate is about four in a thousand families, using the Federal Reserve’s 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances and 2022 wealth values. Rates and project-credit shares remain unselected. SCF source.
Scale and shared prosperity.
We are examining how the largest fortunes compare with national GDP, while tracking whether ordinary households gain. GDP growth alone is not enough. The precise indexing formula, any additional obligation on the largest fortunes, and the final percentages remain open.
Real gains, material power.
Net wealth is assets minus debts. An unrealized gain is an increase in an asset’s value before sale or another recognition event. Ownership can still confer control and borrowing power. Tax timing and political power run on different clocks. Material public power means the capacity to deliver water, energy, care, and work under public control.
Income or a loan?
Wages arrive as income. Borrowing against appreciated assets supplies cash with a repayment obligation, generally without realizing the collateral’s gain. When eligible inherited assets receive a new basis at death, pre-death appreciation can escape capital-gains tax. That is the core of ‘buy, borrow, die’; it does not erase interest, debt, or possible estate tax. Closing those gaps and assessing wealth are related but different reforms. Borrowing research, IRS inherited-basis rules.
What earns credit?
Count the net contribution, not the ribbon-cutting price. If a $100 million project leaves the contributor $30 million of uncompensated economic rights, the starting net contribution is $70 million, before other adjustments. A bonus above that contribution costs public money and must buy additional value. Names, operating rights, and public control are different things.
The aquifer example.
One, I have to get elected. Then, any project needs public approval and workable engineering, financing, and maintenance. Retained private benefits and other subsidies must be deducted when valuing the net contribution; no free lunch.
The Carpenter’s plan.
The inspiration came from Bryan Norwood’s SHEAR paper, Constructing Risk: The Labor of Fire Insurance in Early Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia, in the July 18, 2026, session Institutions and Governance in the Early Republic. The rotating public-value panels are my proposed adaptation. Session program, page 63.
Delaware’s experience.
A May 20, 1940, proclamation describes WPA household assistance during illness, nursery-school care, and other services. WPA workers also left records preserved in Delaware Public Archives. The separate CCC program did dam and recreation work at Trap Pond. Today’s proposed nursing and care work would require appropriate qualifications and continuing service verification.
A long time coming
The liberty cap made allegiance visible. People wore it to identify with the Revolution; it could also be imposed. On June 20, 1792, demonstrators confronted Louis XVI at the Tuileries and pressured him into wearing the red cap. He toasted the people and nation, but did not concede their demands.1
For me, the question is whether extraordinary private power stands with the people or against them. Liberty Cap puts that obligation into the bargain. A symbolic gesture won’t discharge it.
In July, I was working from Harrington’s Oceana on this question: At what share of the national economy does one private fortune begin to resemble a sovereign power? The direction was plain: “Let ambition run; bind rival sovereignty.”
In 1651, Hobbes’s Leviathan argued for powerful, undivided sovereignty to secure peace. In 1656, Harrington’s Oceana paired a balance of property with rotation in office to sustain a republic. Later Court/Country arguments challenged patronage and dependence: could representatives act independently of those dispensing favors? John Adams commended Harrington in Thoughts on Government in 1776. Liberty Cap is a modern design for an old republican problem: keeping concentrated private power from governing everyone else.
Footnotes
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French National Assembly, account of the June 20, 1792, demonstration at the Tuileries (in French). ↩