The Left’s embrace of an assassination in the name of equality shows how much contempt they have for success. 

The recent creation of a defense fund for Luigi Mangione, who is accused of assassinating UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, shines light on an uncomfortable truth that much of American society has a violent disdain for businessmen, and many hold that anyone and anything tied to wealth or business success is an inherent evil. 

This hostility towards the rich, particularly in younger generations, is concerning. It causes people to jump to extremes, like celebrating an assassin just because his victim was a millionaire.  

As a member of Gen Z, I watched the Mangione contagion spread through my peers on the internet and at school. Shockingly, people posted anthem videos and praises for Mangione, the killer, characterizing him as a tragic hero standing up against wealth, inequality, and greed.  

This narrative is also seen in the letters sent by Mangione’s defense fund supporters. One line reads, “Class solidarity! This man has done something incredibly brave and extreme to help unite us against the ruling class. All Americans deserve healthcare free from profiteering.”  

According to the letter, individual human greed isn’t the main problem. Instead, the great enemy is a whole class of people—the wealthy elite.  

Regardless of whether Thompson engaged in corrupt dealings within his business, it’s worrying how quickly how the young activists of my generation vilify the quote unquote wealthy. Thompson himself doesn’t even fit the caricature of an old money, entitled, product of nepotism typically associated with CEOs. He was the son of a working-class family from the small farming community of Jewell, Iowa.  

The left’s hatred isn’t only reserved for the ultra-rich. It’s also at the root of how people justified the property destruction seen in the George Floyd Minneapolis riots in 2020. Businesses, mostly owned by middle-class locals, were set on fire in acts of reckless protest.  

I remember speaking to a classmate who told me, “Who cares about lighting buildings on fire? It’s just property. They can buy new buildings.” But these buildings represented years of hard work. They were people’s livelihoods and not something easily bought back. In fact, rebuilding these buildings will require the labor of many Americans to be wasted because of these arsonists. Their ideology has led them to steal from the workers they claim to represent. 

The frustrations my generation express are essentially that people who are wealthy don’t deserve to be and that they don’t contribute enough to society. Gen Z has been trained to think that people are defined by the numbers in their bank accounts and that the wealth of business owners is sitting uselessly in a bank somewhere. 

But these arguments fail to understand that wealth creation is not manifested solely in cold, hard cash. Wealth is made up of many different assets including buildings, machinery, and intellectual property. It’s about innovation, businesses, and jobs—things that help raise the standard of living for all of us. It’s the convenience a mother has in doing her weekly grocery shopping and the care of a nail technician who gives someone’s grandma a pedicure.  

Wealth helps thousands of workers, families, and employers who benefit from products or services indirectly and directly.   

Many of my generation forget this. We take out large student loans and fight for more federal programs, all the while minimizing the fact that the government and all its programs exist at our expense.  

The irony here is the result of misunderstanding wealth. Government can’t create wealth; it can only redistribute it. And wealthy people aren’t always the villains of the story. Rather than waiting for government programs to provide security, we should be encouraging entrepreneurial thinking and innovation.   

We can and should hold corrupt and unlawful businessmen accountable. But accusing innovative, industrious Americans of class oppression isn’t what our country needs. 

Young people want to feel like their future is secure, that there will be a place for them when they graduate, and that they can achieve their dreams. Instead of vilifying wealth, we should be creating opportunities and encouraging people to generate wealth for their families and communities. 

I know that my peers and I would greatly benefit if we began to aspire to become people who can meaningfully contribute to society through building wealth.  

This piece is a part of The Heritage Foundation’s Wealth and Innovation project which stands to defend and promote the freedom to innovate, create and use wealth. These are essential to the delicate process by which innovators and entrepreneurs work to build a prosperous and purposeful society.

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