In today’s politics, you don’t need a solution — you just need someone to blame. And more often than not, that someone is “the rich.”
Say “Billionaires shouldn’t exist” and the crowd cheers. Say “They’re not paying their fair share” and the clip spreads like wildfire. It’s one of the most reliable applause lines in modern political life — and that’s the appeal.
Economic inequality is real. But listen to how it’s discussed, and something else becomes clear: This isn’t really about solving anything. It’s about blame. From Sen. Bernie Sanders’ calls to “tax the billionaires” to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax crusade, attacking the wealthy has become a political reflex. It works because it’s simple, emotionally satisfying and gives people a clear target.
That’s not an accident. Every movement needs a villain — and “the rich” is an easy one.
In a complicated economy, where problems are messy and solutions take time, blaming “the rich” offers something much more immediate: a place to direct frustration. It turns diffuse anxiety into a clean story about who’s responsible.
But there’s something deeper going on. We’re living in a culture that increasingly treats feelings as facts and validation as a solution. In therapy, that can sometimes help — people need to feel heard before they can change.
Outside the therapy room, that mindset can backfire.
In fact, this kind of thinking often mirrors what bad therapy looks like. Instead of helping people confront difficult realities or take responsibility for their choices, it encourages them to locate the source of their discomfort somewhere else. The focus shifts from growth to grievance, from problem-solving to blame.
It can feel relieving in the moment — even empowering — but it rarely produces lasting change.
Instead of asking, “What can I do differently?,” the question becomes, “Who’s responsible for how I feel?” And politics is starting to reflect that shift.
Attacking the rich doesn’t just signal a policy position. It offers emotional validation. It tells voters their frustration is justified — and that someone else is to blame for it. That’s powerful. It’s also a dead end.
Gov. Kathy Hochul’s new proposal to tax second homes in New York City worth more than $5 million is the latest version of the same political instinct. Find the clearest symbol of wealth, turn it into a villain and let the public frustration attach itself there. It’s straight out of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s playbook: In his recent video announcing the tax on second homes, he stood outside hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin’s penthouse and called him out by name — a reckless move in a city that saw the murder of health care CEO Brian Thompson.
Maybe the tax raises revenue, maybe it doesn’t. But the deeper appeal is emotional. It gives people the satisfying sense that someone rich is finally being forced to pay for what feels broken.
That emotional payoff is exactly why these policies travel so well, even when the real drivers of affordability and fiscal pressure are far more complicated.
Real economic problems are complicated. They involve trade-offs, unintended consequences and solutions that don’t always feel satisfying in the moment.
But a politics built on validation doesn’t reward that kind of honesty. It rewards clarity, certainty and outrage.
So that’s what we get. It’s far easier to rail against billionaires than to explain policy, easier to promise justice than to deliver results, easier to validate anger than to challenge it. And once that dynamic takes hold, it spreads.
Clips of politicians attacking the wealthy rack up millions of views online, often with little or no mention of what they would actually do differently. The emotional hit is the point. The details are beside the point.
And over time, the incentives shift. Politicians learn that outrage travels further than nuance, that anger mobilizes more effectively than explanation. The result is a kind of feedback loop, where the loudest and simplest messages crowd out the most serious ones.
Over time, this changes what politics becomes. It stops being about solving problems and starts looking like a mass venting session — less about fixing anything than about feeling better. That may feel good. It may even win elections. But it doesn’t fix much.
That dynamic can be hard to see because it feels productive. There is language, there is energy, there is a sense that something important has been expressed. But expression is not the same as progress. In therapy, insight comes from friction — from questioning assumptions, examining behavior and confronting uncomfortable truths.
A process that offers only validation may feel supportive, but it leaves people exactly where they started. In politics, the effect is similar: The anger is reinforced, the story is simplified and the underlying problems remain untouched.
A politics built on blame leaves little room for nuance. It turns complex economic questions into moral crusades. It makes compromise look like weakness and disagreement feel like betrayal. It also comes with a cultural cost. When success is constantly framed as something suspect, it changes how people think about achievement. Aspiration starts to look like exploitation. Admiration turns into suspicion.
The irony is that this kind of politics can feel empowering in the moment while quietly lowering expectations over time. It keeps people focused on whom to blame instead of what to build. None of this means inequality should be ignored. It shouldn’t.
But if the conversation is driven more by emotional validation than by real solutions, it risks becoming self-defeating.
Because in today’s politics, therapy isn’t about getting better.
It’s about finding someone else to blame — and calling that progress.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
