An airline CEO is offended by inequality in national wealth, but not by the inequality on his flights.
An airline CEO is offended by inequality in national wealth, but not by the inequality on his flights.
F ew chief executives have hitched their fortunes to affluent consumers as enthusiastically as United Airlines chief Scott Kirby. So, it’s especially rich that Kirby is now calling for a national wealth tax.
Since taking the helm at United in 2020, Kirby, who earned more than $30 million last year, has focused the carrier on delivering upgrades to travelers willing to pay more. As he’s fond of saying, “air travel is not a commodity.” Consumers may have noticed. Domestic airfares have jumped 35 percent this year. Holiday travelers face the highest ticket prices in a decade.
Elevated fuel costs aren’t the whole story. Under Kirby’s leadership, United, the second-largest U.S. carrier by revenue, has bet big on deep-pocketed travelers. This spring, the airline announced new cabin designs with more premium seats and rows that eliminate the middle-seat occupant, giving travelers the option to pay more to avoid being counted among the masses relegated to a three-seat row.
Kirby has boasted that he takes the opposite approach from economy-minded airline chiefs obsessed with cutting costs. Instead, he wants to know “how much extra we’re going to add.” The carrier has rolled out new airport lounges, catering to travelers willing to fork over the equivalent of a grocery bill to sip an iced latte and relax in a wellness room before boarding. Affluent Americans account for a disproportionate share of international travel, another market where United is eager to deploy its premiumization playbook. The airline is planning a luxury global service to compete with the champagne-and-caviar offerings of Middle Eastern carriers.
United’s premium customers might reasonably question Kirby’s embrace of Elizabeth Warren–style tax policy. They had better enjoy United’s new Polaris studios, where travelers are pampered with Saks Fifth Avenue bedding, private luxury valet service, and other amenities, before their heirs confront the “nearly 100 percent” inheritance tax Kirby advocates. Travelers at the back of the plane might have questions too. For a CEO worried about inequality, Kirby sees no problem charging Basic Economy fliers $75 to check a carry-on bag that competing airlines let them bring aboard for free.
With election forecasters predicting Democratic gains in the midterms, Kirby may sense a populist storm approaching Dulles and figure it’s better to get out ahead of it. The airline chief is a frequent flyer when it comes to playing politics, championing vaccine and diversity mandates during the Biden era before retreating from his DEI pledge in a 2025 interview with MAGA-aligned podcaster Katie Miller and publicly backing the Trump administration during last fall’s government shutdown. Whatever his motivations for supporting it, a national wealth tax would be an economic disaster.
Like California Governor Gavin Newsom, Kirby wants Washington to impose the tax nationwide, preventing wealthy Americans from escaping it simply by crossing state lines. California knows something about how that works. The state leads the nation in domestic outmigration, with nearly 700,000 residents exiting to other states since 2023, many to escape the Golden State’s sky-high income taxes.
Kirby should know that incentives matter as much as anyone. Just look at the way his airline prices tickets. Travelers who buy a Basic Economy seat on most United Airlines routes don’t get to bring a free carry-on bag for the overhead bin. If they show up at the airport with a carry-on, they pay a fee to check it. The message is clear: either upgrade or buy a basic economy seat on American, Delta, or Southwest, which still allow free carry-ons. The numbers tell the same story: revenue from United’s upgraded seats has outpaced the carrier’s basic economy revenue in recent quarters.
Taxing wealth discourages saving and investment, the very source of new businesses, jobs, and rising wages. Collecting these taxes is also harder than making a tight connection in O’Hare. Wealth often consists of illiquid assets that aren’t regularly traded. Valuing everything from privately held businesses to artwork and farmland invites endless disputes between taxpayers and the IRS. Administrative complexity contributed to the demise of wealth taxes across Europe.
Kirby is hardly the first one-percenter to turn against the economic engine that helped create his fortune, but he seems not to have thought through the implications of his position. He is entitled to his views, but he owes the prominent platform he currently enjoys to his position as CEO of United. In using that platform, he owes a duty to the shareholders who pay for him to be there. It is hard to see how the policies he advocates would benefit United shareholders, particularly those whose stock holdings in the airline would be subject to a confiscatory wealth or inheritance tax.
Kirby’s own business strategy also reveals something that America’s political class too often overlooks. For all the talk about affordability, higher prices sometimes reflect consumers’ willingness to pay more for better products and services. Americans aren’t buying the same homes, cars, and airline tickets they purchased decades ago. They’re demanding more features, greater comfort, and higher quality. Kirby has built United’s strategy around precisely that insight. His tax prescription would undermine the dynamism that makes it possible.
Rather than finding new ways to tax wealth, policymakers should focus on creating more of it. That means encouraging investment and expanding real incomes. That approach would do far more for the aviation industry — and the economy as a whole — than the taxpayer subsidies for sustainable aviation fuels that Kirby recently pushed for.
Kirby says that his job is really to make five decisions a year. Let’s hope the other four are better than this one.