Whenever the topic of increasing taxes on millionaires and billionaires is raised, the general response from said millionaires and billionaires is to react to the mere mention of such a theoretical proposal as though someone had said, “Let’s strap them down and inject their veins with the Ebola virus.” Earlier this year the upper echelons of the business world quaked in fear over $43 Davos hot dogs after Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez floated the notion of the people at “the tippy-tops” paying slightly more on income over $10 million. “It’s scary,” one adult man told CNBC. It “would be disastrous for the economy,” warned another, suggesting that billionaires like himself would no longer have an incentive to work. “[I’m] wildly enthusiastic” about it, a guy worth $15.7 billion said sarcastically, presumably gritting his teeth while remembering when Barack Obama talked about closing the carried-interest loophole, which he likened to the time “Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”

Yes, the idea of going from really freaking absurdly rich to...still actually quite insanely wealthy is a terrifying prospect for most members of the 1%, making it all the more surprising that a group of them, ranging in wealth from hundreds of millions to $8.3 billion, has requested that the next president of the United States force them to hand over a bit more of their cash.

In an open letter to the 2020 presidential candidates, 19 ultrawealthy individuals, including George Soros, Abigail Disney, and Liesel Pritzker Simmons, ask those running to “support a moderate wealth tax on the fortunes of the richest 1/10 of the richest 1% of Americans—on us,” writing that “the next dollar of new tax revenue should come from the most financially fortunate, not from middle-income and lower-income Americans,” and that it would be immoral, unethical, and economically irresponsible not to “tax our wealth more.” The letter—which comes days after Federal Reserve data revealed that since 1989, the top 1% have gotten $21 trillion richer, while the bottom 50% have gotten $900 billion poorer—notes that while a wealth tax may not be popular among, say, the current inhabitant of the White House, polls show that such a proposal “enjoys the support of a majority of Americans—Republicans, Independents, and Democrats.” (In fact, the group says, millions of middle-income Americans already pay such a tax each year “in the form of property taxes on their primary form of wealth—their home.”)

Referring to the proposal introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren in January, the writers say the plan—which would tax households 2 cents on the dollar for every asset over $50 million, plus a 1 cent tax on the dollar on assets over $1 billion—“would provide millions of families with a better shot at the American dream by taxing only 75,000 of the wealthiest families in the country.” That revenue, which Warren estimates would raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years, could help tackle climate change; go toward investments in infrastructure; fund student loan relief, universal childcare, and public health initiatives; and “slow the growing concentration of wealth that undermines the stability and integrity of our republic.” Also the group argues, it’s just the right thing to do: