Jeff Yass is one of the richest people in the world. He is the richest person in Pennsylvania. He is #25 or #27 on Bloomberg’s Billionaires’ Index, depending on which day you check. His net worth is about $65 billion. He co-founded the Susquehanna International Group, which is based in Pennsylvania. He is also a major investor in TikTok and is widely believed to have persuaded Trump not to ban it. In the last decade, he has given hundreds of millions to political campaigns, including the 2024 Trump campaign.
Yass was recently interviewed by The Washington Post, where he talked about his passion: Vouchers. The writers of the article were Laura Meckler, Beth Reinhard, and Clara Ence Morse.
Yass thinks the public should pay for students to go wherever their parents want them to go: to private schools, religious schools, charter schools, any kind of school, including public schools. He thinks all students should get vouchers, regardless of family income.
He believes the public schools are failing and that universal vouchers will turn American education into a great success.
Yass provided $6 million to Texas Governor Greg Abbott to run pro-voucher Republicans against moderate Republicans who supported public schools. Abbott ran a campaign of lies against the moderate Republicans, asserting that they opposed more funding for public schools and that they supported open borders.
With Yass’s money and Abbott’s lies, they managed to knock off enough moderate Republicans to finally pass a voucher bill. The voucher program is currently costing nearly $1 billion, and most of the voucher money pays the tuition of students previously enrolled in private and religious schools.
The strange part of Yass’s devotion to charter schools and vouchers for religious and private schools is that Jeff is a graduate of the New York City public schools. He graduated from Bayside High School in Queens. He then attended Binghamton University in New York, where he spent most of his time playing poker, betting on horse races, and honing a keen ability to calculate the odds and winning.
As a young man, he read Milton Friedan’s Capitalism and Freedom and became a Friedman devotee. He met Friedman several times; when he asked the great conservative economist which philanthropy he should support, Friedman said “school vouchers.”
Yass jumped in to support school choice. His ideological commitment to them is so strong that he ignores that show that most vouchers are taken by kids already enrolled in non-public schools. He thinks all students should get vouchers, including those whose families are wealthy.
Yass confidently told The Post that studies of voucher programs show “overwhelmingly” positive results. Several early studies of targeted voucher programs have indeed shown positive results on standardized tests, and some research shows positive impacts on other metrics such as college enrollment.
But most research over the past decade or so shows either no effect or a negative impact on test scores for larger-scale programs. Some charter schools struggle with low test scores just like traditional public schools do. That’s at least partly because educating children with many needs and few advantages is a challenging task
Yass maintains that these programs help children. But he also says he doesn’t really care what the studies say or how children perform on tests. He takes the libertarian point of view that all parents should be empowered to choose the school — public or private — that they want for their children, no matter what.
“If the mother or the parent wants the kid to go from one school to another, who the hell is anyone to tell them not to?” he told The Post. “I don’t care what the studies say.”
Yass has spent many millions in his home state of Pennsylvania, but thus far has failed to get sweeping voucher legislation passed.
He has a a starry-eyed and warped view of the U.S. economy.
In a 2021 conversation sponsored by the Adam Smith Society, part of a free-market think tank, he said that the U.S. is almost to the point where “no one” is hungry, cold or lacks basic health insurance.
“What’s the difference between a billionaire and a guy who’s making $100,000 a year? They’re both at home watching Netflix. And they’re both on their iPhones,” he said then. “The disparity between how rich people live and how poor people live in America has never been smaller.”
Government data shows that in 2024, there were 27 million uninsured Americans and in 2023, 18 million households were uncertain if they would have enough food. Wealth inequality has been rising for decades, with the richest families increasing their wealth at a faster rate than everyone else.
Despite Yass’s multi-million dollar contributions to candidates in Pennsylvania, his candidates have frequently lost. Yass has been singled out by protest groups who resent his efforts to buy elections and determine the future of the state.
Critics say his giving represents an absurd amount of influence for one person, who can press his political agenda simply because he is rich….
“Hey hey! Ho ho! Billionaires have got to go!” chanted about 50 protesters marching to Susquehanna’s front door. The group outside Yass’s office in late September wasn’t an unusual sight. All Eyes on Yass, a coalition of education, labor and civil rights groups, has worked to turn Yass into the state’s prime villain, creating an online “Yass tracker” that allows voters to look up whether their state elected officials have received money from Yass-funded PACs.
The protestors organized in response to Yass’s efforts to change the composition of the State Supreme Court.
In the last election, he supported three Republican candidates trying to defeat three Democratic judges on the State Supreme Court. All three of his candidates lost.
It was the 12th demonstration since 2022 organized by All Eyes on Yass. In a year when Musk’s role at the White House prompted intense criticism of billionaires in politics, this group stands out in its singular and persistent focus on Pennsylvania’s richest man.
“We’re here with a simple message: Billionaires like Jeff Yass can’t steal our elections,” said Raquel Jackson-Stone, 32, who works for a civil rights group called One Pennsylvania. “They don’t care about the same things we care about, like housing affordability and making our public schools better…”
Yass rarely if ever interacts with people he disagrees with on this subject. He volunteered to The Post that in business, he advises his employees to seek out alternative points of view. “I always say, ‘Go find the smartest person who disagrees with you,’” he said.
But he said he has never had a personal conversation with a public education advocate to try to understand their point of view. “I would love to do that,” he said….
In the interview with The Post, Yass stood by his comments. He said the divide in America is not about money but about how much satisfaction people get from their work. “That’s the inequality. Wealthy, educated people enjoy their jobs. Lower-income people don’t enjoy their jobs.”
His confidence feeds his opponents but also his conviction to keep spending. If the criticism bothers him, he doesn’t let it show. He sees no problem with one man using money made on Wall Street to press a personal agenda. And he compares his influence not against that of other individuals but to teachers unions and other large interest groups that represent thousands of people each.
As Yass sees it, he’s the one fighting for the underdog — a billionaire speaking up for those who don’t have billions.
“It’s David versus Goliath,” he said. “I represent David.”
So Jeff Yass has never talked to a public education advocate to test his views. I volunteer.
Diane Ravitch's blog 