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Remember when Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous was a thing? Or, if you’re too young for that, what about MTV Cribs? Those shows gave you sneak peaks into the ridiculously lavish lifestyles of the super-wealthy––their mansions, car collections, private theaters, and indoor sports arenas. We used to be equally interested in people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg and what they did with their fabulous wealth. We watched those shows because we wanted to be those people. That was the American dream––or at least one permutation of it. But what about now?

Looking at the news, it seems that Americans might be falling out of love with billionaires. Elizabeth Warren has proposed a new tax that would affect the tiny fraction of a percentage of Americans who make more than $50,000,000. Bernie Sanders has unveiled a new estate tax that would similarly affect the very wealthy; for example, Jeff Bezos’s current estate tax of $53 billion would jump to $101 billion.

More junior congresspeople are proposing similar tax hikes. Ilhan Abdullahi Omar says “We could increase the taxes that people are paying who are the extremely wealthy in our communities. So 70 percent, 80 percent, we’ve had it as high as 90 percent.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has suggested a 70% tax for the very wealthy.

Why are so many congresspeople suggesting these new laws? Unlike what Fox News says––that CEOs are under fire from “socialists,” a claim that that hilariously backfired––this isn’t the work of some rogue lawmakers. These lawmakers were elected by a growing number of people who want to see the super-rich taxed. So we should stop to ask why that might be.

One possible cause is that Americans have given up on the “get super rich” variation of the American dream. It’s hard to say exactly when that happened, but 2008 is a pretty good place to start. During that recession, countless Americans lost their homes and massive amounts of wealth. Retirements were forestalled, sometimes permanently. It’s hard to have hope of being a billionaire when you watch your parents struggle to survive retirement.

The tech boom after 2008 sparked hope for some. Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat made billions of dollars, and some kids (and they were basically kids) got filthy rich. But the days of the unicorn company seem to be over. The Zuckerberg-style success story is over, and it probably won’t be seen again.

But it was seen, and now we’ve watched these handful of people get so rich that they couldn’t spend all their money even if they wanted to. Or, like Bill Gates, they could give away over 99% of their wealth and still afford to give each of their children $10 million. Meanwhile, more Americans have to drive Uber or rent their spare rooms on AirBnB just to make a living.

The lawmakers who want to hike taxes on the super rich are the result of the frustration that comes from a world without promise. That’s not to say there never will be the popular hope of becoming a billionaire again. But with tech no longer the cash cow that it seemed to be half a dozen years ago, there’s little hope for a lucky break.

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