Bust the Billionaires: Why billionaires should not exist

My personal anguish towards billionaires started when I was swiping through Instagram stories a few months back and came across a thread about why billionaires shouldn’t exist.

I’m not going to say that billionaires don’t deserve the money they’ve made, but to have that much money and act the way they do is absurd — their meek donations, unethical business practices and capitalistic ideals need to be criticized by the public more often.

I constantly hear the argument “Billionaires donate to charity! They help people!” And yes, some billionaires do donate to charity. A couple of years ago, Jeff Bezos donated approximately two billion dollars to fund nonprofit schools and homeless charities. Sounds like a lot, right?

Wrong — Bezos has 175.3 billion dollars. To put this into perspective, you could buy my newly built Fairway house with Bezos’ net worth 218,750 times. That’s 18,000 more households than there are in Kansas City. Understanding that billions of dollars is an existential amount of money, one could see how it’s a little undermining to donate that small of a fraction of your wealth — especially when it’s often only for the good public image it comes with.

“The Guardian” discusses how the housing crisis in San Francisco has been influenced by the massive amount of people involved in the tech industry. Because of the extensive income of the people working in Silicon Valley and the prices of real estate, the average residents that attempt to live in that economic climate suffer.

Although Mark Zuckerberg donated $3.6 million to combat the dilemma, it almost seems like he’s trying to duct tape his public image together by donating, even though the problem was caused by his industry. If you look a little deeper you can see why people think the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative — a charity dedicated to technology, education and innovation — is a front for investments in companies and to make political donations.

Most billionaires made their money from an idea that blew up — and today they make their living by becoming in charge of the entire operation, exploiting their workers and in some cases denying their rights. Take another look at Bezos. The workers are tracked, some locations have terrible working conditions and they’re expected to work every hour of their extensive shift. The people who are in charge of these companies should be spreading their wealth out among the employees that are barely scraping by.

Also contributing to their immense wealth, the tax cuts in more recent years give billionaires more chances to grow.

Billionaires pay less in taxes than everyone else, percentage-wise. Yes, they pay a lot of money because they have an inherently wealthier life, but if you compare the percentage of income tax between the social economic classes, you will see that the rich pay far less taxes than the typical American. 

Many democratic politicians say we should tax the rich and give it to the poor, which sounds like a great idea on paper, but that Robin-Hood method simply won’t work in our country due to our economic system. 

Capitalism runs off of jobs being available therefore funding government procedures in result of having a strong economy. The rich in our country have obtained their wealth through business. If someone starts a company that takes off, they can gain profit and hire more employees. When you start to tax the owner more, the business is more likely to decline, leading to a possible shut down, less jobs and less money going into the government.

An opposing argument to this viewpoint is that billionaires’ wealth “trickles down” to the working class, leading to more wealth distribution. 

For the past century, people have been debating whether or not the “trickle-down” economy truly works. The concept makes sense — the rich create innovation and lead the world to a brighter future while the employees earn some money from working with that innovation. Although, the money that does end up “trickling down” is unsubstantial, and when the rich are taxed less they tend to keep the money themselves, according to the blog Medium.

The solution would likely be reliant on the president. For example, president Theodoore Roosevelt had very high tax rates, but this kept monopolies and the rich grounded, and they started to bounce right back after Reagan alleviated a large percent of taxes. The amount of billionaires we have in the U.S. has doubled since 2008, according to History A2Z. We could go back to some form of that system to achieve wealth distribution. You fix the source, you solve the problem.

With all of this being said, I posed a question to myself — is there really such a thing as an ethical billionaire?

To put it simply, no. People could say they’re good for the world and we wouldn’t be where we are without them — which is true, but I don’t think anyone has a solid argument besides that for why they’re ethical. 

To help you out, picture this: You’re the mother of four kids who’ve been up for hours with growling stomachs. You pull out the money you have been saving up for an apartment. You promised yourself you weren’t going to give in and buy more food because you were so close to getting that apartment. But, you realize that having food and water is more important, so you go buy your kids some granola bars and water. Now during those 60 minutes at the store, Bill Gates has made $360,000.

If you were that person, the thought of Bill Gates making approximately $100 a second would enrage every bone in your body. The pure existence of billionaires in society is what creates a larger gap each year between lower and upper class America.

There’s also the more heated topic of changing the economy. I’m not saying America should switch to communism, just take a smaller step to the other side — or even just the middle — of that spectrum.

We should be raising the workers salary, provide childcare and increase healthcare for the lower class and quite obviously, break up the extreme wealth of the growing upper class.

None of the ideas presented here are radical in any sense to a lot of people. I see it as almost common sense. With all of the chaos of this year, I think this topic connects to almost all of our problems.