Billionaires exist
Every year Forbes Magazine publishes a list of the world's 400 richest people. This list started in 1982 and the richest person on that list was Daniel Keith Ludwig, worth 2 billion dollars. Today, Ludwig wouldn't even make the Forbes list to begin with. The richest person on the Forbes 400 list right now is Elon Musk, who is worth 251 billion dollars. There are over 2700 billionaires globally, which is insane to think about. On one hand, we as a society have never had this amount of wealth before, but on another hand this means that the majority of the world's money is possesed by 2700 people... And since there are about 7.8 billion people on the planet, that would mean that most of the money is in the hand of roughly 0.00003% of the world's population. I think that it is safe to say that the division of financial wealth in the world is absolutely fucking insane, to put it ever so bluntly.
But why is this a bad thing?
Well first of all, too much money and power for one person/company is never good. Billionaires can (and will) fuck up markets whenever they want, they buy Twitter en ruin a whole social media platform in an impressively small amount of time, they collect and sell your data, rape women, get teens addicted to their apps, with no remorse and more importantly, no effective consequences. Nobody seems to be able or willing to keep them in check. For example, everything about the Jeffrey Epstein-case is equally disgusting as it is terrifying. Not just what happened, but the amount of people who knew or even had a hunch, but didn't feel the need to say anything about it. I read a book recently called "Dat zou jij nooit toelaten" by Tessel ten Zweege. In that book she describes sexual violence against women can be seen as a pyramid. There's a large layer on the bottom which consists of catcalling or the stereotype that women belong in the kitchen. The layer consists of worse things like groping women or not asking for consent. The top layer is filled with the Jeffrey Epsteins and Harvey Weinsteins in the world. But what's important to understand is that each layer builds on what's normalised by the previous layer. The top layer couldn't exist if it weren't for the lower layers allowing it to. But the top layer wouldn't be so excruciatingly awful if there wasn't so much money to be found there. Sexual violence can be a gold mine for so many parties and it's only one of many examples of how power can and is abused by the top percent. I'm not saying all billionaires are predators, but I can't be the only one who notices that almost every time something extremely unethical happens, there's a rich white person to blame. What I'm saying is that the power imbalance is out of hand and has been for a while. And it's not changing or gonna change unless we do something an take charge. Because the people who are in charge right now don't want it to. They profit off of it. I mean I get it, why would you want to change a system that put you in such this privileged position anyway?
Which brings me to my next point: Where there's someone getting rich, there are someone or something getting exploited. There's no nicer way to put it really. I could start by mentioning slavery, and how unfair it has been since the abolition of the matter. How Black people had to build a life for themselves whilst being twelve steps behind, and meanwhile white people got to reap the benefits of the slaves' labor for years and years to come. But that was centuries ago, and segregation hasn't been a thing for decades (although the consequences of both things are very real and still present). So let's not zoom in on that, but instead on what's happening now. I don't even have to explain it, I could just say "the clothing industry" and most people would get it. Think about all the kids in sweatshops working round the clock in terrible conditions of which us Westerns couldn't even consider in our worst nightmares. And yet we all still shop at Primark and Pull&Bear and Zara, whilst they profit off of those kids's hard work. Or look at Shell, making 381.3 billion in 2022 alone by ruining the planet. Thank you, SHell. A lot of people don't agree with Shell's existence and even now, now that the EU is officially concerned, they're still making bank. Why, because they're such a good company? No it's just a chill easy, yet unethical, way to get rich. And people love being rich so yeah... there goes that. But if we would just let go of the notion that being financially rich means that you've made it in life, then Shell wouldn't make all those billions. And clothing stores would find more ethical ways of producing clothes. But sadly we live in a world where at the end of the day people just want to have so much stuff that they buy storage lockers or even extra houses because they can't store it all in their home. Yeah, that's a good way to live life. Way to go CEO's.
To build further on that notion, financial wealth does not equal wealth in general and it certainly does not equal happiness. In fact, the happiest countries in the world also have the biggest middle classes. So let me repeat that once more: Happiness does not equal money. Yet most people think it does because of the glamorization of the rich billionaire lifestyle. I'm talking about shows like Gossip Girl, The O.C., Dynasty but even media that aimed to criticize the upper class: White Lotus, Great Gatsby, Wolf of Wall Street, they all get spun around. After season 2 of White Lotus popped off, luxury vacations to Italian palazzo's popped off as well. People see the story of Jordan Belfort, who has pleaded guilty to fraud and running a penny-stock scam, but they don't see a fellon. They see an opportunity to be rich and have ladies and be the Wolf of Wall Street.
And you wanna know the real funny thing about most billionaires? They. Don't. Pay. A. Lot. Of. Taxes. They live in the same countries as us, and benefit of of the same system as us, but they don't pay their dues by far. We all pay income taxes, right. Well apparently Warren Buffet pays half the tax rate his secretary pays. I am not here to shit on Warren Buffet, he donates the most of the Forbes 400 by far and is quite aware of his privilege and how unfair the division of wealth across the world is. But he's just one man. What about the 371 billionaires on the Forbes list who donate less than 10%? And more importantly, what about the 97 billion he's worth? How is this man not getting taxed more? It's not even tax fraud or evading taxes or anything, he is just not being taxed as much.
So the current system is obviously not working as it should and thus needs to be changed. I already discussed this earlier, but the biggest decisions in the world are made by the people with the most money. How could the world ever change, if the only people with enough power to make a difference don't even want the world to change. Because most billionaires don't want the current system to change. They're happy with it actually, because that system is what made (and is keeping) them rich in the first place. So if you really think about it, these people are really the worst types of people to be in charge of the world. Our countries are effectively ruled by the 1%, whether we realize that or not... Have we learned nothing from the French Revolution?
So... we're completely doomed?
No, we are not doomed. Not completely at least. I think we can all see that the whole concept of billionaires is problematic at best. But in order not to seem like a totally cynical misanthrope, allow me to illustrate the possibility of change in billionaires' behaviour.
Warren Buffett is currently worth 113.8 billion dollars. Jeff Bezos is worth 130 billion dollars and Bill Gates is worth another 110.4 billion. So that's 354.2 billion dollars between three men. That is absolutely crazy. Nobody needs a billion dollars, let alone multiple billion dollars. Let me repeat that: Nobody. Needs. Multiple. Billion. Dollars. However, to survive in today's society, people do need money. Right now money is divided more and more unevenly between the upper, middle and lower classes. Most of the money in the world is owned by a very tiny small percent, while a very large lower (middle) class is struggling to pay for their kids's school trips and can only afford to go on a holiday when there's a discount to stay at a crappy motel a couple hours away from home. So I genuinely wonder, what stops these men from not giving away, say 25 billion to underfunded public schools across the US, to ensure that no kid has to worry about whether there's food on the table tomorrow, to buy a poor kid who likes sports some actually good gear. And I could go on and on. Why would you buy a spaceship when there are families out there that can't get proper medical treatment for their kids because they can't afford the medical bills? Do these billionaires not know or do they just not care? Because this is getting insane.
What I'm trying to say is that if billionaires would even give away 10-25% of their assets, they'd help out so many people. Even I buy groceries or food for homeless people I see on the streets (and I'm a student, which are notorious for being broke), but I doubt Elon Musk ever thought of the idea of actually helping people like that. And yes, a lot of rich people donate a ton, but come on, they could (and should) be doing more. Are those donations really philantropy? Or just PR bullshit?
Forbes magazine ranks their top 400 billionaires on a scale of 1-5 to illustrate how much of their they've given away. They call this the Philanthropy Score. And out of the 400 billionaires on their list, the lowest of whom is worth 2.7 billion dollars, 29 people have given away over 10% of their wealth. Not even 30 people, out of a list of 400 people. Elon Musk has given away less than 1% of his wealth (as have 126 others on the list), and he is the richest person by far. He has the highest rank on the Forbes 400 and has the lowest one on the Philanthropy Score.
You may say, Wow Sanam, what the fuck? If they don't want to donate their OWN money, they don't freaking have to. Why won't you just shut up, leave these men alone and stay out their business? Ahum. While you are obviously entitled to your opinion, I won't shut up. Because these billionaires are bothering me. These people profit off of the others. Most of them wouldn't be so rich if it weren't for our labor, systems that are funded by tax money that we pay, years and years of colonialism, institutionalised racism and sexism, and I could go on endlessly. There is a system in place that benefits whoever is the whitest, oldest, most masculine person in the room. I will not stand for that. I will not be another queer person of color who just accepts that the world is shit and I can't change that on my own, leading me to just give up. No way. I have a voice and I'm gonna shout so loudly that anyone with ears hear it.
And what can we, the average Joe or Sue or whatever your name is, do? Well... Not much to be honest. I'm just kidding, there's so much we can do. We can educate ourselves and others. We can support activists an support capitalism as little as possible. Buy vintage/second-hand clothes. Got old clothing? Donate those or sell them. Talk to people around you about these things, spread the idea of "Hey since we're gen Z and we're slowly becoming adults, wouldn't it be funny if we... support and foster the idea of equality?" We need to redefine success. We need to understand how important it is that money is divided more evenly amongst the world's population. And wealth and success shouldn't be measured in net worth, but in happiness, health, freedom and peace of mind. I don't know I'm just spit-balling here. But seriously, we can do so much. Don't sell yourself too short okay? Every big thing in history has always started with one person and later a handful of people agreeing with them. I'm not that misanthropic actually, in fact this may sound rather naive to some, but I really believe that things are looking up and I have faith in our generation cleaning up centuries and centuries of mess.
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