''Translation: "We should be grateful to our Billionaires; anyone can be a Billionaire, just be 'lucky'" (especially if you sacrifice children to Satan)''
Timing, luck or talent - what makes a billionaire?
…The size of these fortunes can be hard to comprehend. A billion is a huge number - to give an idea of scale, one million seconds is 11 days, but a billion is 32 years.
And for some, the very existence of billionaires is obscene.
Eighty-one of the world's richest people - about a bus-full - have more combined wealth than the poorest four billion people in the world.
In a 2023 report on inequality, Oxfam concluded: "Every billionaire is a policy mistake. The very existence of booming billionaires and record profits, while most people face austerity, rising poverty, and a cost-of-living crisis, is evidence of an economic system that fails to deliver for humanity.”
That inequality has led to calls in many countries for taxes on absolute wealth rather than income. In the US, Democratic Party Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed a 2% tax on assets over $50m (£39m) and 3% on assets over $1bn (£778m).
But others argue the prospect of great wealth inspires creation and innovation that improves the lives of millions of people.
American economist Michael Strain argues we need more billionaires, not fewer, and cites Nobel prize winner William Nordhaus who found that about 2% of the returns from technological innovation go to the founders and inventors - the rest goes to society.
Strain calls billionaires “largely self-made innovators who have changed the way we live”. He cites examples such as Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer who revolutionised personal computing, legendary investor Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos who upended retail, and Elon Musk who disrupted the automotive industry and space commerce.
“None of them are ‘policy failures’,” he concludes. “Rather than wishing they did not exist, we should be thrilled that they do.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw4yej2n184o