Get off the ‘Billionaire Bandwagon’
By Hazel Walrod, ‘22
Social media has allowed the uber-wealthy to become much more prominent figures in today’s world. Not only do they control our economic and political spheres through their money and influence, they are now also becoming idols. This only exacerbates our instinct to place a large emphasis on wealth and continue the cycle of inequity in present-day America. In order to mend the gaping disparities between the rich and the poor, the power of billionaires in modern society must be dismantled.
We have historically placed wealth above all else as a marker of a person’s value in the United States. Mickey Del Castillo, a Catlin Gabel School history, economics, and philosophy teacher, commented on the culture of wealth in the United States.
“We tend to see wealth as a measure of a person’s value in society.”
We, as Americans, generally equate wealth with success. “From Carnegie, Rockefeller, J.P Morgan, again, all the way up to the Musks and the Bezos and the Buffets… we feel that they are representative of a successful narrative that has allowed us to benefit from it, this perceived exceptionalism,” Del Castillo said. To earn money in the U.S. must mean you are doing something right, either through working hard, innovating, or otherwise adding value to society.
This idea can be linked to meritocracy, a founding principle of American life; those who are smart, hard-working and talented will be rewarded. However, meritocracy is flawed because it traps success at the highest levels, meaning that those who achieve it can artificially engineer success for their children, through paying for better education and utilizing networking.
“Affluence is a form of currency,” Del Castillo asserted.
Besides that, our system is not meritocratic to begin with because it is set up on a legacy of racism and sexism that hinders certain individuals.
In 2016, the average white family net worth was about ten times that of Black families. This income gap is only one way in which our system, the system billionaires feed off of, creates inequities.
This is part of the reason hailing billionaires as top-tier individuals because they are ‘successful’ and thus talented or ‘good’ is problematic: because our belief that they somehow earned this exorbitant wealth through merit is dangerous and often times incorrect.
A concrete example of ‘perceived exceptionalism’ in relation to our country’s mega-wealthy is our obsession with entrepreneurs. Sensationalized success stories perpetuate being a ‘creator’ as the ultimate goal. Elon Musk is a prime example of this.
“What he [Elon Musk] represents is a perverse form of the entrepreneur that has not only been able to manipulate and perpetuate their power base and influence, but to create such disparities in the amount of wealth acquisition they can have in such a short amount of time, and then be able to decontextualize their own wealth … from the extreme inequities that exist in the market system.”
Elon Musk created PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX, among other companies. Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook, a widely used social media site, and now owns Instagram as well. Jeff Bezos made Amazon into what it is today. These are all arguably useful and valuable services that billionaires provide. However, why is it that these creators are hailed over the workers who actually run their companies and make them succeed? And why does this excuse them from their moral obligations?
Still, billionaires like Elon Musk model “an updated version of this sycophancy,” Castillo pointed out. Sycophancy is a term closely associated with our obsession with wealth, and describes someone who flatters for the sake of gaining an advantage.
Musk has 65M followers on Twitter. He posted a poll to his page about whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock in order to have more taxable income for the 15 billion tax. He also posts memes.
In this case, Elon Musk fosters a relatable and admirable image on social media, leading to an onslaught of sycophants swarming his threads. We overlook the environmental and economic toll these billionaires have on our society because we see them in a positive light.
Billionaires are inherently unethical based on the sheer amount of wealth they’ve accrued. According to Insider, Elon Musk paid only $455 million in taxes in a period where his wealth grew by $13.9 billion dollars. This comes down to about a 3.27% tax rate. For a single filer making between $0 and $9,950 in 2021, 10% of their taxable income is taxed.
Musk created this poll as if to suggest that it is up to the people whether he pays fair taxes, moving the blame from himself and painting himself as a good guy.
“Well yeah, they don’t pay their taxes, but they don’t have to because they are smart, they have good accountants, they put it in offshore accounts.’” Mickey believes people find it more palatable to defend billionaires because they deserve their wealth; a consequence of believing you could someday also become a billionaire.
Jeff Bezos, the former CEO of Amazon, is a more straightforward example of abused power and unethical wealth. Although Amazon is a valuable service and smart business strategy, the company is morally disastrous.
Amazon takes business away from local stores and has monopolized most product industries, such as book shopping. Beyond that, the company is responsible for a vast amount of greenhouse gas emissions, and atrocious working conditions and treatment of its workers.
Although Bezos is seen in a more negative light than Elon Musk, Amazon stock continues to be well valued, and he continues to make billions, largely untaxed.
‘How-to entrepreneur’ videos and our obsession with ‘productivity’ and ‘optimization’ encourage people to become billionaires and operate in this system.
The New Yorker’s article ‘How to Become a Billionaire in 2021’ sums up the reality of becoming a billionaire in America in their satirical post. “Be one of Elon Musk’s sons. Turn eighteen. Take ten billion dollars out of your trust fund. Lose ninety per cent of said funds on careless investments. You are now a self-made billionaire! Congratulations.”
There are other options out there. We could return to pre-Reagan level tax rates, or even impose a wealth cap that limits or destroys billionaires all together. But first, we need to re-orient our value system in America.
Being a billionaire may be impressive, but it should not be a goal to strive towards. Accruing such vast wealth while still barely paying workers and allowing those around you to live in poverty is unethical and needs to be criticized.
We have made it socially exceptional for wealth to carry more weight than caring for others. No more. If we want to hold billionaires accountable and repair our economic system, we need to stop playing the money game and idolizing the mega-wealthy.