The level of wealth inequality in America is grotesque. A Pew Research report found that the richest families in the U.S. have experienced greater gains in wealth than other families in recent decades, a trend that reinforces the growing concentration of financial resources at the top. Moreover, the wealth gap between America’s richest and poorer families more than doubled from 1989 to 2016. To put that into perspective, in 2018, households near the top of the income had incomes that were 12.6 times higher than those near the bottom.
At the top of that very economic ladder stand billionaires. And according to Forbes, there were 2,153 billionaires as of March, with the ultra-rich worth $8.7 trillion, and that’s in 2019. Heading into 2022, the 10 wealthiest individuals in the world are all worth more than $100 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The numbers are simply unbelievable, quite like some of their humble success stories.
But people are getting fed up with being told lies. They claim that self-made billionaires are nothing more than another case of nepotism, a common practice of power that favors relatives by giving them exclusive opportunities. We collected some of the most eye-opening arguments about it below, so be sure to scroll down and share your thoughts about this as you go.
Image credits: petergyang
This post may include affiliate links.
Shame they'd just make shell company after shell company all not exceeding $999m. You don't even make $50m without working the system with help from multiple people who specialize in hiding money.
I don't think some of you understand why these guys are billionaires. It's not like they have lots of money stashed away in a bank, just sitting and doing nothing until they decide to spend some. It's because they have lots of stock, likely in the company they run. If they had to "give up" some of that stock, they would sell it. THEN they would have cash in the bank. But first someone would have to BUY it. For them to divest themselves of $500 million, someone (or more likely lots of someones) would have to come up with $500 million. Where are they supposed to come up with that much money, unless they already have it? Even if it was a 100% tax and the government got it, he/she still has to sell the stock to SOMEONE. You don't pay taxes by giving the IRS a bunch of stock. They have that much money only on paper. To get cash for it others have to buy it. Can you imagine what it would do to the value of Amazon stock if Jeff tried to sell $10 billion worth in one week?
Well, I'm sure there's a solution to making such adjustments that wouldn't require the dumping of $10B in stock in one week and the resulting disruption. The adjustments could be done gradually, with new rules created preventing individuals from amassing such astronomical portions of the pie in the first place.
Load More Replies...
Only one way to get rich from nothing. Be a crack, gambling and alcohol addict, invent a pillow company, make a billion dollars, spend millions of it convincing people Donald Trump should still be President
No big corporations. They get too powerful and end up controlling the state instead the of the opposite. Too big to fail is bullshit. Because everything can fail but if it's too big, blackmails the state to save it. And you stop at 10 mil. Enough for 2 lifetimes. The rest you MUST invest in real economy and they don't stay in your name. Find a way to do it. Oh, and no transfers to tax heavens through any kind of bank and officially boycott all of them.
Great idea although I might be inclined to lower the cut of to $950,000or $899,999.
They just open more new bank accounts somewhere under different names to keep the number below a billion
Getting a dog park named after you is ultimate achievement in life - and should only happen for actual good people - not billionaires. Love the rest of it though.
I have idea. You go build company while working job. My personal experience tells me, after 35 hungry years of many failures you may finally "make it big". Quit old job. Take modest salary + stock options so you not scraping pan for scraps anymore. Always put everything else back into company. Company grows, everyone thinks you rich. Haha. Still working your butt off, just not ever hungry anymore (nice!) As your share grows, you live better, but any "extra" spent caring for other people. Drive 19 year old Kia. Why? Because still runs. Company HUGE, eats all capital to keep growing, pay excellent employees & produce goods and services people want. Take excellent salary, still under 100k. Eventually "retire" your job in the company & volunteer your time for good causes. People think since you are s rich you should sell big giant company that is still feeding hard working people & give all to them instead. Really? No. That's my idea. Now you go build something, too... okay? Best wishes.
I mean, they may be worth a billion dollars but they don't have a billion dollars. Sure a lot of their money is liquid but most of it goes right back in to fuel their ever growing capability empire.
Shared ownership of the means of production and equal labor compensation! Actually that doesn't sound too bad.
Load More Replies...
Also should get a plaque that says "Daddy had me driven to Go to collect $200,000".
Income inequality in the United States is at its highest level in at least 50 years, according to the government’s Census Bureau. According to Oxfam, the world’s wealthiest 26 individuals had the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the population in 2018. But 2021 was a year like no other for the billionaires, and it’s not the world still trapped in an unprecedented public health crisis.
The number of billionaires on Forbes’ 35th annual list of the world’s wealthiest exploded to an unprecedented 2,755. That’s a whopping 660 more than just a year ago. According to Forbes, of those, a record high 493 were new to the list—roughly one every 17 hours, including 210 from China and Hong Kong. Another 250 who’d fallen off in the past came right back. As a result, this year we see a mindblowing 86% who are richer than a year ago.
But what is the relationship between nepotism and sky-high fortune like that? Well, legally, the concerns surrounding it are few but not to be ignored. Tom Gies, a founding member of the labor and employment law practice at Crowell & Moring, says there's little out there to discourage nepotism—and nothing that explicitly forbids it.
However, trouble can arise if a company advertises a vacant job and then fills it with an employee's relative who clearly is less qualified than, say, a female or minority applicant. That can run up against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion or national origin. But the solution is more than simple: if the job opening is never publicly advertised, it's almost impossible for anyone to cry foul over nepotism.
Every time I see Zuckerberg's photo, the first thing I think is "Damn. Someone needs to slip him some light colored contacts." Those dark eyeballs are like black holes to his soul.
I'm poor because I don't have a Garage. My entire apartment have the size of ( insert the smallest size place in your house)
I love that Donald trump isn’t on these lists, he got more money from his dad than most of these people and still couldn’t make the list!
I'm a legacy admission - I was granted admission to the every day rat race, just like my parents and their parents and their parents' parents.
My dad passed away; so all of our money is tied up in the afterlife market. An with my dad being a good man I'd like to think he's in heaven. An when I die...well I'm not so sure. So it looks like we will be diversifying our stock portfolio. No use in having all the deviled eggs in one basket. 😁🤪 yeah, yeah I'm leaving. 🤨 Well I know now; that it's not funny...🤣
Mazer- the economy is so fuckd up that a lot of people can't afford food and rent at the same time.
This is the slowest way to become a millionaire. No billionaire would ever spend enough on anyone but themselves to drop below $1,000,000,000.
Shannon, you're full of s**t. Just so full of it. Yes, there are self-made millionaires, but that does not refute the lack of economic mobility in this country. When asked to estimate how many people born into the lowest quintile for income reach the top quintile during their lifetime guess 12%. In the Southeast (i.e., "The South") the guess is 20%. The reality? 7%. Americans as a whole over estimate by 50% and the most "Grab them boostraps, Johnny!" region guesses almost 3x too much. And the top quintile? That's not millions. That's not even 6 figures. That's roughly $65k a year. Any skilled tradesperson can make that. It's plumbers and carpenters and mechanics and unionized line workers, in addition to accountants and actuaries and insurance salespeople. We live in a country where, if you are born into poverty, you have only a 7% chance of ever making even $65k per year, and you're out here caping for millionaires and condemning folks for not working hard enough? What a colossal joke.
Note: this post originally had 33 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Capitalism. That's what it is. The idea that all good things come from being rich, so the richer you are, the gooder you are. But there is limited wealth in any economy, so when some people have a lot more, that HAS to result in many other people having less.
It's not a really something unique to Capitalism. Ever since humans stopped living in small equalitarian hunter gatherer groups and started agriculture to live in much larger groups, some people managed to accumulate a lot more possessions than others, gave it to their children and grandchildren and then built some kind of myth around it to justify why they had all this generational wealth while other people starved. It used to be I'm better than you and deserve all my wealth because I'm ordained by God to be your king/priest/ruler". Now we just have a different myth to justify why billionaires "deserve" to be billionaires while there are still starving people.
Load More Replies... The UN told Elon Musk he could end World hunger with $6.6bn, he asked them to send him a detailed plan. Last year they sent him a full breakdown, he's been surprisingly quiet about it since then. Playing the big man on Twitter as usual.
M**********r has $120 billion & the world asks for $6.6 and Musk ghosts ‘em. Shows his true colors. Same as the rest. The French Revolution gave us the template to deal with them if we get the chance.
Load More Replies...
I get insanely rich people never thinking enough is enough. I get the insanely rich using the tools and political influence at their disposal to preserve their wealth and limit exposure to taxes. What I don't get is the regular people working hard for their money being OK with paying a significantly higher portion of what they have than the insanely rich. Electing politicians who run on the idea that somehow making the insanely rich insanely richer is somehow going to benefit society as a whole after nearly forty years of proof money in fact does not "trickle down". The wealth gap just grows faster. Capitalism works but only when you have some kind of guardrails. Otherwise it's just a real-life game of Monopoly.
I spent three years at an Ivy League university. Not as a student. I can say that IMO the students at this university were no more intellectually inclined than the students at any state university I’ve been affiliated with. As a matter of fact, except for the token minority students, most were average at best. They were, however, a lot richer so things always worked out all right.
Communism entails that everyone gets paid the same, but it also entails that nobody has a voice, government gets to decide everything, we don't get to choose where we go to shop or play or work - y'all realize that if America goes to Communism we can't do a majority of the stuff we do on a daily basis? Freedom is NONE. Knock it off and find another way.
Load More Replies...
I 100% get the snark. But if my Dad got me a job, I'd take it. As long as I didn't have to work for him or with him.
Sure, most of us would and Im pretty sure most of us would behave as the "self made" people... if you always had fortune behind you how would you actually know of real world that majority of people are living in.
Load More Replies...
When the crew of 'The Powerpuff Girls' created the character Princess Morbucks, do you think it's possibly they were trying to warn us?
23 years ago I went to work for a company a couple of (really good) guys started up. It was their company, and they made pretty good money from my work. 14 years ago a co-worker wanted to start a business in the same industry, and invited me to join in the venture. We figured it was about 50-50 whether he would make it or go under. I didn't want to bet the portion of my house I owned, so I played it safe, stayed where I was. He worked a lot of double and triple shifts, almost went under several times, but made it, and 12 years ago he hired me. He now makes a lot more money than I do because he had the guts to risk it, the determination to work for basically no pay for the first couple of years, and the luck that it paid off. He isn't "stealing" or "exploiting." He now employs about 300 people total. No billionaire, but doing well. I'm happy for him, and happy to work for him.
As a young child I remember being told it is not what you know it is who you know.
It's all fun until you realize that people are "making jokes" about "throwing other people in lava"( i.e. killing them) with the argument to redistribute the wealth.
And here I don't want to be no billionaire, not even a millionaire, I just wanna make enough to live comfortably. But Capitalism says no :')
@Bill, you're operating under the idea that "make something of yourself" equals extreme wealth. Discard that premise and assume that we're something without lots of money, and re-think.
Load More Replies...
Not having rich parents, I don't feel it is safe to risk $200K or whatever But knowing my rich parents would bail me out, b/c, y'know, rich parents or influential ones. Also, it's not much vision when *your mother convinces IBM to buy from you* (Gates). When people are willing to rig the game in your favor, it's easier to win. Oh, and to exploit people ruthlessly like Musk, Bezos, et al.
Load More Replies... Capitalism. That's what it is. The idea that all good things come from being rich, so the richer you are, the gooder you are. But there is limited wealth in any economy, so when some people have a lot more, that HAS to result in many other people having less.
It's not a really something unique to Capitalism. Ever since humans stopped living in small equalitarian hunter gatherer groups and started agriculture to live in much larger groups, some people managed to accumulate a lot more possessions than others, gave it to their children and grandchildren and then built some kind of myth around it to justify why they had all this generational wealth while other people starved. It used to be I'm better than you and deserve all my wealth because I'm ordained by God to be your king/priest/ruler". Now we just have a different myth to justify why billionaires "deserve" to be billionaires while there are still starving people.
Load More Replies... The UN told Elon Musk he could end World hunger with $6.6bn, he asked them to send him a detailed plan. Last year they sent him a full breakdown, he's been surprisingly quiet about it since then. Playing the big man on Twitter as usual.
M**********r has $120 billion & the world asks for $6.6 and Musk ghosts ‘em. Shows his true colors. Same as the rest. The French Revolution gave us the template to deal with them if we get the chance.
Load More Replies... I get insanely rich people never thinking enough is enough. I get the insanely rich using the tools and political influence at their disposal to preserve their wealth and limit exposure to taxes. What I don't get is the regular people working hard for their money being OK with paying a significantly higher portion of what they have than the insanely rich. Electing politicians who run on the idea that somehow making the insanely rich insanely richer is somehow going to benefit society as a whole after nearly forty years of proof money in fact does not "trickle down". The wealth gap just grows faster. Capitalism works but only when you have some kind of guardrails. Otherwise it's just a real-life game of Monopoly.
I spent three years at an Ivy League university. Not as a student. I can say that IMO the students at this university were no more intellectually inclined than the students at any state university I’ve been affiliated with. As a matter of fact, except for the token minority students, most were average at best. They were, however, a lot richer so things always worked out all right.
Communism entails that everyone gets paid the same, but it also entails that nobody has a voice, government gets to decide everything, we don't get to choose where we go to shop or play or work - y'all realize that if America goes to Communism we can't do a majority of the stuff we do on a daily basis? Freedom is NONE. Knock it off and find another way.
Load More Replies... I 100% get the snark. But if my Dad got me a job, I'd take it. As long as I didn't have to work for him or with him.
Sure, most of us would and Im pretty sure most of us would behave as the "self made" people... if you always had fortune behind you how would you actually know of real world that majority of people are living in.
Load More Replies... When the crew of 'The Powerpuff Girls' created the character Princess Morbucks, do you think it's possibly they were trying to warn us?
23 years ago I went to work for a company a couple of (really good) guys started up. It was their company, and they made pretty good money from my work. 14 years ago a co-worker wanted to start a business in the same industry, and invited me to join in the venture. We figured it was about 50-50 whether he would make it or go under. I didn't want to bet the portion of my house I owned, so I played it safe, stayed where I was. He worked a lot of double and triple shifts, almost went under several times, but made it, and 12 years ago he hired me. He now makes a lot more money than I do because he had the guts to risk it, the determination to work for basically no pay for the first couple of years, and the luck that it paid off. He isn't "stealing" or "exploiting." He now employs about 300 people total. No billionaire, but doing well. I'm happy for him, and happy to work for him.
As a young child I remember being told it is not what you know it is who you know.
It's all fun until you realize that people are "making jokes" about "throwing other people in lava"( i.e. killing them) with the argument to redistribute the wealth.
And here I don't want to be no billionaire, not even a millionaire, I just wanna make enough to live comfortably. But Capitalism says no :')
@Bill, you're operating under the idea that "make something of yourself" equals extreme wealth. Discard that premise and assume that we're something without lots of money, and re-think.
Load More Replies... Not having rich parents, I don't feel it is safe to risk $200K or whatever But knowing my rich parents would bail me out, b/c, y'know, rich parents or influential ones. Also, it's not much vision when *your mother convinces IBM to buy from you* (Gates). When people are willing to rig the game in your favor, it's easier to win. Oh, and to exploit people ruthlessly like Musk, Bezos, et al.
Load More Replies...