The inequality of wealth and billionaires can be a sore subject when discussed extensively. Where there are billionaires, there appears to be a huge wealth gap. And very strong opinions. Wealth inequality seems to always be present in every country and region. Some studies have arrived at the conclusion that wealth inequality affects health and social problems. Do billionaires have something to do with this?
In a recent tweet by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated “Billionaires need the working class. The working class does not need billionaires” which created a debate on whether billionaires help the working class or with the economy at all.
Comments and views of this statement can be seen as follows:
One argument is that big businesses employ people. Here big businesses are thought to mean billionaires. These people pay taxes that fill up the coffers that are then used for the collective’s universal health care. Then again, more businesses are owned by the middle class, those who have barely enough after working hard and saving a few. Hardly millionaires and definitely not in the billionaire league. But to say they are not backed directly or indirectly with banks or lending companies (which could be owned by billionaires) is anyone’s guess. Rich people (billionaires) have businesses that are able to cut out other competition who have less capital and funnel the money (profits) to themselves. Billionaires are compared to masters with the working class as their slaves paid with very meager salaries. It’s the greedy rich that keep poor people poor.
On the other hand, do these billionaires pay their correct taxes? Pretty sure that a number of them do. Still there are claims that these billionaires and their businesses find ways to elude paying adequate taxes. Even cops and lawyers series show episodes of how they are able to lessen and bypass paying huge taxes. As to whether by legal or illegal means, that is for the authorities to determine. Most of the wealth accumulated are said to be stored to offshore banks where they cannot be taxed.
A majority thinks that billionaires exist because of the poor. Except for the likes of Oprah who built an empire from scratch, it would seem most billionaires who came from less than dirt-poor are included in this tirade. To think that billionaires are created because of people poorer than these billionaires will not be off the mark.
One points out consumerism as being the cause of how billionaires get money from the middle class to living from paycheck-to-paycheck. People who buy computers and furniture or affords to buy them. The same middle class that hires people and manages to pay their workers decent living wages. Some economic studies have shown the large gap between actual luxury goods purchased and the number of upper to middle class that can afford these products. These consumers are able to buy these through saving up or paying with their credit cards. There is a school of thought that points out a billionaires mindset where people who belong to this borrow to create an asset instead of borrowing so they can spend on the latest gadget.
To say billionaires stop working and innovating after becoming one is imprudent. Well-known founders-turned-billionaires generated their ideas and worked harder than most to be rich.
Ironically enough, these arguments from her statement could have been typed from a smartphone and launched on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, owned by billionaires.
