Stop looking up to billionaires

A young man reads Forbes’ “World’s Richest People” | David Suarez

As billionaires continue to amass unfathomable amounts of wealth at the expense of everyday Americans, why is it that they are idolized in the United States? 

In America, billionaires are often treated as modern-day heroes, self-made visionaries and role models who embody the American Dream. Their faces grace magazine covers, their words are quoted like gospel and their lifestyles are envied by millions. From Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, they are portrayed as geniuses whose success stems from hard work, intelligence and determination. But this narrative is deeply flawed.

The reality is that billionaires are not the epitome of meritocracy they are made out to be by the American public. Their wealth is built on exploitation, corporate greed and systemic advantages that regular Americans will never have access to. Idolizing billionaires distracts from the structural inequalities that allow such extreme wealth to exist in the first place. Rather than looking up to billionaires, regular Americans should question the very system that allows a small handful of individuals to hoard obscene amounts of wealth from millions struggling to make ends meet.

A common defense for billionaire worship is the idea that they earned their wealth through hard work and intelligence. However, this is a myth. Many of the richest individuals in the world were born into privilege, giving them access to resources and opportunities that most Americans could never dream of.

Take Elon Musk, for example. Musk is often described as a self-made genius, but he comes from a wealthy family that built part of their wealth from the exploitation of an emerald mine in Africa, which Musk has denied. In an interview on  “Podcast and Chill with MacG”, Errol Musk, Elon Musk’s father, confirmed that he owned part of an emerald mining company that operated out of Zambia.

“Elon knows all about the emeralds,” he said. “It’s just because, you see, he wants to tell the people in America that he also had a hard time.” 

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, started his company with a $250,000 investment from his parents, an amount that far exceeds what most American families could afford to give their children. Even those billionaires who did not inherit direct wealth still benefited from elite education, business connections and access to capital that regular people simply do not have.

The idea that anyone can become a billionaire through sheer effort ignores the structural barriers that keep wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. The vast majority of Americans work long hours, juggle multiple jobs and struggle with debt, yet they will never come close to accumulating even a fraction of the wealth that billionaires control. Hard work alone does not make someone a billionaire, but systemic privilege does.

Far from being role models, billionaires amass their wealth by exploiting workers, engaging in unethical business practices and taking advantage of economic loopholes.

Amazon, under Jeff Bezos and now CEO Andy Jassy, is notorious for its poor treatment of workers. Warehouse employees and delivery drivers report grueling conditions, including constant surveillance, unrealistic productivity quotas and even being forced to urinate in bottles because they are not given adequate break time. Meanwhile, Amazon has fought aggressively against unionization efforts, ensuring that workers remain underpaid and overworked while executives and shareholders reap record profits.

Elon Musk’s companies, including Tesla and SpaceX, have also faced numerous allegations of workplace discrimination, safety violations and union-busting tactics. In 2021, the National Labor Relations Board found that Tesla illegally fired an employee for union organizing, and in 2023, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued Tesla for widespread racial discrimination at its factories.

And then there’s the Walton family, heirs to the Walmart fortune, who collectively own more wealth than millions of working-class Americans combined. Walmart has a long history of paying poverty wages, driving small businesses into bankruptcy and relying on government assistance programs like food stamps to subsidize the low wages it pays its workers.

The wealth of billionaires is not built on innovation and genius alone, it is built on the backs of underpaid and overworked employees. Looking up to billionaires celebrates a system that allows a few individuals to hoard unimaginable wealth while millions of people struggle to afford basic necessities.

Not only do billionaires exploit workers, but they also manipulate the political and economic system to ensure that their wealth remains untouched.

The American tax system is designed to favor the ultra-rich. While regular Americans see a significant portion of their paychecks deducted for income taxes, billionaires often pay a lower tax rate than middle-class workers. This is because they make most of their money from investments, which are taxed at a lower rate than wages. In some cases, billionaires pay close to nothing in taxes. 

A 2021 ProPublica report revealed that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other billionaires had paid little to no federal income tax for several years, despite their vast fortunes.

“His tax avoidance is even more striking if you examine 2006 to 2018, a period for which ProPublica has complete data,” ProPublica said of Bezos in the report. ”Bezos’ wealth increased by $127 billion, according to Forbes, but he reported a total of $6.5 billion in income. The $1.4 billion he paid in personal federal taxes is a massive number — yet it amounts to a 1.1% true tax rate on the rise in his fortune.”

Billionaires also use their wealth to influence politics, ensuring that laws and policies benefit them at the expense of regular people. Through campaign donations, lobbying and political action committees, they shape legislation to minimize their tax burdens, weaken labor protections and deregulate industries. The result is a government that prioritizes corporate profits over the needs of ordinary Americans.

Billionaires like the Koch brothers have spent decades funding right-wing think tanks and politicians who push for lower corporate taxes, anti-labor laws and cuts to social programs. This ensures that billionaires continue to amass wealth while public services like healthcare, education and welfare programs remain underfunded and Americans remain underpaid. 

Looking up to billionaires means ignoring the fact that they actively work against the interests of regular Americans. Rather than being role models, they are key players in maintaining economic inequality and preventing policies that would create a more just society.

Some argue that billionaires should be admired for their philanthropy, pointing to figures like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who have pledged to donate large portions of their wealth to charity. However, billionaire philanthropy is not the noble act that it appears to be.

Many billionaire donations serve as tax shelters, allowing them to avoid paying taxes while maintaining control over their wealth. When billionaires donate to their own foundations or donor-advised funds, they receive immediate tax deductions without actually redistributing their money in a meaningful way. In many cases, these foundations spend only a small percentage of their assets on charitable work, while the rest remains invested, continuing to generate wealth for the billionaire and their family.

Additionally, billionaire philanthropy allows the ultra-rich to dictate how social problems are addressed, rather than letting democratically elected representatives make those decisions. For instance, when billionaires fund education initiatives, they often push for privatized solutions like charter schools, which can undermine public education rather than strengthen it. Similarly, tech billionaires investing in climate change initiatives often prioritize market-based solutions that preserve their own economic interests, rather than policies that challenge corporate power.

If billionaires truly wanted to help society, they would support policies that redistribute wealth like higher taxes on the ultra-rich, universal healthcare and stronger labor rights. But they don’t. Instead, they use philanthropy as a way to polish their reputations while maintaining a system that benefits them at the expense of everyone else.

Looking up to billionaires reinforces the false idea that extreme wealth is a sign of merit, rather than a result of exploitation and systemic privilege. It encourages regular Americans to aspire to a level of wealth that is unattainable for nearly everyone, rather than fighting for a fairer system that benefits the majority.

Instead of idolizing billionaires, Americans should focus on demanding economic and political changes that benefit the working class. This means supporting higher taxes on the ultra-rich, stronger labor protections that lead to unionization efforts and policies that ensure basic necessities like healthcare and education are available to everyone. It also means rejecting the idea that billionaires are the solution to society’s problems because, more often than not, they are the cause.

Billionaires are not heroes. They are not role models. They are beneficiaries of a deeply unequal system that allows a small handful of individuals to control vast amounts of wealth while millions struggle to survive. Rather than looking up to them, regular Americans should be questioning why billionaires exist at all.

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