A Surviving Facts Blog
Forgive typos— I’m having a moment.
I wrote this original blog a few months ago before billionaire greed moved more into the spotlight. Recently, Billie Eilish, Rachel Maddow and Steve Colbert have all chastised the billionaire bros— Zuckerberg, Bezos, Musk— for their greed. Billie and Rachel, both accepting awards for their philanthropy, announced enormous donations at the same time. Eilish told them to “give your money away, shorties,” possibly referring to Zuckerberg’s and Bezos’s stature.
It always takes the women.
The women always speak out first, calling out the obvious: billionaires have not been generous, at least not in relation to their wealth. Warren Buffet and Mackenzie Scott are certainly exceptions to this. Buffet has promised to donate $1.5 billion to his children’s charitable foundations for them to give away.
The idea of wealth driving a better society was made popular by Reagan who spoke about a “trickle down economy,” in which the wealthy with increased tax cuts and other benefits would donate to the betterment of society. Unfortunately, this didn’t happen. Instead of giving away more, the wealthy reinvested in themselves and in each other. Plenty of economic data show the wealthy growing richer and the poor growing poorer. Today, the wealth gap is broader than ever before in the U.S.
Since Reagan, under Republican leadership, we’ve seen a shrinking middle class, growing poverty and more concentration of wealth among the top few. The wealthiest 400 Americans hold wealth equivalent to nearly 30% of American GDP. The top 1% own almost 60% of the stock market. The top 10% own around 90% of the stock market. The bottom 50% own less than 2% of the stock market.
So who is getting wealthier?
If it’s not blatantly obvious, let me spell it out. Since Reagan, the wealthy have gotten wealthier, the middle class has shrunk by more than 10% and poverty has soared. The only periods when the scales began to shift back were under democratic presidents. Don’t believe me? Look it up. Historical data since World War II indicates the U.S. economy has performed significantly better on average under Democratic presidents across various metrics, including GDP growth, job creation, and stock market returns.
Not too long ago, I had a discussion with a friend who supports the trickle down economy concept. His argument is that billionaires hire all the rest of us and keep the economy alive. No data supports this. In fact, if you look at the rate of growth of billionaire wealth compared to the people they employ, you see salaries of regular people like you and me decreasing, especially in relation to inflation and cost of living. Billionaires on the other hand have continued to grow. Simply put, this means the only way billionaires can reap so much reward while workers do not is because billionaires are literally stealing from those who work for them. Billionaires have enriched themselves by taking a greater share of profits in proportion to people who work for them. The Waltons are the country’s richest family and among the richest in the world. And yet they pay Walmart employees minimum wage and no health insurance.
Now, Amazon, Google and Meta are all laying off tens of thousands of employees. It will be Amazon’s biggest lay off ever. Bezos meanwhile rented the entire city of Venice for his wedding to Lauren Sanchez. The cost of this 3-day spectacle was over $50 million.
Historically, when economies have faltered, the wealthy have been bailed out— a term that hides the socialist action of redistributing wealth from the regular American tax payer to the top 1%. So, the richest of the rich get handouts but we cannot give children with disabilities SNAP and Medicaid ??? The current congressional fight over additional tax breaks for the wealthy literally requires taking away from the poor— Snap, Medicaid— to fund it.
Why do you think billionaire and top 10% wealth soared after Trump’s 2017 tax cuts? Because WE funded it. It was funded by taking away yours and my money to pass on to Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg. This is not a trickledown economy. It’s a firehose-force spray up economy. Americans are doing worse than ever. They cannot buy houses, afford healthcare, groceries and other necessary items for life.
Way back in the 1970s, Republicans voted health insurance companies to be for profit. Since then, the industry is making billions of dollars, Their CEOs receive astounding salaries and bonuses. Meanwhile, every year since the 70s, Americans pay MORE for health insurance rather than less. The Republicans promised that profit motive would reduce costs for Americans. The complete opposite has happened. Today, people blame Obamacare for increased insurance cost. The numbers don’t support this. Health care companies are making record profits. The CEO of United Healthcare makes $500,000 per week. No benefits are being passed to customers. Privatizing all health insurance will continue this trend. Rather than reducing our costs, privatizing will give big insurance more opportunity to raise prices, price fixing and price gouging.
Let’s sum this up:
- Billionaires have gotten richer, concentrating more wealth at the top.
- As this has happened, Americans’ salaries have decreased and not kept up with inflation.
- Billionaires do not employ more people the more they make. Amazon, for example example, is making record profits and laying off employees, largely for implementation of AI. Walmart does no better.
- Allowing health insurance companies to make a profit has resulted in greater premiums and more cost being passed on to Americans. Obamacare supplied 70 million Americans with access to health insurance. After the ACA was passed, the rate of increased healthcare expenses slowed overall. In addition, the cost Americans paid for healthcare actually decreased after Obamacare until Trump removed various provisions in 2017-18. Look it up.
- If the current bill is passed, more wealth will be distributed up to the wealthy and you and I will pay for it.
Why is this happening? Why don’t billionaires do good works? I regret to remind you but it’s true: being that rich turns (most) people into jerks. Read my original blog below. There’s also the unfortunate Fox News effect: lying to Americans who don’t research, question or look elsewhere for information. They believe the lies so fervently that they ignore their own reality. What derangement syndrome is this called?
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The results are in. People with wealth aren’t very nice. I just read Rolling Stones’ “What You’ve Suspected Is True: Billionaires Are Not Like Us.” Author Alex Morris does an excellent job of summarizing research and outlining the issues. It’s worth reading.
Let’s break this down a bit. Usually when we refer to people as “nice,” we mean that they engage in prosocial behaviors. These are behaviors that convey kindness, empathy and generosity. For example, let’s say a car is entering a freeway. The freeway is bumper to bumper traffic. The yield sign for the highway entrance is a signal not to stop, but rather to gently move forward and be allowed to merge in the lane. But let’s say the person in the highway lane refuses to move. The entrance runway is ending, but the car on the highway guns the accelerator to make sure the yielding car doesn’t get in. We’ve all had this happen to us. But let me break it to you: This is antisocial behavior. Prosocial would require a few brake taps allowing the entering car to go in front. Both cars keep moving, the entire highway benefits, road rage is unneeded.
- Less likely than lower income people to allow pedestrians to cross a street, even when pedestrians have the right of way
- More likely to cheat when playing board games such as Monopoly
- More likely to believe they deserve special rules and treatment, even when it is given randomly and without merit
- Less likely not to read or to misread other people’s expressions and emotions
- More likely to engage in risk-seeking behavior such as drug experimentation, abuse and addiction
- More likely to believe in nature rather than nurture. They are born to be great.
Moreover, wealthy individuals donate a smaller percentage of wealth to charity than do lower income individuals. Indeed, generosity falls even when people are asked to think about wealth.
Three recent occurrences have led me to thinking about this correlation:
- The Senate passage of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill which promises not only to continue his high income tax cuts from 2016 but to increase them even more. At the same time, the bill will cut healthcare and food support for those who need it most and increase the debt by trillions of dollars, per the GAO.
- Bezos’ $50 Million-dollar wedding was an astounding display of excess. From purchasing an entire city to his star-studded guests to his bride’s over-indulgent plastic surgery- the entire affair illustrates the crevasse between the haves and the have nots. Should one rent an entire city just because they can? This is a real ethical question.
- Musk’s criticism of the BBB for increasing the deficit has a schadenfreude feel. We all watched while he and his zealous tech bros systematically dismantled the Federal government without understanding roles and needs and without returning some of the 100s of millions of dollars Musk had received in government contracts. Some departments were so decimated that employees had to be rehired to perform critical tasks. So while I agree with Musk on the increase in government deficit, I still call hypocrisy on taking what he has from the government.
- There’s a fourth one, actually. As a country, we have bailed out big industry numerous times- auto industry, home industry, banks, on and on. We also forgave the PPP loans of the top 1%. Why are we okay with providing charity and loan forgiveness to billionaires and not to students who have paid off three years of student loan interest and participated in a government program for student loan forgiveness? Why do we only give welfare to the wealthy? Why would I- who paid off almost $100k in student loans myself- resent today’s young people not having to go through the hardship I did? I want today’s young to have this hurdle knocked down!
These are the issues that sent me to research the correlation between wealth and empathy, kindness and compassion. Are the wealthy really different from the average American? Drum roll, please: yes, a strong negative correlation exists. Simply put, billionaires (most of them) are assholes. They lose empathy, compassion, connection and relationship. In fact, they live in purely transactional worlds- I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. Just look at the tiff between Musk and Trump now when their mutual usefulness expired.
One of the arguments I’ve heard about bailing out big industry is their employment of other Americans. Yet, as AI becomes more ubiquitous, these same companies are replacing humans with robotics. In fact, this started decades ago. Look at the jobs lost in the auto industry. Big business does little to safeguard jobs for the average American worker and it doesn’t bring jobs back either. The wealthy reap the rewards, benefits and bailouts.
The belief in “working harder” also breaks down when examined. Does a billionaire really work harder than the single mom with 3 jobs, working 90 hours a week and caring for her four children? More frequently today than in generations past, billionaire status is gained based on inheritance, cronyism and financial opportunities not afforded the average American. Are these billionaires better simply because they are fortunate to have access? And let’s not forget, billionaires take advantage of government subsidies and regulatory loopholes. Many workers helped them get where they are. They did not do it alone. Yet, billionaires overwhelmingly believe otherwise.
If most billionaires were good people, we would see more improvements to society. If ingenuity is what we’re protecting, then let’s ask them to apply their innovation, cleverness, and singleminded obsessions to homelessness, hunger, healthcare, systemic poverty and crime rehabilitation. I would think that solving these very real US horrors are more profound than having very wealthy people living on mars by 2070- one of Musk’s literally lofty goals. The tech bros see democracy as dead and old fashioned (read Peter Theil). Their goal is to break everything, even if it doesn’t need breaking, and refashion it with tech oligarchs at the helm. This sounds like a new version of 1984, or Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall. When wealthy oligarchs rule, society is made for those who have money and those who don’t have no opportunity to climb out. Btw- that is communism.
Billionaires’ inventiveness is not applied to real world problems but to abstract, out of the world, unearthly, inhuman issues- i.e. rockets and Mars. Perhaps they can move en masse to Mars so those of us left on earth can get to work and solve real problems.
The root of the richer=meaner equation is ego. Extreme wealth magnifies the concept of exceptionalism, the belief that one is wealthy because they are better than anyone else. The definition of empathy, however, is connection and compassion. Exceptionalism and empathy don’t coexist.
Of course, billionaire exceptions do exist- MacKenzie Scott, for one. Warren Buffet, probably, as well. I’m sure there are more. But it’s too few.
We are an asshole society. This is the only way we can explain how empathy has shifted from starving children (Florida has now passed a law so underage children can work- you know, earn their food) to reducing billionaire taxes? A billionaire will not feel a 20% tax. A person making $75,000 per year will.
Our compassion-o-meter needs recalibrating. When we overlook human suffering for billionaire aggrandizement, our meter is stuck: our country has become the United States of Assholes rather than the tired and weary masses yearning to be free. Send your poor and hungry to Canada or elsewhere. The US of A-holes doesn’t care.
I would love to hear from you, even if, especially if, you disagree. Perhaps we can bring back the American tradition of debate. Please like and share this blog with others. Subscribe to receive it by email and go directly to the Walk the Moon website (www.walk-the-moon.com) to peruse the full collection of articles and updates. You can email me from the Walk the Moon website as well. Pl
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