All Billionaires Are Evil

Or, American Greed Gives Me Chest Pain

The average heart beats just short of three billion times in its lifetime. When I was first told this in my anatomy class, my immediate reaction was to think, “I would’ve thought it was more.” Whenever I share the fact, I get a similar response.

It is merely a statement of fact that our society has lost its understanding of what a billion is. The number seems to not-so subtly surround us through its increased verbal usage, diluting its connotations. You probably hear it every day. It doesn’t awe you like it used to.

Right after being surprised at how “little” the human heart beats, I also thought, “Some people make more than that”. That was my basis of comparison; I hear more about the billions of dollars that the top 1% hoards than the billions of times my heart beats because the latter just isn’t that societally relevant. I can’t help but think that if I’d heard this fact a little earlier in my life, I would’ve rather been astonished at how rapidly our heart works than confused at its… mediocrity?

I don’t think humans were ever supposed to become familiar with a “billion.” The concept should have been reserved for absurd notions like light-years, the human population— heart beats.

But it’s not anymore. It’s attainable, its desired. People want to be a billionaire. It’s like we skipped the millions because, well, that’s just not enough anymore. This actually ties into a much greater epidemic that is plaguing our society with increasing speed:

Greed.

Overconsumption has become such a buzzword recently but I’m glad it’s getting recognition because I genuinely think a larger percentage of the American population is making its way towards class-consciousness as a result. It’s all tied. Everyone wants more— more money, more stuff. It’s a continuous loop that feeds off of itself. Like that one political cartoon of a snake. It’s an addiction that blinds the societal awareness of the masses. Because, whether you realize it or not, the growth of billionaires actually does benefit you. A little bit. Not proportionally, but still. Worth considering. Their greed is fed by your consumption which is the direct result of their greed. Their mega-corporations are on TikTok Shop now, literally a button away from being on its way to your doorstep. You benefit because you just need that polyester blend five-dollar sweatshirt that appeared on your favorite influencer’s amazon must-have list. And you can have it because it’s, like, ten times cheaper to make because it’s terrible quality and billionaires just can’t afford to waste extra money making sure the products they sponsor don’t ruin the planet, or your skin, or the economy, or literally anything else.

So, let’s talk about how the rise of billionaires does not benefit you (spoiler alert, there’s a lot of reasons).

I think a major aspect of billionaires is that they are not ever “self-made”. Ever. The accumulation of such ridiculous quantities of wealth can only be made possible as a result of the exploitation of others or the earth.

For example: Tim Cook is the current owner of Apple, which itself is valued at 1.9 trillion dollars. Like, with a ‘T’. Stop trying to conceptualize that— you can’t. It’s not a real number. Cook himself has a net worth of around $2.3 billion dollars, according to Forbes. While Tim Cook does all the very hard work of attending meetings, paying for things, and making executive decisions, the production workers for Apple in Shenzhen, China make about $2.80 dollars an hour, reports the South China Morning Post.

Apple workers make less than 3 dollars an hour in China.

Hey, so, that’s literally illegal here.

Now, it’s total American propaganda that China has no labor laws. Their labor laws are decently reasonable. Employees are entitled to paid leave, maternity insurance, and proportioned overtime pay (English.gov.cn). So, why is so much of our stuff made over there?

Minimum wages are not nationally enforced but instead depend on regional officials to implement. Apple does not directly employ workers in China, but instead contracts with manufacturers like Foxconn which manage the workforce. In Shenzhen, the minimum wage is about 22 RMB/hour, which is around $3/hour. Many workers rely on overtime pay to survive, which might make their monthly earnings slightly higher and compliant with ethical laws. Their hourly wage is still low. Also, benefits are often factored into pay. Free housing or meals are often used to reduce actual take-home pay, which is often counted as part of the salary. Also, most labor laws are not even enforced because a lot of the work force in China is made up of migrant workers. The Harvard Business Review has an insanely interesting article on this—"The High Cost of Cheap Chinese Labor”. Do your own research; it’s a lot more complex than I make it seem. I am not a woman in STEM, I will not be making a chart. Sorry.

Anyway. These working conditions can persist because they are consistently funded by people who are funded by people like Tim Cook. The terrible thing is that they do not have to be. Like, Elon Musk has most of his Tesla warehouses in the U.S (I’ll get to Elon Musk’s atrocities in a second). Most of his labor practices are comparatively ethical with the rest of the billionaire stratosphere. Anyone with over a billion dollars can afford to pay their workers livable wages. Also, I might be getting a little ahead of myself here, but I cannot name a single person who giddily anticipates the release of a new Apple iPhone every single year. Most of us are sick of it. They are all relatively the same. Slow the production down!

Back to Elon Musk. He is the wealthiest man in the U.S as of today. According to Forbes, his net worth is around $434 billion. I will do just a little bit of math for you. If he so desired, he could use less than half of his net worth (200 billion) to feed currently starving people… about 33 times, if he were to respond to the UN’s proposal of a $6-billion-dollar donation (How billionaire Elon Musk’s fortune could end world hunger). He would then be the third richest person in the United States (God forbid!).

Maybe this model is unrealistic, maybe it is somewhat inaccurate. The point is, he could be doing a lot of philanthropizing right now. But instead, Elon Musk spent $277 million on Donald Trump’s campaign, which is exactly what everyone was asking him to do— not (Elon Musk Backed Trump With…—NYT). If you’d like a long list of the evil things Musk has done, Vanity Fair has kindly compiled an article for you. Find it here.

People with so much power need to be held accountable, even for verbal grievances. Elon Musk spews so much false information, that it’s a genuinely dangerous situation. He is influential, he has money. People believe him. His status as a billionaire gives him an enlarged stage upon which he can display his mistakes and wrongdoings.

If you’re still thinking about the title, no it was not click-bait.

All billionaires are evil. Inherently.

“But Bella, I’m sure there are some nice billionaires out there!”

I’m sure there are! That’s not what I mean.

All billionaires contribute to various forms of corruption, whether it be first or second-hand. Regardless of how they acquire their wealth, it is impossible to be a billionaire ethically. Even if they’re not the owners of huge business like Tim Cook or Elon Musk, even if they’re music artists like Taylor Swift, who’s generated over 77.5 tons of CO2e in almost 113 flight hours (yeeeouch).

Essentially, no one should be in possession of a billion dollars at the same time some people are in possession of nothing. I mean, let’s look at the wealth distribution in America.

While this graph is from four years ago, little has changed. Billionaires still continue to hoard wealth, money they did not work for. They didn’t work for it because there is no amount of work able to be done that would be proportional to billion-dollar compensation. Simply put, no one deserves so much money. However, the majority of Americans are working. Many are working just as hard as CEOs, basketball players, and singers. They are not making anywhere near a billion dollars because the billion dollars are being greedily stowed away by the billionaires. As we get further into this pattern of wealth disparity, it becomes increasingly more difficult for the working class to make a living. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer because the rich own the world and are fed out of their own, exclusive, white-gloved hand. They sell their companies to each other, leaving those with an unprivileged (financially) start to life an incredibly hard time to improve their economic situation, making it almost impossible for class mobility.

Chelsea Fagan from The Financial Diet says this: “Much of the ‘American Dream’ stands on the idea that we can change our financial standing with relative ease. We’re actually way behind. We tend to fall behind almost all other developed countries in terms of class mobility, and, even by our own standards, mobility has vastly decreased since 1980”.

Watch Here.

Billionaires are why your groceries are becoming more expensive, why everyone needs to take loans out for school, why the middle class is disappearing.

Nicolas Costa writes in The Economics of Billionaires, “By September of 2020, the wealth of American billionaires grew by 845 billion dollars, all while millions of Americans struggle with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. To put that into perspective, that is about equal to the GDP of the Netherlands – all in the hands of less than a thousand people.”

For lack of a better phrase— that’s not fair.

And billionaires themselves have the ability to change this. They won’t, because like I said, they are consumed by greed.

A while ago a reddit post resurfaced on TikTok where someone calculated the amount we could take from the billionaire class without reducing the number of billionaires in the world.

It was $6,472,200,000,000.

And they would all still have a billion dollars!

According to the original poster, that amount could solve world hunger for 216 years and halt the climate change multiple times. This isn’t a totally credible source so take it with a grain of salt. Like I said, I don’t do much math so I will not be verifying.

Anyone with the power to cure multiple world crisis and refuses to do so is evil.

I’m finishing up this post after watching Trump’s inauguration, where many billionaires were reported to have attended. They include Jefferey Bezos (Amazon), Sundar Pichai (Google), Tim Cook (Apple), Elon Musk (X), Mark Zucherburg (Meta), Shou Zi Chew (TikTok), amongst others.

Their wealth is enough to garner them power, power that is now on display like never before.

Maybe it’s time to consider what the existence of billionaires means for you.

Goodnight.