Billionaires and Bezos

BY KIRA SARSFIELD

Let’s look at the facts — billionaires and celebrities ultimately rule the world. Between Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Facebook developer Mark Zuckerberg, these creative entrepreneurs have a combined net worth of around $260 billion. This is simply just an unfathomable amount of money for the average human mind to consider — so let’s put it into perspective.

According to Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, we could end hunger in the United States with just $25 billion — so let’s subtract that from the $260 billion. We’re left with $235 billion, which is still a big number. Then, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, $20 billion is the amount of money needed to end the homelessness crisis in America.

Using that still leaves $215 billion in the names of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Ultimately, we solved two national problems that have affected our country for hundreds of years — by only taking 17% of their net worths. Let those numbers sink in.

All throughout the world, these billionaires have been praised for their admirable persistence and determination. However, in recent generations, the popularity of these billionaires has quickly shifted. Greedy, money-hungry and lazy are some of the few words millennials are using to describe these billionaires — particularly Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for his refusal to donate bigger portions of his wealth to non-profit organizations.

Dave Brown, professor of economics at Penn State, explains that the denotation and connotation of the word “billionaire” takes on two very different forms.

“The denotation of the word ‘billionaire’ is someone who has a net worth of $1 billion to their name, but the connotation of the word ‘billionaire’ for most young people is negative,” Brown says.

Although this change of heart aligns with most of our generation’s ideologies, this change has not happened overnight. Controversial economic events around our nation have shaped the way we view our billionaires today — and not in a positive way. “Starting within the last 10 years, social events like Occupy Wall Street and the Great Recession have encouraged our nation to think that greedy, rich people and bankers caused all of these events — even though it was a lot more complicated than that,” Brown says, adding that the national government incentivized and provided bailouts for banks when making poor financial decisions.

As a result of this, our generation has viewed these poor economic decisions by our national government to be fueled by one fault: billionaires and their incomprehensible wealth. These billionaires have become the main scapegoat for America’s financial problems, like the wealth gap and inequality between middle-income and lower-income families. But, are they the ones to blame?

Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple are undoubtedly the most powerful corporations in the entire world. Amazon Prime has undoubtedly changed the world, with convenient shipping and a variety of products. Apple has built and manufactured the most advanced technology that the world has ever seen, like the iPhone and Macbook. Google and Microsoft both revolutionized the world of the internet that we once knew and turned it into a ginormous platform for information and communication.

So, are these major corporations to blame for the rise of billionaires and their wealth?

“Walmart and Amazon are these multimillion dollar companies who are hiring hundreds of thousands of employees each year,” Brown says. “If you are successfully running a trillion dollar business and bringing in tons of revenue, don’t these billionaires deserve to be paid $50 million each year?”

“If millionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are successful at running these multimillion dollar companies, another company could easily hire them away. They look at entrepreneurs like these and say: ‘Hey, you’re really good at running your company — so why not run ours instead and we’ll pay you a lot of money to do it!’” Brown says, highlighting that existing companies must pay their CEO’s a fair share to keep them around.

Just like there’s two types of people in this world, there are also two types of billionaires in our society today. Those like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos climbed the corporate ladder, making a name for themselves as their net worth grew. However, those like Kylie Jenner and Paris Hilton are criticized for not being a “self-made” billionaire, but rather those made by the influence of their name.

“Someone who is self-made is definitely going to get more admiration than the Kardashians who became famous from their father and then leveraged that fame to make yourself wealthy,” Brown says. “A lot of people will still not accept the fact that billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are self-made, saying things like ‘You still had to hire employees to work for you, therefore, you’re not self-made.’ However, no one can make a billion dollars in complete isolation — you need employees to pay and equipment to buy. But Bezos and Gates still built their own companies, hired their own workers and did the work that grew their companies.”

So, the difference between those self-made and those who got famous from their name differs. Of course, the majority of billionaires are hard-working and their companies are fueled by hard workers and great products. However, could Kylie Jenner’s Lip Kits have taken off like they did if they weren’t made by the Kylie Jenner? Could Paris Hilton’s boohoo line still be successful if the line was endorsed by your average, ordinary person? Absolutely not. All across the nation, these billionaires make money in a variety of different ways, using their names and unique, yet convenient products to revolutionize the world.

In all, our generation’s view of these billionaires is shifting fast. The richer are getting richer and our generation is awaiting the change.

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