Let’s all practice billionaire positivity
It’s not a zero-sum world.
Back in November, the Department of Homeland Security put out an insane propaganda tweet asserting that immigrants are responsible for all the problems in American life, only to be met by a Pramila Jayapal retort that, actually, it’s all the fault of evil billionaires.
This is really dumb as a policy analysis.
Billionaires are not the reason that traffic is terrible, for example. They just aren’t. A lot of this is that Pramila Jayapal has incorrect ideas about economics, but I can’t even begin to reconstruct what she’s thinking about traffic jams. She’s suffering from Billionaire Derangement Syndrome every bit as much as Stephen Miller has gone ’round the bend with hatred of immigrants.
And, on some level, I empathize with her.
Social media has exposed many of us, often for the first time, to the casual political thinking of extremely high-net-worth individuals. And it’s truly aggravating to watch Bill Ackman or Marc Andreessen sound off in an ignorant way about various issues. Of course there are also lots of non-billionaires sounding off in ignorant ways too. But it’s more annoying when the billionaires do it because you can just imagine them sitting around smugly in their Scrooge McDuck moneypits firing off these bad takes without a care in the world, not even realizing that half the people agreeing with them are just kissing their asses because they are rich.
That being said, how many billionaires are actually out there firing off hot takes?
If you take a look at the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, you’ll find that the 500th richest person on the planet, Bruce Kovner (at the time of writing), has a net worth of approximately $7.4 billion. The list stops at 500, so there’s got to be hundreds more people with net worth below Kovner’s but above $1,000,000,000. How much do you know about them? Are they all obnoxious? I met Kovner once, and he’s not obnoxious. He’s more right-wing than I am, and I think too enamored of unregulated school choice. On the other hand, he supports Success Academy, which is a very good charter-school network, and also things like Juilliard and Lincoln Center and other uncontroversial arts stuff. Here’s one of his politics takes from a decade ago:
I believe in free-market principles and strong defense and look for those things in political representatives. In my view, complex coalitions lead to the most stable government, so I want a variety of opinions, ethnicities, and classes in each party. I deplore ad hominem attacks, which degrade the quality of political debate and are not good for the country. We can make progress if we call those who disagree with us our opponents in policy, but our colleagues in seeking good outcomes for America. But not if we call them dishonest or cast doubt on their good intentions.
That’s a pretty good take! Kovner pushed the R.N.C. to disavow Trump in 2016 and supported Chris Christie’s campaign in 2024. We could use more center-right billionaires with that level of integrity.
It feels a little absurd to write a pro-billionaire post, or do takes like “not all billionaires,” or say that some of the billionaires I’ve met over the years have been very thoughtful and perceptive people. I guess I don’t really think that anti-billionaire demagoguery is going to get out of hand and lead to blood in the streets and orgies of destruction.
But I do see people working themselves up, not about the details of tax policy or the regulation of any particular business, but about “billionaires” in general and I think it’s emotionally and intellectually unhealthy. There is nothing wrong with starting a business. There is nothing wrong with a business being successful. And it happens to be the case that if you start a business and it is very successful, you will end up with a net worth that is north of $1 billion. If you can pull that off, good for you!
Many billionaires are doing great things
I really got to thinking about billionaire positivity last summer when my family was in Maine.
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