Mansi Sharma
Do billionaires deserve to be billionaires?
Introduction
It’s gratifying to see billionaires, give charity for many global issues around the world,
however, not that glitters are gold. According to Investopedia.com, billionaires are
individuals who has assets or a net worth of at least one billion currency units such
as dollars, euros, or pounds. On the 5th of march, Forbes (a global media company,
focusing on business, investing, entrepreneurship, etc.) released its 33rd annual
ranking of the world’s billionaires, featuring the planet’s wealthiest individuals, which
accounted to 2153 billionaires around the whole world. Indeed, there is a comforting
prospect of having these billionaires, however they also have a darker side to them
which at times are overlooked looking at positive sides of them. Therefore, this
alludes to whether billionaires deserve to be billionaires. This paper aims to point out
the disadvantages caused because of billionaires are not investing much on global
problems. There are several reasons and evidences which proves the above
statement.
Disadvantages
Wealth inequality
One of the major arguments against billionaires are that they create an enormous
wealth gap around the world. “The richest 1% in the world have more than double
the wealth of 6.9 billion people and the 22 richest men in the world have more wealth
than all the women in Africa.” (Oxfam,2020) These alarming facts explain why 10
percent of the world's population lives on less than US$1.90 a day (the international
poverty line) and why majority of the people in low-income countries such as part of
the Sub-Saharan Africa, South-East Asia and many more, have no access the basic
necessities each person should have such as clean adequate water, food etc. Lack
of these necessities have caused the life expectancy of the poor to decrease
significantly. Likewise, billionaires can solve this problem by just “paying 0.5 percent
extra tax of their wealth over the next 10 years which would equal the investment
needed to create 117 million jobs in sectors such as elderly and childcare, education
and health.” (Oxfam,2020) However, as claimed by the New York Times, the overall
tax rate on the richest 400 households in 2018 was only 23 percent, meaning that
their combined tax payments equalled less than one quarter of their total income.
This shows how billionaires till date have been paying less taxes than the workingclass people, due to the loopholes many governments have which the rich benefit
from.
Another overlooked impact of wealth inequality is how economies are becoming
gender bias. According to Oxfam’s time to care report, “women and girls put in 12.5
billion hours of unpaid care work each day —a contribution to the global economy of
at least $10.8 trillion a year, more than three times the size of the global tech
industry.” These works include the healthcare work, domestic care, fast fashion
industry and many more industries of the world. They are underappreciated for the
work they do and how much extra hours they put into these businesses. Due to this
unpaid work, many girls mainly in low-income countries have a lower attendance at
school or are not able to pursue higher education.
Environmental degradation
Figure 1 Oxfam,2020
In addition to wealth gap, billionaires are also responsible for most of the
environmental degradation taking place around the world. As shown on the above,
the world’s richest ten percent are responsible for majority of the CO2 emissions
around the whole world. This could mean that even individual efforts won’t make any
difference to fight climate change because “more than 70% global emissions come
from just 100 companies.”(GQ, 2018) Moreover, a huge contribution of global
warming comes from 20 percent of the global population who are billionaires. One of
the most compelling evidence are the Koch Brothers (Founders of the Koch
Industries, a chemical manufacturing industry). According to investigative reporter
Jane Mayer’s book, "Koch Industries alone routinely released some 24 million tons of
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a year."
Counterargument
One of the arguments in favour of billionaires are doing some philanthropic work
such as donating money for many philanthropic projects around the world. A leading
example is Jeff Bezos, he gave an estimated “$2 billion thanks to the launch of
his Bezos Day One Fund, which supports existing non-profits that help homeless
families.” (CNBC,2019)
Conclusion
Overall, given these points, these show how billionaires have lost their moral values
and do not carry any social responsibility on how they can support many needy
people’s lives by just investing to solve many global issues around the world such as
lowering the wealth gap between them and the poor and bring up higher living
standards for them. They can also take measures and reduce the amount of carbon
emissions emitted by their companies to contribute less to global warming.
Reference page
1.) David Roberts (2017). “Wealthier people produce more carbon pollution —
even the “green” ones.”
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/1/16718844/green-consumersclimate-change
2.) Lifewater.org (2018) “9 World Poverty Statistics that Everyone Should
Know.”
https://lifewater.org/blog/9-world-poverty-statistics-to-know-today/
3.) Luke Darby (2018) “Billionaires Are the Leading Cause of Climate Change”
https://www.gq.com/story/billionaires-climate-change
4.) Lola Fadulu (2019) “Study Shows Income Gap Between Rich and Poor
Keeps Growing, With Deadly Effects
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/us/politics/gao-income-gap-rich-poor.html
5.) Oxfam.org (2020) “World’s billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion
people”
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-have-morewealth-46-billion-people
6.) Kate Whiting, 20 January 2020. “5 shocking facts about inequality, according
to Oxfam’s latest report”
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/5-shocking-facts-about-inequalityaccording-to-oxfam-s-latest-report/
7.)