The tweet in question. Via “Martha Kelly” on Twitter.
Although this tweet first came into the spotlight in 2019, it has since made the rounds online and it has even made the Reddit front page, most recently in early 2021.
Clearly, the proposal in the tweet resonates with many, after all the tweet appears to offer a seemingly “reasonable” approach to the problem of poverty. The author of the tweet claims that they are not looking to make billionaires poor, just less rich. That doesn’t sound too bad, right? Why wouldn’t wealthy people get on board with the idea?
Spoiler alert: there are many issues with this proposal.
Logistics
Before we discuss the morality behind the argument made in this tweet, let’s first talk about the logic behind it. Does it make sense? Would their suggestions of making billionaires just a little less rich actually have the desired impact?
This tweet is suggesting that if billionaires gave up some of their “exorbitant” wealth, then some of that wealth could go to people in need, and that way the world would be a better place and the billionaires wouldn’t even suffer that much because they would still be rich, just less rich, right?
Well, to illustrate the flawed logic in terms of mathematics alone, let’s take this proposal several steps further. What if we gathered all of the billionaires in the world and we took not only a small percentage of their wealth but took all of their wealth instead and distributed it among the whole population of the world. Would that solve the world’s problems of poverty?
According to Google, as of 2019, there were 7.674 billion people in the world, and there were 2,825 billionaires in the world with a combined net worth of $9.4 trillion.
Now, if you divide the combined net worth of billionaires between the number of people in the world, everybody would get the underwhelming amount of $1236. That’s barely a stimulus check.
But then, what would happen after? That money wouldn’t change people’s lives, let’s be honest. And even if you made the argument that we should only divide the billionaire’s wealth among those who are extremely needy and not among the rest of the world, that would still not have the life-changing impact this tweet implies.
This makes one suspect that people who tweet things like this aren’t as concerned with the needy as they are annoyed by the fact that billionaires exist.
A Better Solution to Poverty
So what is the true solution to “saving the needy”? You can come up with a bunch of schemes like taxation, which attempts to take a little bit from everybody and then divide the spoils. But the truth is that the best way to make sure people are taken care of to give each person the freedom to take care of themselves.
Sure, there are many homeless people all over the world, but the circumstances of how they end up in homelessness are very unique to each one of them. Most people around the world are perfectly capable to work enough to feed themselves, keep a roof over their heads and even afford luxuries like smartphones and air conditioning — things that Kings from a hundred years ago could only dream of. And that’s the way it should be — each person taking responsibility for their own life.
It seems outrageous to place the responsibility of providing sustenance for all the people in the world on the shoulders of a few people, in this case, the billionaires. Instead, each one of us should place the responsibility of our own life on our own shoulders.
And yes, making a living is easier in some countries than it is in others. But the same principle applies. Even if you divide not just the wealth of billionaires, but the wealth of the entire world between everyone on earth — as the socialists would like — it would just be a very temporary “fix,” we’re talking a day or weeks, because wealth cannot just be distributed, it needs to be produced — it’s an on-going process. This is why each person should try to produce as much wealth as they need for themselves.
Now, perhaps the person who tweeted this is not planning on distributing the wealth of billionaires between the poor. Perhaps they only want to use that money to develop social programs that help people. But again, what type of program can you develop that is more effective than allowing each person in the world to work and provide for themselves?
Which is another reason governments need to get out of the way of their citizens’ lives and let them work. Stop putting barriers in front of them that prevent them from working, such as expensive business licenses and many other regulations that hinder people from starting a business.
And there is another thing worth talking about. Why aren’t those billionaires spending all of their money by throwing lavish parties every night, or by buying boatloads worth of jewelry? Why do they hold on to the wealth? And why even the most charitable of them give only a small portion of it away?
The reality is that in order to run a business you need money, regardless of the size of your business venture. For instance, if you are a small coffee shop, and you make a profit of $5000 per month, you have to keep at least more than $5000 in the bank at all times in case you have a bad month. You need cash reserves to make sure your business doesn’t go under and to be able to pay for your business expenses, such as paying your employee’s salaries.
The same goes for billion-dollar businesses. Except they have to keep much larger “cash” reserves at hand at all times in case their company is not doing well. You need a large amount of money to do damage-control, not only to save your business but also because you have hundreds of employees that depend on your company to stay afloat. However, people who tweet things like this don’t seem to comprehend this.
Billionaires
One of the things that tend to inspire people to come up with tweets like this is the fact that they believe one cannot become a billionaire without doing something wrong, that surely billionaires must have stolen or scammed someone because how else could they ammas so much wealth?
But the fact is is that, for the most part, billionaires are just good at making business on a mass scale. For instance, let’s take the example of Amazon.
The profit logic that applies to Amazon is the same logic that applies the small business down the street. When a product it’s sold, the money you get is used to pay your employees, to pay the cost of your facilities, to pay for the product itself, to pay to produce more of the same product, and then a very small portion of the sell is what you get to keep as “profit.”
The only difference with Amazon is that they figured out a way to do this process a million times a day, every day. So of course the tiny profits that they generate from the sale of each product are going to add up to millions when you’re making millions of sales a day.
But of course, Amazon is not the only one to benefit from their billion-worth platform. There are millions of vendors who have grown their business and their wealth thanks to the Amazon platform, which allows them to easily market their products to millions of customers who need and want those products.
When a small business from someone we know thrives we get excited, but when a large business thrives, we’re hostile toward it — hostile because they’re too good at what they do. Where is the logic in that?
And of course, the vendors and Amazon itself are not the only ones to benefit from Amazon’s success. Everyone that uses Amazon benefits from its existence. Even the most wealthy people in the 1950s could only dream to have access to the type of “luxuries” common people can access nowadays with an Amazon account: next-day delivery, entertainment, medicine delivered to your door, etc.
Now, of course, there are other factors that one can use when assessing big business-like, are their business practices ethical, or are they lobbying in the government to squash the competition? Those are things worth scrutinizing, but for the most part, most of these businesses are just really good at business.
Morality
Now let’s talk about the morality of the proposal behind this tweet.
Here in the united states, we uphold property rights because nobody enjoys getting the stuff they worked hard to get getting taken away from them, right?
So why do we think it’s alright to violate the property rights of billionaires? After all, they are just people, people who happen to have made a lot of money. Is there an official chart somewhere that dictates how much property rights should be respected based on how much you make? And who gets to decide how much is too much? The president? The internet? Oprah? The egalitarians’ Official chart of property rights vs income?
Of course, there’s a lot more to be said about this subject regarding morality. But for now, consider this: If we didn’t have the government to do our dirty work for us and you had to be the one to walk up to Jezz Bezo’s house and tell him that you want him to give up his wealth — what would you say? What would be your justification? Or would you forgo words and just show up with a gun and threaten to shoot him if he doesn’t give it up?
This is, as you might realize, is what the government does to all of us, but instead of pointing a gun at you, they just threaten you with jail — in the case of not paying taxes.
“Under Capitalism . . .”
It is also worth noting that the first half of the tweet appears to suggest that Capitalism is responsible for certain misfortunes, such as “children going hungry” and “people losing their homes.” But the truth is those situations are not a consequence of Capitalism, but of a free society.
In a free society, you are free to engage in any ventures you want and take financial risks, which means sometimes your ventures might fail. For instance, you are free to buy a house whenever you like. However, sometimes people buy homes when it is not financially feasible to do so, so they end up losing their house. This, of course, it’s an oversimplification, as there are many factors that might lead someone to lose their home.
The alternative to living in a free society where you are allowed to take risks is to live in a totalitarian society, where you are not allowed to do what you want to do in the name of “keeping everyone equal.” In a totalitarian society, there is more equality, but not because everyone is better off, but because most people are equally miserable. In a free society, however, you have the opportunity to take the type of risks that make many people succeed and become wealthy.
Now let’s talk about another thing: The intention behind the tweet. Perhaps this tweeter doesn’t hate billionaires, perhaps they were motivated to tweet about this because they just want to make the world a better place, and this was one of the possible solutions they came up with.
Who doesn’t want all people to live good lives and not suffer? But the reality is that we are not weak creatures who need saving from the responsibility of sustaining our lives. Aside from people with extreme disabilities, most of us are capable of working to sustain ourselves, which is the real solution to “the problem of poverty.”
As previously mentioned: It is unreasonable to place the burden of the well-being of all human beings on the shoulders of a handful of people. We should each place the burden of our own well-being on our own shoulders.
And yes, as a free-market advocate I believe the system that best allows people to work and create wealth is Capitalism, free trade. Sure, there are plenty of billionaires that inherited their wealth — nothing wrong with being able to decide who inherits your wealth when you die — but there are also many self-made billionaires. Just think about that. Being free to do business and innovate and make lots of money is something that is only possible in Capitalists economies.
Will people ever stop demonizing the pursuit of wealth? The author of this other, also-viral tweet probably won’t.”
This tweet also made the front page of Reddit.
The assumption in this tweet is that there must be a secret, magical tax percentage that will finally fix poverty. But you could tax billionaires 90% of their wealth and that still wouldn’t solve poverty. A small group of people cannot save the world just by giving up their money. Again, just let people work. That’s the real solution.
And of course, it doesn’t need to be said but I’ll say it anyway: just because free-market advocates like myself are against taxes, doesn’t mean we are against voluntary charity. What we are fighting is coercion of individual rights in the name of the “greater good.” Even if taxes were abolished overnight, that wouldn’t take away our empathy. Many of us would still help people if we have the means to do it.
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