It’s been said that society in general dislikes two very different classes of people – those who are great failures and those who are great successes.
Thus we have James Steidle’s last two anti-billionaire columns.
Is it envy? It would seem so, because nothing bad that has happened in anyone’s life was because someone else is a billionaire. Millions of people willingly paid Bill Gates for his operating system. They got good value for their money, so he became a multi-billionaire. How has that hurt anyone? The products which made him a billionaire made life better for millions of us.
I would suggest that billionaires are necessary. Get rid of them and we get rid of the system that allows anyone and everyone the opportunity to increase their wealth, because that is the same system that is used to become a billionaire.
Everyone has the same opportunity to increase their wealth, but not everyone has the ability or discipline to do so, and very few are capable of recognizing and acting on the opportunities to build great wealth. Without billionaires, there would be no millionaires and no middle class, just the poor with no opportunity to advance and no hope.
China’s communist system kept their people locked in poverty. When China’s leadership allowed their people to practice capitalism, they started to build wealth and soon were climbing out of poverty at the rate of 1 million per month, all without any government anti-poverty programs. And yes, a few of them even became billionaires.
There will always be billionaires, no matter what the economic system. Fidel Castro kept his people locked in communism while he himself accumulated a personal net worth of nearly a billion US dollars. Hugo Chavez (socialist president of Venezuela) mired his people in poverty and at the same time, over a period of 14 years, accumulated a personal fortune of $4 billion US.
In capitalism, the chance to become a billionaire is open to everyone. When that opportunity is taken away from the people, only the ruling elite have the opportunity become billionaires, and they do it by nefarious means.
Art Betke
Prince George
