Actually, Bernie Sanders, Billionaires Should Exist

Every once in a while an age-old argument will resurface, disguised as novel discourse. Such is the case with the recent billionaire debate, a vociferous and, at times, acrid dispute concerning those individuals at the peak of our economic hierarchy. Owed in large part to an election cycle (as so much audacious rhetoric tends to be), this debate is the product of a radical new wealth tax proposed by Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Being sold as some long-overdue condemnation of society’s most avaricious, the billionaire discussion belies a long-fought history of intellectual debate, but it inevitably reduces itself to the same, centuries-old calls for economic reconstruction, a position endemic to the Left. The axes of its arguments are diverse and interconnected, but seldom original.

I want to avoid this banal retreading of arguments gone-by. Whether it be in terms of freedom, coercion, equity or justice—the waves of this discussion rise and fall like the tide. There is, however, an alternative: an avenue of thought rarely explored and more rarely understood: one from which many of these principles derive (and can only be derived)—and from which the most unlikely defense of the billionaire class emerges— their poverty.

It’s a radical and counterintuitive notion, one that I’m sure many will consider laughable, if not entirely abhorrent. How could Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos—the two richest people on the planet, the 0.001%—ever be considered to be poor? Or anyone with a nine-zero net worth for that matter: tycoons, oil barons and tech giants: those among us best measured in luxury yachts, not dollar bills. The answer lies in a notion largely estranged from modern society, seldom discussed in economics, and all but forbidden in political discourse. The answer lies in optimism.