Billionaires get a bad rap.
Sure, their wealth is plundered from the earth and working class, their carbon emissions are dooming the planet, and their political influence is grotesque, but billionaires themselves are not the problem. The problem is simply that there are too few. We need more. A lot more.
There are only 750 billionaires in the United States. And that small number means billionaires act with enviable class solidarity towards their goals. That goal generally boils down to “more for us, less for everyone else.” In the vein of FDR stacking the Supreme Court, the solution is simple.
Everyone in America should get a check for a billion dollars. Easy as pie. Remember the checks we got during covid? It’d be just like that, but with a few more zeros. Suddenly there are 335 million billionaires in the United States and there is no more “everyone else.” No more 99%. We’re all billionaires now. We’re all in the same boat. Everyone has billionaire perks: yachts, medical care, housing, preferential treatment in the courts, your congressperson’s cell number. Did I mention yachts?
What would you do with your first billion? Pay off your house? Say goodbye to your student loans or medical debt? Invest in the environment? Maybe toss a couple million to the charity of your choice? Heck, you could do all that AND buy a few Supreme Court justices and still have nearly a billion dollars left over.
Now I’m sure economists (those naysaying high priests of capitalism) will have a thousand reasons why printing 335 quadrillion dollars would be a disaster. They’ll use a bunch of scary words like “hyperinflation” and “global economic collapse.” But frankly, it seems like a tariff war and the gutting of public institutions, land, and infrastructure are going to do all that anyway. Also, a system where eight people have as much money as half the country is a disaster for most of us already.
John Steinbeck wrote that the Americans “…see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Let’s end the embarrassment, make everyone billionaires, and give everyone what they deserve.