Should billionaires exist?
Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, whose current net worth Forbes estimates at nearly $139 billion, admits it’s “a strange thing to have people worth [billions],” he said in an episode of the new Netflix docuseries “What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates.”
“It’s such a mind-blowing amount of money relative to personal needs,” Gates added in the episode, which explores the issue of income inequality around the world.
In fact, an interviewer asks Gates directly if he believes he’s “too rich.” The billionaire avoided giving a “yes” or “no” answer, but left no uncertainty that he feels wealthy individuals should share more of their wealth with the rest of humanity.
“It’s kind of wild that we do have billionaires,” Gates said. “It’s a huge amount of wealth, which if you even tried to consume it would be kind of absurd. You want that money to be given back to society, not just consumed.”
It’s an issue that Gates is personally invested in, literally, as his nonprofit Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated billions of dollars to address global problems like poverty and inequity. Gates is on the record as believing that the wealthiest people, himself included, should pay much higher tax rates.
“I’m for a tax system in which, if you have more money, you pay a higher percentage in taxes. I think the rich should pay more than they currently do,” Gates wrote in a 2019 blog post.
In fact, Gates got more specific, noting that he would have roughly 62% less wealth under his own proposed tax system for the U.S., he told journalist Kara Swisher at a Netflix-sponsored event in New York City last week.
“I would set tax rates quite a bit higher for rich people,” he said at the event, citing a conversation he had with progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has argued for substantially higher taxes for the wealthy. “I would not make it illegal to be a billionaire. [Sanders] would take away over 99% of what I have. I would take away 62% of what I have. So that’s a difference.”
‘The world would be better if billionaires voluntarily chose to give more money away’
A majority of Americans favor higher taxes on wealthy individuals in order to counter growing wealth inequality, polls show. The wealth of the top 1% of richest Americans recently hit record levels, as they currently hold more than 30% of the nation’s total wealth, according to data from the Federal Reserve.
The fact that government data shows nearly 38 million people currently live in poverty in the U.S., one of the world’s richest nations, suggests that “our social safety net is not funded as well as we’d like it to be,” Gates said in the docuseries.
That’s why Gates advocates for higher taxes on the wealthy, as do a handful of his fellow billionaires, like Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban. That’s also the idea behind his commitment to philanthropy, and why Gates advocates for more billionaires to join his Giving Pledge, in which 240 wealthy individuals have committed to giving away at least half of their fortunes to charity during their lifetimes.
Ultimately, Gates aims to give away “virtually all” of his massive fortune with the goal of eventually dropping off the list of the world’s wealthiest people completely: “I’m not saying it’s some awful thing to be on the list. I’m just making it clear it’s not a positive thing,” he said in the docuseries. “I think the world would be better if billionaires voluntarily chose to give more money away.”
To be clear, Gates is still a firm believer in capitalism as the foundation of the American economy. He believes financial incentives for hard work and innovative thinking should continue to exist as inspiration for workers and entrepreneurs like himself to create the wealth that keeps the U.S. economy humming.
“I’m not someone who thinks outlawing wealth above a certain size is the right way to go about it. But, again, I’m biased. [And] I understand why some people feel that way. And, it’s a good debate.”
Gates’ point is that he believes America’s current economic system, and its tax system in particular, unfairly benefit some people more than others.
Under that system, “a few people end up with a great deal,” Gates wrote in 2019: “I’ve been disproportionately rewarded for the work I’ve done, while many others who work just as hard struggle to get by.”
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