Contrary to Bernie Sander’s advocacy to wipe out all the billionaires, let us tell you why billionaires and the first expected trillionaire of the world Jeff Bezos, shouldn’t scare you.
You might already know that Jeff Bezos is expected to become a trillionaire in the next four years, given the condition that his stocks and Amazon‘s valuation continues multiplying at the same rate as now. The projections have been made by Comparisun, a platform for small to medium size firms to draw product comparison, and is drawn out of the average percentage increase in Bezos’s income over the past couple of years.
Since the past five years, the world’s richest man Bezos has been registering an increase of 34% in his net worth.
Watch: The Odds of Jeff Bezos becoming the World’s First Trillionaire Ever
However, cynicism and complaints from people from different walks of life cannot be ignored. It would actually be a milestone in the progression of humanity if the 21st century gives the world its first trillionaire ever. But let’s agree, Americans are not happy. People who helped Amazon’s owner and CEO Jeff Bezos to reach where he is today are not happy.
The world at large is skeptical about gigantic wealth accumulation in one person’s hand, and it is understandable.
If you forgot, then let us remind you that we already have trillionaires in the world. There are trillion dollar companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and the next-in-line is Facebook. A company by definition is an artificial person. But that shouldn’t be your reason to stop worrying about the first human being owning trillion dollars.
The real reason to not fret over Jeff Bezos becoming a trillionaire is because- you really shouldn’t!.
Multiple theories are circulating about billionaires getting richer and how it endangers an average American. And it’s time you get some prudent answers to your queries. We shall talk about why Americans are unhappy and why we think they shouldn’t be. But before we address common man’s biggest concerns about billionaires, let’s just first draw a picture:
What the World would look like without Billionaires?
The world is suddenly against billionaires, unleashing hatred for stacking the amount of money that most can’t even imagine, let alone own. You might have come across tweets voicing far fetched opinions like, “we shouldn’t have any billionaires at all”.
Let’s agree with the naysayers for a minute and take all the billionaires out of the world. To make it simpler, let’s do this experiment on just the CEOs and founders of the behemoths — Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook.
What do we get if we pull out — all the billionaires from the world?
A world without the 5 companies is a world without more than 3 million jobs combined.
To begin with, a world without Facebook is a global economy at a loss of hundreds of billions. On a granular level, this translates to colossal setbacks worth $227 billion for the global economy, $148 billion for the marketing platform for the small, medium and large businesses and connectivity and communication worth $50 billion. And these are mere surface figures.
If there was no Microsoft, businesses and homes all over the world would have been deprived of over a billion personal computers. Let’s not even start on economic empowerment born out of rapid expansion of technological infrastructure globally. Not to mention the user-friendly software and tools like Windows, MS Office, PowerPoint, Paint, Excel and everything that has made lives profoundly easier.
Technically, all these technologies can rightly be called the underlying layer of modern utilities like Google docs, spreadsheets, and Google drive. And this makes it safe to say that a world without Microsoft translates to a world without any computer utility tools and software. If this isn’t enough, the company’s technology also aids governments to carry out its operations including security and statistics.
When we plan to bid goodbye to Apple, we plan to bid goodbye to more than 2 million jobs alone in the US.
This comes in addition to billion dollars in corporate taxes and a plethora of Apple enabled technology including America’s favorite iPhones. Moreover, information at our disposal on any subject matter within seconds is a wonder that Google has created for the world.
The rapid digitization enabled by the global search engine is expected to boost the American economy by $2.2 trillion and the global economy by another $1 trillion in next four years. It would probably take up the entire space to talk about the losses that would be worth multi-billion dollars for businesses and organizations worldwide that have leveraged the tech giant to expand their profits and reach.
Graph: Wealth growth for American Billionaires in 2020
You will find more infographics at Statista
To add up to the monetary benefits that the companies of world’s richest billionaires provide to governments, economies and citizens, the money moguls also run trusts and philanthropic organizations spending billions of dollars for social causes.
It’s a pretty incomplete world, almost nascent, without the billionaires and their companies in it. But this is not the only explanation for why pessimism surrounding the richest doesn’t hold a strong ground.
To understand why Jeff Bezos — becoming the first trillionaire of the world is not problematic, let’s try to unfasten one knot of doubt at a time.
Doubt 1: Capitalism is Dangerous
Straight out, capitalism is freedom and competition. It is the reason for the infusion of a prodigious amount of money in the economies in the 21st century. It is the playground for the ones who have a bull’s determination and for fact, most of the richest billionaires of the world, including the man soon expected to be a trillionaire, come from ordinary backgrounds. If they can make it big, so can others.
Watch: The Capitalism vs Socialism Debate
Free market makes the production process efficient, encourages innovation, provides financial incentives, and promotes political freedom. Whereas socialism is accumulation of power and wealth in the state’s hands with no scope of challenging human potential. The only means of climbing up the ladder is making your way through the government’s good books. And that doesn’t sound fair.
Doubt 2: Billionaires getting Richer is leading to Poor getting Poorer
There is no fact that supports the claim of decreasing wealth of the middle class and poor due to increasing wealth of the billionaires. If anything, rise in billion and trillion dollar companies have only injected more jobs and money in the market consequently raising the living standards of people.
Contrary to what people have to say about poverty, studies have revealed that the number of people living in extreme poverty fell by 1 billion since 1990. 47 million people every year stepped out of the bracket of extreme poverty in the last three decades. While issues like poverty and hunger still prevail, but the positive impact of globalization and privatization cannot be outlawed.
Graph: Countries producing the most Billionaires (2027 Projections)
You will find more infographics at Statista
Moreover, if money was enough to eradicate global poverty, every person would be living a financially secure life given the amount of money in the current world that has never existed before. But the truth is, poverty is a mindset and so is money. And the latter cannot fix the former alone.
Watch: Bill Gates opens up on the question: Should Billionaires exist at all?
Doubt 3: Jeff Bezos gets Richer and the Average American faces the Consequence
It does not work that way. Amazon’s owner Jeff Bezos becomes richer with every passing year by creating more utility for the customers throughout the process. The company grows by upgrading its operations with a planned goal of acquiring more customers who buy the services. This can only be achieved by solving their problem and creating a value that can change lives.
Graph: How Amazon’s Riches Grew (2004-2019)
Find more statistics at Statista
The company began with a handful of 21 employees. As of September 2020, Amazon employs 1,125,300 people across the world. Think of it as a ripple effect. This process of magnifying profits requires more manpower, talent and technology injecting jobs and opportunities. Millions of sellers throughout the world have upgraded their business from local to global through the pre-cooked ecommerce infrastructure that the platform provides.
If Bezos becomes a trillionaire, these benefits will only enlarge.
Trillion Dollar Question: Who Are The Billionaires In The To Be Trillionaire Race?
Within the next 80 years, the world can expect a few more additions to the incredible future list of trillionaires. Others in the race to trillion are:
| NAME | COMPANY |
|---|---|
| Mukesh Ambani | Chairman, Reliance Industries |
| Jack Ma | Ant Group (Alibaba) |
| Mark Zuckerberg | |
| Ma Huateng | Tencent Holdings |
| Bernard Arnault | LMVH |
| Steve Ballmer | Microsoft |
| Michael Dell | Dell Technologies |
| Larry Page | |
| Sergey Brin | |
| Elon Musk | Tesla & SpaceX |
