Tuesday Column: The Billionaire Class

The rich are different than you and me.

Globally, there are more than two thousand billionaires.

America has the biggest number of billionaires (characterized as having a billion dollars more in assets than in liabilities). There are slightly more than a 800 billionaires in the United States (counting Elon Musk, who I assume is not going back to South Africa any time soon despite Donald Trump’s threats).

The US has 26 of the top 50 billionaires in the world and they spawn from 18 different companies (Amazon, Google, the Mars family, the Koch family, Microsoft, the Waltons etc). These are the big-time billionaires.

There are plenty of famous billionaires who became extremely wealthy because of their fame. Jerry Seinfeld, Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, Steven Spielberg Arnold Swartzenegger are great examples of that. And in case you think that America is an irredeemably racist country there are plenty of black billionaires, including Oprah, Michael Jordan, Jay-Z, Tiger Woods and Magic Johnson.

The chief difference between being a billionaire and being a millionaire is that billionaires have more money. And that money gives them a security that affords them a peace of mind that they aren’t going to end up in a ditch. Or end up on Medicaid.

It is rare for a billionaire to go so completely broke that they spend their last days in the homeless shelter, although for most of Musk’s billionaire life, he would sleep on the couches or extra bedrooms of his friends.

Musk is also one of the rare billionaires who couldn’t care less about how much money he has in his bank account. Most of the very wealthy become very wealthy by being careful with their money. Musk is not exactly careful with his money, but he doesn’t lavish himself with the opulence that flows from it. Sure, he likes his toys, but not because they are toys, but because they are creations that propel him to his next big thing.

I am fascinated by the psychology of the billionaire class. It all reminds me of what F. Scott Fitzgerald said of the millionaire class back in his day.

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different."

I don’t know if the billionaires who make up the top of the modern list can be characterized as soft or trustful. Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, even Warren Buffet, didn’t from great wealth when they developed their great companies. But they certainly do believe that they are better than we are, mostly because they have more money.

Money shouldn’t afford greater political access or greater moral authority, but alas it does. Money talks and bullshit walks, as the saying goes.

Politically speaking, billionaires don’t make great politicians, mostly because they don’t understand the travails of the common man. Donald Trump is unique because he gets where the people are, despite his great wealth. No amount of focus groups or poll numbers can make up for the uncanny political instincts of President Trump. It is uncanny.

I am writing about billionaires because three unrelated but connected episodes. First, Zohran Mamdani got nominated to be Mayor of New York. Second, Jeff Bezos got married in a lavish wedding that cost more than $50 million. And third, Congress is working to pass a tax and spending bill that is the centerpiece of President Trump’s legislative agenda.

Mamdani believes that there should be no billionaires and his economic policies, if enacted, would chase the few billionaires that still live in Big Apple out of the city. The Bezos wedding attracted many of America’s most successful billionaires and was a showcase for the kind of wealth that working people both despise and are fascinated with.

My general assumption is that most people who attended the Bezos wedding would be opposed to the reconciliation bill that just passed the Senate and will presumably pass the House. Most of these folks don’t pay taxes in a conventional way and probably don’t care that the bill removed taxes for tips, got rid of taxes for overtime, reduced the taxes paid on car loans and many of the other provisions that were included in the bill for working class Americans. Most of the billionaires who attended the Bezos wedding saw this as a victory for Donald Trump and the wedding attenders have nothing but disdain for our President.

For this collection of billionaires, Donald Trump is a fraud who shouldn’t be President, a racist who should be in jail, a climate destroyer who is inducing even more global warming (the wedding was very hot, by the way). This group of the very wealthy think they are better than you and me, mostly because they have money and more security.

Democrats will spend the bulk of their time in the next year attacking Republicans for cutting taxes for billionaires while kicking poor people off of the Medicaid system. Their attack ads will prove to very effective for many who attended the Bezos wedding. They don’t like Trump and by extension, they don’t like his tax cuts (or his energy policy or his immigration policy).

For Republicans, the trick will be to separate the billionaires from the working class who make up the base of the MAGA movement. This legislation will benefit everybody who works in this country, mostly by reducing taxes on job creators and those who actually pay taxes. Yes, some billionaires might reap a dividend from the growing economy which is typical when the economy grows.

Republicans have to walk a careful line. They can’t give in the class-war rhetoric a la Mamdani because attacking all of the wealthy leads to economic devastation. By the same token, they can’t cheerlead the vast economic inequality that has become endemic in American society.

This tax bill should supercharge the economy. Let’s hope it helps the working class the fastest.

Nobody likes the billionaire class, but everybody wants to be a member. It’s the only sure-fire way to stay off Medicaid.