They invested wisely

If America is starting to resemble the country Ayn Rand described in Atlas Shrugged, it is no coincidence.  It seems that a lot of American billionaires have found ways to sock away their money that would be out of reach of any billionaires' tax, meeting each year in Davos (Galt's Gulch) to discuss their strategies for saving the world, with nothing more than empty commitments coming out of it.  What they have managed to do is consolidate an incredible amount of wealth, leaving the vast majority of the country, and by extension the world, scrambling to make ends meet.  

It took a while but Lithuania now has a handful of billionaires, who like to consider themselves self-made.  Like the architect who got stiffed by Trump, my experiences have not been positive.  Suffice it to say, I don't have any sympathy for billionaires, or millionaires for that matter.  I know that they didn't earn it.  They made their money off the backs of others.  If they "invested wisely" it is because they often had inside information that led to lucrative deals.  

Look at Musk. This is a guy who made his first billion in 2012, thanks to the government extending him a substantial loan to upgrade the production of Tesla, and he is now worth nearly $300 billion.  You don't make that much money that fast without having valuable connections and inside information.  Yet, Musk believes himself to be a self-made billionaire.

His is probably the most meteoric rise in history, putting him on par with the tycoons of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  I don't think Rockefeller, Carnegie and Morgan made their billions that quickly.  These were the great financiers Ayn Rand extolled in her book.  She believed they could save the world.  Elon appears to be taking a similar turn, after getting so much flack for his love for rockets.  He wants to end world hunger now, but will only donate sizable contributions if the UN makes its accounting transparent.  That's pretty rich coming from this guy.

It is doubtful the world will ever see any accounting of this money, anymore than the Newark school system in New Jersey saw anything come of Zuckerberg's money in 2010.  It was a failed initiative largely because it only allowed for the rich people to sit at the school board and try to turn a public school system into a charter school system that failed miserably.

What it seems these billionaires want to do is get rid of government all together and run the world from their lofty perch in Davos.  That way they could eliminate the middleman, which is the way most people see government anyway.  We know how these politicians are underwritten by wealthy patrons, who promote their interests in government.  This is why nothing gets done with climate change despite all the empty promises each year.  

The time to have done something about climate change was back in the 1960s, but after decades of neglect thanks to successive conservative governments in the US, UK, France and Germany, the global warming patterns are now so pronounced that we are literally in damage control.  It is no longer about remedying the situation but forestalling the inevitable - a total environmental collapse that will leave the vast majority of persons on this planet in desolation.

Whatever initiatives are taking place are at the NGO level with governments trailing far behind.  These non-governmental organizations are largely funded by small contributions.  Billionaires like to make a big splash from time to time, but their money is quickly absorbed in the ongoing effort to combat climate change, feed the hungry and try to mitigate contagious diseases like TB.  In the end, their meager contributions amount to little more than a public relations exercise to make themselves sound like good guys.  

Often this backfires, like the time Elon sent his little submersibles to save those kids trapped in a water-soaked cave in Thailand only to have it blow up in his face.  There were no good intentions here, just an attempt to capitalize on all the attention these kids were getting.  This is vintage Elon Musk.  Everything is ultimately about himself, and his current interest in world hunger is the same.

We can no more rely on these billionaires to save us than we could in the 1910s or 1950s.  They don't give a rat's ass about world hunger, climate change or any other social peril.  All they care about is making a name for themselves, some of which still lingers like the Carnegie-Mellon libraries that the two Andrews set up in posterity.  They were going to educate the world through their libraries after making fabulous sums of money exploiting labor for decades.  Well, it is nice to see that these libraries are still being used, but that does not vindicate them.

One of the great boons for Americans was during the Depression years, when so many businesses went belly up and the government was forced to intervene.  It could have happened much sooner than 1935 had not Herbert Hoover and Republicans in Congress dragged their heels, but later is better than never, and soon many Americans found themselves employed building roads, bridges and other badly needed infrastructure in this country.  This was funded by taxes, including a very large wealth tax, that for once held these Gilded Age Tycooons accountable.  Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats in Congress were also able to establish a social security administration and various other social programs that greatly alleviated the mass poverty at the time, and gave workers something to look forward to in the way of pensions.  In Europe, this would occur after WWII.

Unlike Ayn Rand's homage to her benevolent billionaires, it has repeatedly been the government that has stepped in to alleviate economic crises.  We saw it again in 2008, the worst economic collapse since the Depression, and almost entirely brought about by the greed of billionaires and their corporate-backed politicians in Washington that allowed AIG to collapse under an enormous weight of bad loans.  You heard the story that the banks were too big to fail.  Well, they did, yet the government bailed them out anyway, leaving a few crumbs for others.  

It took years to get out of this mess largely because the government invested too little in Americans and too much in banks and the auto industry, hoping to revive big business and get Wall St. in the black again.  Meanwhile, most of us suffered through government austerity measures, except in a handful of countries who were smart enough to put their citizens first.  

Sadly, John Galt seems to still hold sway in Washington.  Look at Mitch McConnell talk about the virtues of investment rather than tax the rich to steer us out of the crisis created by COVID last year.  He says billionaires should not be taxed just because they invested wisely.  Even if Elon Musk were to give $6 billion to world hunger, it would amount to only 2% of his estimated wealth.  The billionaire tax would have him pay a measly 5%.  He would still have $285 billion to his name, hardly putting a dent into his enormous fortune, yet helping to offset some of the social programs that Biden and the Democrats are hoping to sponsor with their proposed budget, which has already been whittled down substantially, less than what we poured into Afghanistan the last 20 years.

It's time we get over our infatuation with billionaires.  They will never hold the public interest in prime regard, as Ayn Rand's fantasized about.  They are truly selfish in every regard.  What little money they donate makes a very small addition the US and UN efforts to alleviate the crises that confront us locally and globally.  Even if we taxed billionaires 100% it still wouldn't be enough, but at least it would be something, and right now that is all we can hope for.