As the housing crisis and wealth inequality emerge as top issues for voters in New York City, mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani has called for higher taxes on the rich to pay for services and famously suggested that billionaires should not exist. Mamdani's viral campaign handily defeated Andrew Cuomo, New York's former governor, in a Democratic primary earlier this year. As expected, billionaires and billionaire-owned companies such as Airbnb and DoorDash are now spending big to defeat Mamdani and influence the race.
Billionaires are often lauded in America, but some condemn them as evil simply for being billionaires. This raises the moral issue of whether a person can be morally good and a billionaire. The issue is whether, in general, you could be a billionaire and still plausibly be a good person. Proper resolution of this issue requires determining which moral theory (if any) is correct. But we can rely to some degree on our moral intuitions and some basic logic.
Parents have been making these judgy comments to each other forever--in the '90s it was about too much tv. And it's especially gross coming from a billionaire with a gaggle of nannies. Keeping kids engaged in activities and/or responding to 'I'm bored' 24/7 sounds exhausting when you don't have hired help to do it for you, and there's nothing wrong with a reasonable amount of screen time.
Billionaires as a group now account for 1.7% of total wealth worldwide, but in certain countries, this figure can exceed 4.0%, showing significant wealth concentration.
"My neighbors, my friends, my family, the people who are most deserving are going to be basically reverse Robin Hooded by these billionaires, and we can't be lining their pockets while we're cutting a trillion from Medicaid, SNAP, food assistance and other vital services," said Ashmu Murakami, Sunrise Movement.
"Aspirations to wealth can be positive, but aspiring billionaires risk losing their integrity if they don't choose their role models wisely amidst troubling headlines."
