A free society (one driven by Capitalism) that creates billionaires is a moral society. In fact, the presence of billionaires in a Capitalist society is a direct measure of that society’s morality.
A command society (one driven by Socialism) also creates billionaires. The presence of billionaires in a Socialist society is a direct measure of that society’s immorality.
To explain, let’s focus on today’s “world’s richest person,” Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon. His title may be stripped after his divorce, but let’s wish the couple well and go with this for now.
Readers, please click on this link and notice that as of Friday (1/24/19), Jeff Bezos owned just about 79 million shares of Amazon stock, which closed around $1,670 per share. A quick calculation puts his wealth, from ownership of Amazon shares alone, at $130 billion dollars. Not bad for a guy that started out selling books.
Amazon is a 25 year old company (relatively young) and employs over 500,000 workers. If you click this link, you’ll see that Amazon is valued at approximately $800 billion dollars and profits a mere 4% on revenue of just over $220 billion dollars.
So why provide these statistics? I don’t know how much more wealth Jeff Bezos has beyond the $130 billion. However, even if it’s $10 billion in cash stuffed in a mattress, that still means 92% of his wealth is in Amazon stock, SERVING the rest of the world! Is it necessary to explain how the existence of Amazon and the genius of Jeff Bezos benefits billions of people? Is the morality of Mr. Bezos’ contributions derived from his great wealth not self-evident? Even if Bezos were somehow able to miraculously sell ALL his stock at Friday’s price and reap $130 billion in cash (for his mattress), the investors that purchased the stock would have placed THEIR money in the service of others, by owning their respective pieces of Amazon, a company we all agree is of tremendous benefit to everyone. As a side note, billionaires typically don’t liquidate to stuff mattresses or buy $130 billion dollars worth of caviar. Many become great philanthropists like Gates and Rockefeller to name two.
Let’s look at other well known billionaires, which all happen to be dead ex-dictators of Socialist regimes, such as Hugo Chavez, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and Fidel Castro. Does anyone want to hold up Venezuela, Iraq, Libya or Cuba as moral societies while under these Socialist dictators?
As in the Jeff Bezos example, the vast majority of the wealth of America’s super-wealthy is in the service of the non-super-wealthy. Notice this didn’t say, “in the service of the poor.” This is because most of today’s poor in America’s free and Capitalist society, would be considered wealthy in any of the Socialist societies mentioned above and others not mentioned.
As Democrats lurch further Left, let’s not let them, with the help of the main stream media, self-anoint as caretakers of the moral high ground, especially when any attempt on their part to do so is a BIG LIE! Popularity and shallow audacity will lose to truth that is trumpeted loudly, proudly and relentlessly!
Michael Malgeri is the creator of the “Johnny Profit” series of children’s books, which teaches young people about Capitalism. He co-author of #ROCKME, a Congressional Resolution that stands for "Rewards Of Capitalism:Knowledge, MORALITY, Empowerment." He’s also involved in projects that spread Capitalist ideas to the young people of Africa. Please visit his website at www.Kids4biz.com