We live in a country where 771,480 people sleep on the streets every day in unsafe, dirty, and hostile environments. We also live in a country where billionaires like Jeff Bezos own at least a dozen houses, from Florida to Hawaii. This display of excessive wealth is not only selfish, it’s immoral.
If you look at the ten richest people in America, you will notice they all fit the same category: old, white, straight, men. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe they just happen to fit into those categories while still working their hardest to advance their wealth. Or maybe they came from generations of wealth that never faced discrimination or hardships, whose money was fed to them on a silver spoon.
A whole other argument is that the only reason they were able to become so well off is because of their privileged background, a background where they most likely never had to face discrimination because of their gender or the color of their skin. They never faced prejudice or extreme inequality because of their race or sex, things they have no control over.
Regardless of how hard they did or did not work, it is completely unnecessary to be a millionaire, or, as the numbers of them go up, a billionaire. Why do these select few get to roll in their money while the middle class and below struggle to make ends meet?
If one has the power to literally change hundreds of lives with their wealth but is instead choosing to collect cars and houses that they don’t even need, that goes beyond selfish to downright evil. Now I’m not saying we implement communism into our government. I’m not saying that if you’re “comfortable” you should feel bad for making it in life. I’m simply suggesting that when an individual has such a surplus of money that they literally don’t know what to do with it, that is an excess that we should be capitalizing on.
As of October third, the United States of America has a national debt upward of thirty-seven trillion dollars – that’s $109,951 per American citizen! And how are we handling it? We are putting tariffs on our allies and taxing the poor, hard-working average citizens of our country.
Why? If our president is truthfully focused on lowering the national debt like he claims to be, then why is he buddying up with the people who are most able to help? Here’s why: they like money. President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and all of their billionaire friends like having money, even when it’s physically impossible to spend it all. To them, money is power for themselves, not something that could be used for real, good purposes.
Currently, taxes in America go by tax brackets, or progressive taxation. This means that how much income tax you pay depends on the level of your income and the bracket you are in. It’s easy to picture it like buckets overflowing: the first chunk of your income is taxed at the lowest level, the next chunk at a higher level, and so on and so forth until you’ve filled all the buckets that you can. If you don’t make a big enough income to fill the first bucket, you get taxed at the lowest level. This means people are taxed on what they earn but not what they own.
This system may seem great, but there are ways to slip through the cracks. For example, Jeff Bezos’ income is an average $80,000, even though his net worth is $234.8 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg’s salary is $1, while he has a net worth of $254.6 billion, meaning they are taxed less despite their immense affluence. Much of Zuckerberg’s wealth goes untaxed because it lies in the increasing value of his assets. He won’t be taxed on them until he realizes a gain.
Another thing to consider is that their money is easily gained. Lots of people think that the rich shouldn’t be taxed extra because they worked hard to earn their billions. However, this is not true. Maybe it was true in the beginning, but lots of people don’t realize how easy it is to make money once you have it. Simple investments that have little risk, CDs, properties, once you’re wealthy, it’s so easy to stay that way.
Not only this, but it takes money to make money. College costs a lot, and if you don’t get the scholarships you need, skipping higher education altogether might seem like the only option. According to cornerstone.edu, people with just a high school diploma are three times more likely to live in poverty. Comparing this to Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg, who went to Princeton University, Queen’s University, and Harvard University, respectively, the advantage is clear.
While none of these main billionaires came from extreme wealth or money, the trend of their characteristics is still obvious. The only woman in the top fifteen richest people in America, according to Forbes.com, is Alice Walton. She is the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton and inherited his wealth. If women, people of color, and any other person in the minority had had the advantages that were given to the billionaire at birth, maybe they too could have had a shot. However, they inherited no such immediate advantage, instantly placing them miles behind the start line.
Not only this, but the CEOs of these big, money-making companies are earning their keep by stepping on the broken backs of their workers. According to epi.org, in 1965, CEOs were paid 21 times that of a typical worker. This number is minuscule compared to how it grew by 2023, when CEOs were paid 290 times more than a typical worker.
The top 0.1% of U.S. wage earners make a measly 1/10 of the amount of money that CEOs are paid. These statistics not only show the gross inequality between CEOs at the top and the workers at the bottom, but also that the pay gap is increasing over time. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
So, what is there to do? We do the best we can to even out what has been unequal since the beginning: we implement wealth taxes. This means that people would be taxed on their total wealth, not on how much they make in a year. While this won’t stop the selfish from trying to find loopholes and dragging as much cash back to their hordes as they can, it’s the first step to making the world a little bit better, a more equal place.
Money makes the world go round, but the scales are tipped, and they have been tipped and will continue to be tipped until someone decides to even the weights.
https://poole.ncsu.edu/thought-leadership/article/the-pros-and-cons-of-wealth-taxes/
https://www.fightinequality.org/blog/tax-rich-9-reasons-wealth-tax
https://www.cornerstone.edu/blog-post/skipping-college/
https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/
Jonathan • Oct 8, 2025 at 3:49 pm
Amazing article