By Nadia Paschal
Celebrities are constantly in the news, with discussions about their personal life, businesses, art and lately, their wealth.
After Forbes deemed Kylie Jenner as the first self-made billionaire in 2019, there was a lot of controversy surrounding this title.
Since then, more and more people have been discussing the topic of billionaires within mainstream social media, and whether that status in and of itself is OK.
Other than Jenner, other billionaires frequently featured in the news include Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. What these select few members of the billionaires club all have in common is creating successful companies.
When looking at the 1%, there are some questions that immediately pop into my mind. How exactly did these businesses grow to be as big as they are now? How did these people get the money for their start-up? Who are their parents?
These wildly successful people are incredibly polarizing, as they have plenty of fans but also plenty of people who are against them and their morals. To be completely honest, I believe most of them don’t deserve their wealth at all.
Most billionaires do more harm than good for society, if they do any good at all. Most of the richest people in the United States accumulated their wealth in the tech industry, as we’re currently in the digital era. As of April 2024, there are approximately 340 billionaires in the tech industry alone, according to Forbes.
Let’s take a look at Zuckerberg as one example, as his net worth is just above $200 billion.
In 2004, Zuckerberg was involved in the creation of Facebook, which is now worth more than $1 trillion, according to bankrate.com. The company grew exponentially and quickly became one of the most successful in the world.
However, Zuckerberg landed himself in hot water in 2018 when he allowed private user data from Facebook to be collected and used for political campaigns.
Why should a person like this be celebrated if he actively chose to break confidentiality and compromise their information? These kinds of actions should have much harsher consequences and should not be ignored.
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, is often used as an example of a good billionaire. Gates and his wife, Melinda, have their own philanthropy, aptly named the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
With this venture, they aim to improve global health, global development and access to technology and education in lower-income areas.
This is more than what most other billionaires have done in terms of philanthropic efforts, yet it doesn’t change his status as one of the wealthiest men in the country. In an episode of his Netflix docuseries, “What’s Next? The Future With Bill Gates,” he said that he considers himself to be too wealthy, and admits he doesn’t need as much money as he has.
If Gates truly believes what he is saying, then why does he still have so much money? Is he giving away as much as he can?
In a world where the rich keep getting richer and the poor can hardly survive, it’s crucial to think about who truly deserves their success and fortune.
