Do all rich people suck?

Wealth is a delusion

Late last year, Bill Gates reclaimed his spot as the richest man in the world, overtaking Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos by reporting wealth at a whopping $110 billion. Jeff Bezos has taken it back. In spades.

The fact that two mega billionaires passing the baton is considered newsworthy is evidence of our obsession with extreme wealth — and our weird belief that rich people deserve all of that money. I think it’s because we fantasize about a time in the future when we too will become filthy fucking rich. Maybe if we just put in a little elbow grease and work 21,000 years, we could join the list of billionaires in the world. I’m sure that’s how Kylie Jenner did it.

But they don’t deserve it. Your favorite multi-millionaires or billionaires don’t deserve all of that money. They either had such a privileged life that not becoming wealthy would have been personally embarrassing (Bill Gates), exploited their workers to keep costs low and profits up (Jeff Bezos), or some combination of those and a variety of other reasons.

“But Chika?” You may be saying. “The ultra-wealthy do so much! What about philanthropy? What about charity?”

In 2018, Anand Giridharadas released Winners Take All, a book that calls out the elite for their intentionally insufficient efforts to make the world a better place. In a time where millionaires and billionaires are hoarding wealth while the rest of the world is struggling to survive, we in the 99% still believe that…