Democrats want us to believe that there is some cohort of “good billionaires” who can be relied upon to fight for political progress. But as the right-wing turn of tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk suggests, this is nonsense.
There’s no hard line, sure: I lived in the Amazon for years, so I know how to live off poverty wages. Poverty where I grew up in the USA seems almost plush by comparison, because a shitty trailer is far more comfortable than a thatch roofed house with electricity only 4 hours a day. My lifestyle now is middle class, and I feel like I’m living like a king. It’s a grey smear of a continuum of wealth and privilege and morality that I feel like I understand viscerally.
However: my lifestyle and wealth is far closer to my friends in the Amazon than that of billionaires.
So there’s a line, but it’s far closer to the top 0.1% than the rest of us. I can help a few friends get motors for fishing canoes, and still make ends meet if I’m careful. A billionaire could get electricity and running water for the whole town and not notice.
There’s no hard line, sure: I lived in the Amazon for years, so I know how to live off poverty wages. Poverty where I grew up in the USA seems almost plush by comparison, because a shitty trailer is far more comfortable than a thatch roofed house with electricity only 4 hours a day. My lifestyle now is middle class, and I feel like I’m living like a king. It’s a grey smear of a continuum of wealth and privilege and morality that I feel like I understand viscerally.
However: my lifestyle and wealth is far closer to my friends in the Amazon than that of billionaires.
So there’s a line, but it’s far closer to the top 0.1% than the rest of us. I can help a few friends get motors for fishing canoes, and still make ends meet if I’m careful. A billionaire could get electricity and running water for the whole town and not notice.