Eat, And I Mean This With My Whole Heart, The Rich
No one needs a billion dollars, much less a trillion.
A green piece of paper is the pinnacle of our society. Money is quite literally power. No money? No food. No healthcare. No housing. No resources. Everything in this world has a price, and if you don't have the means to fulfill it, you're left to drown. With 38.1 million Americans living below the poverty line as of 2019, this is a very jarring, common reality.
The truth is, the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. The richest 1 percent control more than 40 percent of this country's wealth. Economic inequality is worsening, and no one's doing a thing about it.
Jeff Bezos is set out to become the first-ever trillionaire, while Americans have just filed 40 million unemployment claims.
It's hard to grasp just how much money Bezos hoards, so let me paint a picture. He could house every single homeless veteran and still have money left over. He could pay off every single person's private student loans and still have money left over. He could cover the cost of chemotherapy for every cancer patient and still have money left over. He could buy every sports team in the NFL and still have money left over. He could end the world's worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen and still have money left over. He could end world hunger and still have money left over.
Guess how much of that he's actually done?
None of it.
The truth is, donating 0.0001 percent of your unimaginable wealth is just self-serving. There is no reason for a single human being to have this much money. There is no ETHICAL way to make this much money. It's the exploitation of the working class, paying less than living wages to your employees, and placing more value on a dollar than a human being's life. It's being consumed by greed. It's why Bezos makes more than 150 thousand dollars per minute while kids are quite literally starving to death.
There is no ethical way to be a billionaire.
Instead of a handful of individuals gatekeeping an obscene and evil amount of wealth, what if that money was diverted to underfunded education, the climate crisis, hot lunches, the gender pay gap, homeless shelters, and other low-income assistance programs. To progress as a society that believes in reform and rehabilitation, it is so necessary to invest in these constructive programs.
Where will all this money come from? Bezos's piggy bank. I promise he can handle being a billionaire with just slightly fewer billions.
Tayler Klinkbeil
Tayler Klinkbeil
Tayler Klinkbeil
Tayler Klinkbeil
