Do We Need Billionaires? - I am BARRY HESS

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A significant portion of the population in the USA still thinks of Reaganomics as certified fact rather than a largely discredited theory. By this mindset the engine of our economy requires people to strive for a ton of money. A rising tide lifts all boats and all that.

First, I got to wondering, were US billionaires even a thing at the end of Reagan’s term? As a tween at the time, I couldn’t really remember. Turns out, yes:

Sam Walton • $6.7 billion • Wal-Mart Stores

John Kluge • $3.2 billion • Metromedia

Ross Perot • $3.0 billion • Electronic Data Systems

Donald Newhouse • $2.6 billion • Publishing

Samuel Newhouse Jr. • $2.6 billion • Publishing

Henry Hillman • $2.5 billion • Industrialist

Lester Crown • $2.3 billion • Inheritance / investments

Anne Cox Chambers • $2.25 billion • Inheritance / Cox Enterprises

Barbara Cox Anthony • $2.25 billion • Inheritance / Cox Enterprises

Warren Buffett • $2.2 billion • Stock market

Then, I needed some context for the difference between a million and a billion dollars. It kind of sounds like a similar thing, yes? Well, a clever internet person said, “The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is approximately a billion dollars.” In reality there’s a big difference between a million and a billion dollars, and I think it’s hard to understand it. Here are some comparisons between a million and a billion of something. Maybe one of these comparisons will help to register the vastness of the difference for you:

A million seconds is 11.57 days. A billion seconds is 31.71 years.

A million marbles fills a bedroom closet. A billion marbles fills over one hundred 12 × 12 × 8 foot bedrooms.

Flying a million miles will have you circling the earth 40 times. Flying a billion miles circles the earth 40,000 times.

A million miles gets you two round trips to the moon. A billion miles gets you 2,000 round trips.

A million dollars in a stack of $100 bills is 3.6 feet tall. A billion dollars in $100 bills is almost ¾ of a mile tall.

A million dollar bills laid end-to-end would stretch 97 miles. A billion dollar bills laid end-to-end would circle the earth nearly four times.

If you spend $1,000 a day, a million dollars would last 2.7 years. A billion dollars would last 2,740 years.

If you spend $1,000,000 a day, a million dollars would last one day. A billion dollars would last 2.7 years.

Wow!

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Still, I could definitely see the everyday person saying, “Hey, Walmart is a net benefit to the economy. I can buy much more stuff with my paycheck than I could if we just had mom-and-pop grocery stores, hardware stores, pharmacies, and corner stores.” That’s probably true. Economies of scale did its scaling. I personally wonder if it was all worth it, though. Maybe we’d be paying more if we weren’t taken over by big box stores (and eventually the internet), but maybe it’d be nice to have those mom-and-pop stores around? And maybe we’d still have a bunch of US factories producing our goods? And maybe that would make us more able to react quickly to things like wars and global pandemics? That’s a bit beyond the scope of what I’m thinking about here, though.

Let’s pretend in 1988 the rising tide was tuned just right. Certainly when we’re talking complicated macroeconomics, a simple inflation calculation on the dollar isn’t quite the tool that should be reached for, but I’m still curious.

$1 in 1988 is worth $2.82 in 2026. That’s 2.76% annual inflation.

$1,000,000,000 in 1988 is worth $2,815,046 in 2026.

$6,700,000,000 in 1988 (e.g. Sam Walton) is worth 18,860,811,496 in 2026.

It appears that billionaires inflate differently than the rest of us, eh? Here’s the top ten as of April, 2026:

Elon Musk • $817 billion • SpaceX, Tesla

Larry Page • $257 billion • Alphabet / Google

Sergey Brin • $237 billion • Alphabet / Google

Jeff Bezos • $225 billion • Amazon, Blue Origin

Mark Zuckerberg • $222 billion • Meta Platforms

Larry Ellison • $190 billion • Oracle

Jensen Huang • $155 billion • Nvidia

Warren Buffett • $150 billion • Berkshire Hathaway

Rob Walton • $149 billion • Walmart

Michael Dell • $141 billion • Dell Technologies

WOW!!

For the top spot, that’s a 13.5% inflation rate per year. Second place inflation is a mere 12.25% per year. Warren Buffet inflated 10.7% each year.

Interestingly both lists are filled with people trying to have an extreme influence on the direction of our country. At least that hasn’t changed! I mean, certainly all billionaires have lobbyists working on their behalf (again, that’s another topic), but the 1988 list had numerous publishers, communications folks, and even an eventual presidential candidate. Today we have a list filled with folks who own publishing companies, control information streams, build massive companies directly funded by government contracts, and directly throwing their sticks into the very spokes of the government bicycle.

The...