Billionaire Discrimination Is Highly Objectionable, Plus It's Un-American
Until about three years ago, I’d never met a billionaire in my life. Born middle- to upper-middle class, I’d managed to stay more or less middle- to upper-middle class through my career and to travel in middle- to upper-middle class circles.
Then Ken Fisher became a client of mine, and eventually someone I presume to call a friend (as well as now a former client). He’s a billionaire, one of only 2,473 on the planet by the latest count. He’s also, as I discovered, a regular guy.
I raise this point only because of the backlash against billionaires that came from the news that Michael Bloomberg, himself a billionaire more than 50 times over, has entered the presidential race. No sooner did the former three-time mayor of New York City declare his candidacy than Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, obviously feeling threatened – and rightly so – reflexively attacked billionaires for being billionaires, and obliquely accused Bloomberg of trying to do an end-run around the electoral process and buy himself a seat in the Oval Office.
Sanders went so far as to say, “Billionaires should not exist.”
At what point in the United States, exactly, did being rich in and of itself become a crime against humanity and an unmistakable symbol of absolute evil? I always believed the American dream involved – along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – the right to make as much money as you pleased, free of any randomly or artificially imposed limits.
Yes, some billionaires are bad people – ruthless, grasping and corrupt. The axiom from Honore de Balzac that behind every great fortune lies a great crime is occasionally indisputably true. History is rife with examples of ambitious people wantonly cheating others to claim the big bucks. And yes, egregious income inequality stinks to the heavens, though by my reckoning less because of those with than those without.
But then you have someone like Warren Buffett, who despite being worth roughly as much as Midas, still lives in a house that hardly qualifies as extravagant, picks up breakfast in a fast-food drive-through and generally carries himself as if he considers himself no better than you or I.
You also have someone like Michael Bloomberg, who, whatever else you may think of him – and I generally like him – has given away eight billion dollars to major domestic and global causes over the years. That’s almost the budget for the state of Rhode Island.
Recall, if you will, how people vilified former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz for having the nerve to announce his bid for the White House while being a billionaire? Schultz became so self-conscious about his wealth that he ultimately resorted – absurdly, to my mind – to requesting the public to thereinafter refer to billionaires euphemistically as “people of means.”
And now we come to Ken Fisher. Ken, the founder and former CEO of Fisher Investments, started his firm with an investment of $250 that has since grown to more than $100 billion of assets under management. Like Buffett and Bloomberg, he’s a self-made billionaire.
Given his wealth, I find Ken becomingly humble. If he’s proud of anything, it’s that he graduated from Humboldt State University. He is demonstably uninterested in anything remotely fancy, whether houses, offices, clothes, cars or food. He often speaks affectionately of his family, particularly his grandchildren.
He is also, on occasion, exceedingly self-effacing, as I witnessed firsthand. Asked about his leadership style, for example, he admitted to a reporter, “I was not a good CEO. I was never a good people person. I never made anyone feel good.” Ken had nothing to gain from making such a disclosure, nor was it anything but heartfelt. I found it endearing.
Call me naïve, but I believe billionaires can and often do serve a useful purpose in our society, our culture and certainly our economy. I also believe discrimination against billionaires is no different from, and certainly no less objectionable than, discrimination against anyone else. Furthermore, it’s undemocratic in the extreme.
Michael Bloomberg has as much right to run for president as anyone. If we’re going to call him out for anything, please, let it be for something other than his billionaire status. Otherwise – and I hate with all my heart to rely on this phrase, but it’s what comes immediately to mind -- we’re just being un-American.
