But the children of billionaires are (almost) all obscenely wealthy.
Consider - the children of musical prodigies are likely to be more musical then average. The children of billionaires are likely to be more entrepreneurial than average - both are likely to be wealthy - neither are likely to be as prolific — I.e a child making an even more successful business, or being a better musician - over a few generations, both are likely to revert to the mean. In some countries this is not true of the wealthy, but in America this is particularly true
And that's the fundamental difference between the child of a musician v. the child of a billionaire. In order for the musicians' child to be a prodigy like one's parent, there's still considerable training and practice required. In order for the billionaire's child to be a billionaire like one's parent, the child simply needs to wait for one's parent to die.
That is: the passing down of musical aptitude through multiple generations requires each generation to put in approximately the same labor as the previous. The passing down of material wealth through multiple generations does not.
The descendants of American billionaires might suck at sustaining their advantageous positions right now, but that's only because America's upper class is relatively fresh, still full of bourgeois "new wealth" instead of aristocratic "old wealth", and lacking practice with migrating from the former to the latter. In a century or two (barring intervention to return wealth to the proletariat) I'd expect the American upper class to get into that groove of wealth consolidation, like how things evolved in Europe (and hell, if the US follows the same trajectory as the Roman Empire we might even end up with the same sort of feudal society in some places).
Let’s think on that a bit. Consider, if a parent is a musical prodigy, it’s akin to having a fantastic coach at an early age. They can teach you hard-earned insights, help you make the right choices, introduce you to the right people. This makes achievement considerably easier. It’s not as different from financial transfer as we think.
> In a century or two (barring intervention to return wealth to the proletariat) I'd expect the American upper class to get into that groove of wealth consolidation, like how things evolved in Europe
As long we live in a free-market society, I think this will be hard to do. Main reason: it is extremely difficult to invest well in the long-term. You can see this by how prized top investors are. Unless one invests well, in a free market society their wealth gets eaten up.
Europe avoids this through a highly regulated society — social mobility in and out of the upper class is extremely difficult there.
It’s certainly possible that the u.s will lose their position as the bastion of free markets — but whoever picks it up will become as powerful, and most people will start to immigrate there.
...not really. Take it from a musician: performance ability and teaching ability are not as interconnected as you're implying.
And on top of that, even a fantastic coach can't really do much if the one being "coached" has no interest in learning something, or in practicing what one learned.
> As long we live in a free-market society
We don't, and arguably never have. A free market is pretty difficult to achieve when you have existing players motivated to hold onto that wealth and prevent competitors from unseating it.
> social mobility in and out of the upper class is extremely difficult there.
You think it's significantly easier here? Especially with wages tanking relative to cost of living for all but the upper class, I don't see this fixing itself any time soon without one heck of a course correction. We ain't that far off from a European-style regulated society (and indeed, political discourse in the US seems to be pushing for it).
Even a low percent gain over the long term is very, very difficult. You can tell this by noting how much endowment managers get paid.
In the words of those Screen Rants pitch meeting skits: "It'll be easy, barely an inconvenience!"
The easiest and most surefire form of investment out there is in land. There's a finite amount of it, so while on local scales values will fluctuate, on an aggregate scale the value of one's total land holdings will increase indefinitely as demand increases (which it will, both from a growing global population and a growing global economy). Land ain't especially liquid, but on long-term scales that ain't really a problem.
Until we as a society pull some moves out of the Georgist playbook and tax land value, the rich will always be motivated to consolidate that wealth into land control, and will be able to hold onto that wealth at the expense of everyone else.
Is that true though? You made a big claim, without backing, to support your other claim.
That isn’t a good path to finding the truth. It only exposes hidden biases and assumptions.
One defining quality is that billionaires need to scale work that often involves management. In this case consider prolific basketball coaches, or generals in war.
The reason I shy away from including politicians, is because their m.o is starkly different: it’s all about status.
Either way, I think your argument is weak. “Sure you feel this away about billionaires. But change ‘billionaire’ to something different and your feelings change.”
Well, duh. That’s not even an analogy. You’re just literally changing the subject of the sentence. Billionaires are super different than writers in ways that are relevant to this discussion.
Most people have a natural bias towards billionaires. To remove the particulars of the essay, to look at it with fresh eyes.
Yes, indeed it changes things, and no one change will map completely. Do this a few times though and a clearer sight comes through
And founders are not?
Some founders are at that level, and frankly, more important to society than most athletes or musicians.
MLB pitchers make $10's of millions of dollars a year, far more than most of our top talent.
For many, this is a hard pill to swallow. Here's one way to judge it more objectively. Replace "billionaire", with something more neutral: "pro basketball player", "amazing musician", "prolific writer".
The arguments tend to make a lot of sense in other categories, but our natural inclination rebels on Billionaire. This is a great sign that something is off