The Washington Post - 14.03.2020

A22 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAy, MARCH 14 , 2020

BY CHRISTOPHER INGRAHAM

At a time of near-record wealth
concentration, more than twice as
many young Americans say the
existence of billionaires is bad for
society a s those who say it is good.
According to the Pew Research
Center, 39 percent of adults
younger than 30 support the view
that people whose personal for-
tunes exceed $1 billion “is a bad
thing,” while 16 percent say bil-
lionaires are good for society.

It’s w orth noting, however, that

a plurality of young Americans —

45 percent — profess indifference

either way.

These attitudes were likely

sharpened by the Democratic

presidential campaign, which at

one point pitted a multibillion-

aire (Mike Bloomberg) against,

among others, a socialist senator

who says that billionaires

shouldn’t exist (Bernie Sanders)

for the right to challenge the bil-

lionaire in the White House come

November.

“The recent reigning conven-

tional wisdom over the last sever-

al decades of what I call the ‘A ge o f

Capital’ is that [billionaires] are

‘up there’ because they are smart-

er than us,” s aid Anand Giridhara-

das, author of “Winners Ta ke All:

The Elite Charade of Changing

the World.” But the Pew data, he

says, suggests that young Ameri-

cans believe billionaires have

amassed their wealth “through

their rigging of the tax code,

through legal political bribery,

through their tax avoidance in

shelters like the Cayman Islands,

and through lobbying for public

policy that benefits them private-

ly.”

The financial situation of

young Americans also explains

some of their suspicions toward

the ultrawealthy. In 2016, the me-

dian household headed by a per-

son younger than 35 had a net

worth of about $11,000, which is

lower, in real terms, than the net

worth of a comparable younger

generation in the 1980s. Those

smaller nest eggs are due, in part,

to things like massive student

loan debt owed to the people and

institutions at t he opposite end of

the financial spectrum.

Meanwhile, Americans 30 to 49

years old are slightly more likely

to say billionaires are bad (24

percent) than good (20 percent).

Among respondents 50 and older,

just 15 percent say billionaires a re

a bad thing.

It might have been easy for

baby boomers to see themselves

as “temporarily embarrassed mil-

lionaires,” coming into adulthood

as they did during an era of rela-

tively high wages and cheap ex-

penses. But millennials appear to

be more cynical about wealth cre-

ation, graduating as they have

with five-digit student loan debt

into a labor force where bosses are

often more concerned with share-

holder profits than living wages.

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Study: 39 percent of young Americans say billionaires are bad for society

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