Recent attention has been paid to a publication pointing out that eight men in the world own more wealth than the poorest 3.6 billion people.
Oh tsk, tsk. How terrible. How unfair. Evidence of income inequality!
My personal, initial reaction was that these people had probably inherited their wealth, and I drew a judgment of them as slothful non-contributors, men in their indolence enjoying the wealth created by their predecessors. How wrong I was.
Fortunately, my curiosity pushed me to find out who these people actually were. Surprise! In the U.S., they are Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison and Michael Bloomberg. Gee whiz. No Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Carnegies or Fords. Not even Waltons or Jobs! How could this be? Surely these people came from wealth. They could not possibly have had an idea or a skill and applied themselves and actually earned their vast wealth!
Ah, but they did.
I have looked at the biographies for all of these people and none of them came from “wealth.” A couple could be described as having come from comfortable early homes, but others came from virtual poverty.
I am a regular shopper at Amazon (Bezos), user of Facebook (Zuckerberg), Oracle runs in the background of much of our computer world (Ellison) and I have multiple computers that run on Windows (Gates). I have added to the individual wealth of all of these people. They all have some of my money!
I recently bought a Microsoft wireless mouse, so I added another tiny bit to the wealth of Bill Gates. Now, he is not the person that I think I would I seek out, but do I resent that wealth that he got from me? Absolutely not. That mouse added to my quality of life. I hate the touch board on my Lenovo laptop, on which I am writing this, and the mouse relieves most of my aggravation. And it was cheap!
So instead of resenting Bill Gates’ wealth and my contribution to it, I say thank you. Enjoy your well-earned wealth.
George Thompson
Durango
