Anyone Else Tired of Billionaires?

Well, CNBC kept mentioning the new Forbes annual billionaire list today (which I'm not about to link to!). Frankly, I'm tired of hearing about billionaires, the number we have vs the world, the number of new millionaires, lottery winners, the housewife who invented a baby sling and made ten million.

Not only is this a slap in the face of working people, but it's like a lottery or poker winner gloating to all the losers whose money they just won. This wealth has to come from somewhere, it doesn't just materialize for 'good people', the government doesn't just print them a billion and give it to them - it comes from all the rest of us.

Now let's multiply that times the 40-60 billion that Gates and Buffet and Carlos Slim each have, let's say 150 billion for three people at the top. This means 150,000 millions, or they could give 1,000 to each of 150,000,000 people, or half the people in the U.S. OK, let's say they keep half, only look at families, and don't give any to the top half in income, just families below the median: they could still give away 75 billion, give 38 million families at the bottom 2,000 each, and have 25 billion remaining apiece.

[Note: Any math errors are because I use "Larry Kudlow" math which is often off by a factor of ten, you know the CNBC loudmouth conservative idiot who claims you give a rich man a 5% tax cut he'll go out and hire some people rather than take an ocean cruise - and he was an economist on the Reagan team! Now you get an idea of why we are exactly where we are. Their thinking is often off by a factor of ten when it comes to huge numbers like trillions.]

You want economic stimulus? And this is just the three at the top of the wealth list. Let's imagine every billionaire gave half his wealth to U.S. citizens. Do you think there would be a spending spree to end all consumer binges? It would be crazier 'than a rat in a coffee can', to quote Jeff Macke on Fast Money.

Would a billionaire be worse off with 'only' 500 million?

Of course this will never happen, because the reverse process happened for them to gain all that wealth. We each, or our companies did, contributed to all these fortunes, that's where our money went. Of course it was an exchange, we got some goods or insurance or something in return, which we can't give back either! The portion they got to keep was the profit, and that's capitalism.

Maybe one day you too can become a billionaire, or even win a big lottery, that's the beauty and lure of capitalism isn't it, that one in million shot we each have, or is it one in a billion?