Economics: Why We Need Trillionaires!

 

(Drivebycuriosity) -  There is a lot talk about billionaires. "I don`t think billionaires should exist", tweeted Bernie Sanders (blairbelle). Sanders is mistaken, we need even trillionaires in the not so far future.

America`s rise was driven by inventors & entrepreneurs who often became billionaires (in today´s money). In the early 1920s Henry Ford, who was obsessed with driving production costs lower, made cars affordable for the masses and created so a huge industry and wealth for the whole nation. Today´s billionaires Gates, Bezos, Musk & Co. became extremely wealthy by giving us cheap computers & software, by delivering goods fast, cheap & reliably to our house doors or pioneer cars, that don´t burn fuel. iPhone creator Steve Jobs, who would be member of today´s billionaires club, created tiny computers that changed the live of almost everyone. These innovators & entrepreneurs became über-rich, but they also improved the productivity of the society and raised global wealth.

The society gained even more indeed. Prof. Nordhaus, winner of Economics Nobel Prizes 2018, wrote in his 2004 paper “Schumpeterian Profits in the American Economy: Theory and Measurement,”: “Only a minuscule fraction of the social returns from technological advances over the 1948-2001 period was captured by producers, indicating that most of the benefits of technological change are passed on to consumers rather than captured by producers.” (aier.org). According to Nordhaus "producers, on average, capture a mere 2.2% of the total benefits of their successful introduction into markets of technological advances. A whopping 97.8 % of those benefits are enjoyed by people each of whom as a consumer did nothing other than exercise his right to spend his money on those options that he judges best for himself".

Tomorrow´s billionaires will be visionaries with the talent to realize their visions. They will become ridiculous rich by creating something new. Maybe a cancer vaccine, a life expanding pill, cold fusion, room temperature superconductivity or something unknown today. We all - and the future generations - will be winners.

The wish to become a trillionaire might not be the driving motif; maybe the future trillionaire wants to save humankind like Musk, who is pioneering technologies like electric vehicles, space flights and more.

The trillionaires of the future will help to make the world even a better place.