Should billionaires exist? - Shresta Rai

Author: Shresta Rai, Honors College of Rutgers University, USA

My first ever job paid me around $15 an hour to teach group swimming lessons. After three years of dealing with four-hour shifts in a barely heated pool, we were told we could earn $20 per hour if we taught one-on-one private lessons. I immediately jumped at this opportunity; instead of dealing with eight kids at once, I just had to work with one and I’d get paid more. It felt like I found the ultimate cheat code! It wasn't until I talked to my student's parents that I realised they were being charged up to $95 for one private lesson. Somewhere in between signing a waiver and getting into the pool, I—the one doing all the teaching—was ‘robbed’ of $75 without even knowing it.

Even though I was making New Jersey's minimum wage, this story is essential when I think of billionaires. The CEOs and executives of companies like the one I worked for are paid multiples of their frontline workers. Although I taught students, encouraged them to sign up for more lessons, and managed the pool deck, my coworkers and I never felt the full financial benefit of doing all this work. Whether it's warehouse workers being denied basic bathroom breaks to maintain productivity metrics or garment laborers in overseas factories earning mere pennies while luxury fashion brands reap massive profits, the exploitation that creates billionaires’ wealth is clear. In fact, it feels like many CEOs earn their money from shortcuts, outsourcing, and exploitation—squeezing every penny to widen their profit margins. In my opinion, these billionaires should not exist. As Karl Marx put it, their wealth comes directly from the value generated by their workers.

Yet, as a young undergraduate student looking to work somewhere at the intersection of finance and technology, I’ve noticed an alarming trend. As we give new gen-AI companies billion-dollar valuations, it feels like that money is coming out of thin air! Many investors don't even need to see a product before passing over millions of dollars to the cofounders. This concerns me because this money was not technically "earned" by the company – it simply reflects the value these new tech products are perceived to have. Look at the current youngest female billionaire, Lucy Guo, who earned her billionaire status via her equity stake. She became a billionaire after leaving the startup—money not from her direct work but from seemingly thin air. I don't have a yes or no answer on whether these billionaires should exist, as they're not directly doing anything wrong. What I do know is that investments creates a domino effect.

Billionaires who emerge from tech are more likely to keep investing in products they think should be built. Now I see the issue of billionaires being less about accumulating wealth, and more about amassing influence. They get to determine what products get funded to the point of leading the path of science and tech discovery in a way subject to their own biases. Andrew Carnegie used his fortune to build schools, while Elon Musk is attempting to colonise Mars! Both think they are moving humanity forward, but their opinion on what that looks like determines the future everyone else lives in. So even if these self-made billionaires can exist, their financial power over others and the future of their industries walk a dangerously thin line.

So, let me summarise. I think whether billionaires should exist is not so much a question of wealth accumulation per se but rather one about unchecked influence over the lives and futures of others. Until we reckon with who gets to decide the direction of innovation, labor, and opportunity, we risk letting a handful of people shape the world in their image rather than in the collective interest. Personally, I don’t think that’s the future I want. 
 

Shresta Rai is a sophomore studying Finance and Data Science at the Honors College of Rutgers University. With a passion for artificial intelligence research and an interest in financial services, her perspective reflects a changing workforce. At Rutgers, she is a part of the Scholars of Finance chapter and the Rutgers Consulting Group.