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hardest-working cohort of any segment. They receive more return (economic and non-economic), so there are greater incentives, but there’s no escaping it—if you’re planning on being a billionaire (and don’t have billionaire parents), you should plan on working for the next 30 years . . . and not much else. I’m not pushing hustle porn—the jobs that create multimillionaires are just extremely demanding.
I get older, I’m struck by how big a part luck played in my life—being born in the right place at the right time—and how much I mistook it for skill.
Coming of professional age as a white male in the 1990s was the greatest economic arbitrage in history. Today’s 54-to-70-year-olds saw the Dow Jones increase an average of 445% from 25–40, their prime working years. For other ages, it doubles at most. That growth meant more opportunities—opportunities that were sequestered to a specific demographic (see above: white males). In 1990s San Francisco, between the age of 34 and 44, I raised over $1 billion for my start-ups and activist campaigns. I didn’t know a single woman, or person of color, under 40 who raised more than $10 million. And it
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The difficult thing about a meritocracy—or what we think is a meritocracy—is that we believe billionaires deserve it and that we should idolize them. Our idolatry of innovators blinds the winners to the structural advantages and luck they benefited from. And it fools us into thinking we are just a few lucky breaks from joining them. Sixty percent of Americans believe the economic system unfairly favors the wealthy25—but, as John Oliver points out, we tolerate this, because we think, “I can clearly see this game is rigged, which is what will make it so sweet when I win this thing.”26 Then we
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The greater our differences economically, the more we come to believe we are different in more fundamental ways. Altruistic behavior decreases in times of greater income inequality. The rich are more generous in times of lesser inequality and less generous when inequality grows more extreme. Michael Lewis writes, “The problem is caused by the inequality itself: it triggers a chemical reaction in the privileged few. It tilts their brains. It causes them to be less likely to care about anyone but themselves or to experience the moral sentiments needed to be a decent citizen.”28 Privilege looks
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When we put the 0.1% on a pedestal, we crowd out teachers, social workers, bus drivers, and farmworkers from the respect that is due to them. We tell them they are less, that they have failed. That any economic disadvantages they face are their fault, their birthright even. That’s not capitalism, that’s a caste system—and the inevitable result of cronyism, which requires these myths to entrench the power of the 0.1%.
This is why we need a strong government, to counter human nature, to balance fast thinking and selfishness with slow thinking and community. We don’t need to make idols of the wealthy to inspire achievement. Wealth and success are motivation enough. We are not dressing billionaires up as heroes because they need better marketing. We are dressing them to obscure the truth—that while innovation still happens, and hard work still exists, an ever-increasing share of the spoils are not going to the innovators but to the owners.
Why does this matter? It kills innovation and job growth. Nearly twice as many new companies were formed each day during the Carter administration as are formed now.29 That tax-free $10 million hasn’t birthed new companies, it’s destroyed them.
