{"id":158,"date":"2024-04-22T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-22T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/how-many-can-fit-on-the-rocketship\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T18:50:19","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T18:50:19","slug":"how-many-can-fit-on-the-rocketship","status":"publish","type":"essays","link":"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/essays\/how-many-can-fit-on-the-rocketship\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many Can Fit on the Rocketship?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t do anything with five [million dollars], Greg. <\/em>Five\u2019s a nightmare<\/em><\/span><\/a>.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Wow, two Succession<\/em> quotes in one month? Someone cancel her Max subscription!<\/p>\n

Look, one day you\u2019re waltzing through life downplaying Kim Kardashian\u2019s private jet purchase (it\u2019s a write-off!<\/em>); the next you\u2019re asking 180,000 people where we should draw the line on wealth accumulation. Hashtag class consciousness. I wanted to write a follow-up from last week\u2019s \u201cethical billionaire\u201d riddle<\/span><\/a> and include some of your thoughtful replies. <\/p>\n

My original plan was to tally the numbers and build some glorious data distribution that showed the range of limits, but only one reply quantified an actual limit:<\/p>\n

\u201cI vote that $100 million is WTactual<\/em>F territory. I would definitely be on a plan to give 90% of my net worth away. $10 million is a sanely excessive amount for anyone who still needs to feel set apart from the masses.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
>
\n \u201c<\/span>What jumped out most when reading your replies, though, was the emphasis on philanthropy; donating our way out of extreme inequality.\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n
\n

I extend an honorable mention to the reader who wrote that she and her husband are implementing a \u201c7x\u201d limit within their own business, where the highest paid person can make no more than 7x the lowest paid employee.<\/p>\n

What jumped out most when reading your replies, though, was the emphasis on philanthropy; donating our way out of extreme inequality. (One gal wrote in that after a certain limit, we could require people to give a certain percentage to big, society-wide projects, which immediately made me picture a Silicon Valley-adjacent scene in which someone suggests disrupting \u201cgovernment.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Someone who works in what I\u2019ll call capital-B, capital-P Big Philanthropy noted that \u201cthe next generation inheriting their parents\u2019 wealth is starting to look different. The millennial and Gen Z kids of billionaires are bringing different values to the table. Is philanthropy making a difference at all? <\/strong>Hard to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

What an interesting question. *laughs maniacally*<\/em> <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve worked for a private family foundation for the last seven years, and boy, do you see a lot of hand wringing and mental gymnastics playing out constantly. One key tension I think about often is between the movement by some billionaires to spend down their wealth to address immediate problems and make big transfers to nonprofits so they can more boldly and securely scale solutions and drive impact (like MacKenzie Scott). On the other side, you have the Rockefellers of the world: Folks who believe they need to keep making more and more to keep their philanthropy going in perpetuity; to endow their efforts and intentions to make the world a better place long into the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another reader, who\u2019s 70 years old, noted that he and his wife \u201clive frugally, solely on our Social Security and pensions.\u201d They want to \u201cleave money for our children (not too much, as we want them to continue working, although we don\u2019t want them to worry about sending their own children to better schools) and to fund a charitable foundation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The timing of these responses\u2014all this talk of philanthropy and charitable foundations\u2014couldn\u2019t be more serendipitous given my most recent read, Winners Take All<\/em><\/span><\/a> by Anand Giridharadas. Giridharadas said, Oh, y\u2019all want a thought experiment? Buckle up!<\/em> and proceeded to, in chapter 6, systematically deconstruct our modern view of philanthropy by throwing it all the way back to the robber barons (listen, you\u2019re<\/em> the ones who brought up Rockefeller\u2026). <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
>
\n \u201c<\/span>I hadn\u2019t realized how influential people like Andrew Carnegie were in our modern conception of wealth accumulation and charity.\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n
\n

Before reading it, I hadn\u2019t realized how influential people like Andrew Carnegie were in our modern conception of wealth accumulation and charity. In Carnegie\u2019s view, shrewd businessmen (yes, just men, because it was the 19th century) had an obligation to be as ravenously profit-seeking as possible\u2026and<\/em> a subsequent responsibility to redistribute that wealth in a way that benefited society. Carnegie, if you\u2019ll recall, financed things like libraries and museums for the very people he was (probably) underpaying.<\/p>\n

In 1889, he pulled out his glitter gel pen and wrote the following<\/span><\/a>: \u201cThe laws of accumulation will be left free, the laws of distribution free. Individualism will continue, but the millionaire will be but a trustee for the poor, entrusted for a season with a great part of the increased wealth of the community, but administering it for the community far better than it could or would have done for itself.<\/strong>\u201d (Emphasis mine, because I think it illustrates that point of view so well: Let us make a ton of money and we\u2019ll do good with it, we promise.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Rob Reich, a political scientist who writes about the phenomenon of the private foundation, says that we were more skeptical in the early twentieth century of the desire to accumulate massive wealth in order to \u201cadminister it for the community far better than it could for itself\u201d: \u201cBig philanthropy is often an exercise of power, the conversion of private assets into public influence. And it is a form of power that is largely unaccountable, often perpetual, and lavishly tax-advantaged,\u201d he writes<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Because democracy is supposed<\/em> to be a one person = one vote affair, Giridharadas and Reich argue, individuals amassing a ton of wealth usually means gaining a commensurate amount of influence over what problems get prioritized and, more importantly, how they get solved. (Read: often in a way that does not meaningfully diminish the ability to keep the profit party rolling.)<\/p>\n

Other readers pointed out that the entire thought exercise is premised on the idea that if some have more, others will have less, and critiqued that as untrue: \u201cIt operates from an incorrect zero-sum standpoint. It assumes that every dollar one person has is a dollar someone else doesn\u2019t have. Money is not finite. We rarely make our money at the \u2018expense\u2019 of someone else not making money. Billionaires\u2019 money is constantly being used to finance growth, credit, loans, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of this generally amounts to the idea I alluded to last week: the argument that there\u2019s an indirect societal benefit to allowing individuals to accumulate endless wealth, or at the very<\/em> least, no direct harm done.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
>
\n \u201c<\/span>There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they\u2019re falling in.\u201d<\/span>
\n <\/blockquote>
— Desmond Tutu<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n

One of these respondents argued our government is incapable of effectively helping the poor, that this is<\/em> better left to private donors. Another pointed out that the estate tax<\/span><\/a> (which limits intergenerational wealth to a measly $27 million tax-free per couple and will cut the rest by ~40%) is<\/em>, in some ways, a limit on wealth accumulation. <\/p>\n

Still, I can\u2019t help but think about Desmond Tutu\u2019s sentiments on the subject: \u201cThere comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they\u2019re falling in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Philanthropy is great for relieving the pain that poverty creates, sure, but at some point, it\u2019s worth asking why there\u2019s still so much poverty<\/span><\/a> in the first place. <\/p>\n

As one reader wrote, \u201cI\u2019m currently working on my graduate studies soon to be equipped with a Masters of Environment and Business, and we talk a lot about the external costs of business on society and environment. My theory is that the only way a company gets this<\/em> rich is through externalizing the costs. If they were to run a business that truly took care of people and the planet, you wouldn\u2019t accumulate that kind of excess.\u201d <\/p>\n

If Carnegie were here, he\u2019d probably say that by paying workers as little (and working them as hard) as possible, he was able to multiply wealth and make it a more \u201cpotent\u201d force than if he had just \u201cdistributed [the money via wages] in small sums to the people themselves.\u201d <\/p>\n

There\u2019s a sense of the \u201cwe\u201d\u2014however strained\u2014in Carnegie\u2019s conception of his responsibility to humanity as one of the wealthiest men on Earth. He clearly views himself as superior in his abilities to \u201cmultiply wealth,\u201d but you don\u2019t get the sense that he lives on an entirely different planet from the people for whom he\u2019s funding libraries.<\/p>\n

The human (and optimist!) in me wants to believe that there\u2019s something to this claim of #synergy, but my friend, writer Caroline Burke, pointed out how fundamentally strange it is that we, the masses, aren\u2019t more alarmed watching the billionaires of today<\/em> plainly preparing for earth to be imminently uninhabitable, either by building<\/span><\/a> rocket ships<\/span><\/a> or spending $270 million on off-the-grid bunkers<\/span><\/a> (\u201cI mean, it\u2019s not like they\u2019re taking us with them\u2026?\u201d she asked, though it wasn\u2019t a question).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
>
\n \u201c<\/span>If a large enough coalition of moderately rich people decided to band together, it would amount to an even bigger (and, on that note, more democratized) impact.\u201d<\/span>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n
\n

It\u2019s also worth remembering that while the richest .1% of Americans collectively control around 20%<\/span><\/a> of the country\u2019s wealth (those with average net worths between $100 million and $500 million), the top 10%-minus-the-richest-.1% (those with an average wealth of between $2 million and $10 million) collectively control around 51%<\/em> of the country\u2019s wealth. That is to say: If a large enough coalition of moderately rich people decided to band together, it would amount to an even bigger <\/em>(and, on that note, more democratized) impact.<\/p>\n

Still, the chill that ran down my spine when I realized the people with the most access, money, and information in the world are currently spending nine or 10 figures apiece on elaborate planetary exit strategies is\u2026well, it\u2019s certainly something.<\/p>\n

(In talking this through with a few others in the next few days, we decided it\u2019s likely that today\u2019s billionaires would probably say that their rockets and the like are<\/em> their version of libraries and museums.)<\/p>\n

Carnegie\u2019s notion that the richest among us are mere vessels for shepherding society\u2019s wealth wisely (and that inequality is the brief transitional period between accumulation and sharing) functions only if the richest among us still see themselves as one of us.<\/em> <\/p>\n

Sometimes I wonder if achieving even moderate<\/em> wealth (call it seven figures) can function in a similar way, creating an illusion<\/em> of insulation. We get a little nest egg, move to a nice spot in the suburbs, and feel removed enough<\/em> from economic precarity that it\u2019s easy to forget we don\u2019t have bunker<\/em> money to save us from the consequences that we\u2019ve so far managed to evade.<\/p>\n

But when you\u2019re bunker rich, you don\u2019t actually have<\/em> to suffer the consequences of the world your decisions have wrought. You don\u2019t live in that world anymore. You\u2019re already floating away on your rocketship to somewhere else.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cYou can\u2019t do anything with five [million dollars], Greg. Five\u2019s a nightmare.\u201d  Wow, two Succession quotes in one month? Someone cancel her Max subscription! Look, one day you\u2019re waltzing through life downplaying Kim Kardashian\u2019s private jet purchase (it\u2019s a write-off!); the next you\u2019re asking 180,000 people where we should draw the line on wealth accumulation. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2483,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158","essays","type-essays","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Many Can Fit on the Rocketship? - Money with Katie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/moneywithkatie.com\/essays\/how-many-can-fit-on-the-rocketship\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Many Can Fit on the Rocketship? - Money with Katie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cYou can\u2019t do anything with five [million dollars], Greg. Five\u2019s a nightmare.\u201d  Wow, two Succession quotes in one month? Someone cancel her Max subscription! 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