Billionaires--Tax Them or Bless Them?

We hear a lot about billionaires these days.

The Democrats seem to believe that if we could just get billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes there would not be any problems in the world.

Of course, they seem to ignore the fact that most of these billionaires have built businesses that have created jobs for millions of workers which allows them to put food on the table for their families and to pay billions and billions in taxes on the wages they earn.

For example, the latest estimate by Grok is that 130,000-140,000 people are employed in the companies that make up the bulk of Elon Musk's wealth---Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, Neuralink, The Boring Company and xAI.

These billionaires have also made a lot of people financially comfortable with investments in their companies or the products they have enjoyed because of it.

For example, Jeff Bezos who founded Amazon, states that he holds $200 billion of Amazon stock but the company is valued at $2.3 trillion.

“Somebody needs to make a list where they rank people by how much wealth they’ve created for other people,” suggested Bezos, “instead of the Forbes list that ranks you by your own wealth.”

“Then I’ve created something like $2.1 trillion in wealth for other people. That should put me pretty high on some kind of list—and that’s a better list,” Bezos explained.

Forbes recently did a list of the richest people in the world as of March, 2025.

Here is a list of the top 15.

13 of the 15 reside in the United States led by Elon Musk. Bezos is third behind Mark Zuckerberg.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/

Since this list was produced in March Larry Ellison has moved up from #4 to #2 due to a surge in the stock price of Oracle of which Ellison is a major shareholder. 

Ellison is now worth $368 billion but he still trails Musk who has increased his net worth to $478 billion thanks to increases in Tesla’s stock price.

There are just over 3,000 billionaires in a world out of a population of 8 billion people,

Forbes puts Donald Trump's net worth at $5.1 billion as of March, 2025.

Trump's net worth decreased in his first term from $4.5 billion right before he took office to $2.1 billion in 2020.

This was largely due to the enormous negative impact on his business brands when he became President in 2017. 

Most Presidents get wealthy after they take office (e.g. Ford, Clinton, Obama, G.W.Bush, Biden etc).

Trump got much poorer despite Democrat claims that he only ran for office to enrich himself.

Winning a second term after all that he went through, Trump has enjoyed a rebound in the value of his business empire as his brands have become more acceptable.

The net worth history of Trump as calculated by Forbes tells the tale.

Redemption at the ballot box has been very sweet on several dimensions for Donald Trump.

Donald Trump Wealth History
Source: https://www.forbes.com/profile/donald-trump/?list=billionaires

However, Trump only ranks #700 on the Forbes list for American billionaires.

To put Trump's business empire and net worth in perspective, he would be much wealthier if he had opened restaurants selling chicken instead of investing in real estate properties.

Todd Graves, who founded Raising Canes which serves chicken strips, has a net worth ($10 billion) twice that of Trump.

Todd Graves
Twice the wealth of Donald Trump
Credit: @ToddGraves on X

That is nothing compared to the Cathy family that founded Chick-fil-A. The three children of Truett Cathy who started the chicken sandwich chain are worth a combined $34 billion according to Forbes.

Where else is that possible but in the United States of America?

BrilliantMaps.com took the information from the 2024 list earlier this year and developed some wonderful maps to put the billionaire class in better context.

The map data does not match the 2025 Forbes updates but it is useful to put the billionaire subject in better perspective.

This is a map of where the billionaires in the United States resided in 2024.

California had 194 in 2024. New York was home to 132 and Florida had 104.

Alaska, Alabama, Delaware and West Virginia did not have a single billionaire.

On a per capita basis, Wyoming actually leads in the number of billionaires. 

There are over 10 billionaires per one million people in Wyoming. Of course, Wyoming only has a population of 600,000. It has 6 in total.

New York is next best at 6.64 per million. 

The total wealth of all those U.S. billionaires in 2024 was $5.8 trillion.

This reality is where taxing the billionaires to solve our fiscal issues goes off the rails quickly.

You can confiscate ALL OF THE WEALTH of America's billionaires and it would be short of the almost $7 trillion the federal government will spend just this year.

Stated another way, if the total net worth of billionaires in the U.S. was confiscated it would only cover the current annual federal deficit of close to $2 trillion for less than three years.

Of course, after you take it all, you then have no income to tax in the future from these billionaires and the wealth is also all consumed and gone. 

Where do you go next for the money you need?

It also goes without saying that when you confiscate wealth or implement onerous tax rates on the ultra-wealthy you also destroy any incentive for those people to earn and create more in the future.

The free enterprise system in the United States is a big reason why it leads the rest of the world in the number of billionaires.

The money has also come from a wide range of industries. From chicken restaurants to AI and everything in between.

This map shows billionaires by country around the world.

In 2024 Europe was home to 695 Billionaires with a combined net worth of $3.4 Trillion USD..

In contrast, the US was home to 840 Billionaires with a combined net worth of $5.8 Trillion USD.

It may not be a popular view but the reality is that billionaires provide the juice that makes the world work.

By and large, these are the people who have provided the inventions and innovations that have moved humanity forward around the world.

They may be a popular target for politicians who want to further their own careers.

However, the long term risk to society by targeting their wealth is many times greater than any short term gains.