I’ve got 99 Problems

And Billionaires Are All of Them

There's this absolutely adorable meme making the rounds lately that confidently declares, "none of your problems are because someone else is a billionaire." It's the kind of thing that sounds profound if you've never thought about economics for more than thirty seconds, or if your understanding of wealth creation comes exclusively from watching Shark Tank.

Let's explore why this sentiment isn't just wrong, it's exactly backwards. In fact, if you're experiencing any of the myriad economic challenges facing regular people today, there's a pretty good chance a billionaire's wealth hoarding is at least partially to blame.

First, let's talk about rent-seeking, which is economist-speak for "making money by being a middleman who doesn't actually create anything new." Imagine if someone installed a toll booth on a public road that was already there and started charging people to use it. That's rent-seeking in its purest form, extracting wealth without creating value.

Now, you might be thinking, "But don't billionaires get rich by inventing amazing things?" Sometimes, sure. But increasingly, the real money isn't in innovation, it's in finding new ways to insert yourself between people and the things they need, then charging a premium for the privilege of access. (This is literally the Private Equity playbook full stop.)

Let's look at some pure examples of modern rent-seeking (extracting wealth without creating new value):

• PBMs (Pharmacy Benefit Managers) who insert themselves as mandatory middlemen between drug manufacturers and pharmacies, then extract massive "rebates" while actually driving up drug prices and contributing nothing of value

• Ticketmaster/Live Nation using their monopoly position to extract ever-increasing "convenience fees" on concert tickets while actively preventing venues from using other ticketing services

• Patent trolls who buy up patents solely to sue actual producers and innovators, never intending to create or produce anything themselves

• Investment firms who use algorithms like RealPage to coordinate rental prices across regions, extracting higher rents through artificial market manipulation rather than property improvements or service quality

The common thread? None of these activities create new value. They just redistribute existing value upward.

Consider this simple example: imagine you own all the egg factories in a region. One day, you realize something interesting. If you shut down one factory, reducing the egg supply, the price of eggs goes up enough that you actually make more money selling fewer eggs at higher prices. Basic economics tells us this is bad for society since we're producing less while paying more. But as the owner, you don't care because your profits went up.

Now, if eggs were produced by a diverse network of smaller farms and businesses, this kind of manipulation would be much harder to pull off. Plus, local owners who actually live in the communities they serve would feel the effects of their own price increases. But billionaires don't have to worry about egg prices since they're completely insulated from the consequences of their profit-maximizing decisions.

Let's map out how billionaire wealth concentration actually does cause or exacerbate most of the economic problems people face today: