You can hardly turn around these days without hearing someone lecture about how immoral it

is that billionaires exist.

It's a popular view, but is this just an emotional or ideological reaction?

Or does economic theory also show that the existence of billionaires is actually harmful

to a nation's economy or its people?

That's coming right up Unskeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid. I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

Is the existence of billionaires inherently harmful?

As the world's billionaires fly into space, disrupt crypto markets with their tweets and

buy comically ridiculous megayots, the rest of us often roll our eyes and grumble, and

it seems that more and more often we see little meme graphics shared on social media saying

how evil billionaires are, or making fun of them or their habits, or of how disconnected

from reality they are.

I've never seen a positive one.

Clearly, most people don't seem to think very much of the ultra wealthy, and just as

ubiquitous as these memes is the popular belief that the existence of billionaires is not

just fodder for the comedians, but it's actually harmful to economies, to social justice,

to world health, to the environment, and to just about everything else.

Today we're going to dive into the research and find out just what impact billionaires

truly do have on the rest of us, if any.

A quick internet search for headlines gives us a temperature reading of what readers are

hungry for, from the New Republic.

...