# How are billionaires getting away with it? (Part 2 of 2)
Date: 2025-04-28
Previous Part: https://disrael.github.io/blogs/raw/how-are-billionaires-getting-away-with-it.part1.md

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With America now at 1.66 births per woman, even the 2018 to 2022 line above will be difficult to reach again and the most wealthy are also below the replacement level of 2.1.

So this is how the billionaires are getting away with it. Their wealth defense industry is pushing policies that make everyone (even them) worse off and these policies are also supported by a gerontocracy representing older Americans unwilling to pay taxes.

However what’s more in the face of 2024 Trump voters are an upper middle class touting a raceless, genderless, nationless, religionless meritocracy to explain that they are legitimately superior.

These superiority claims go back to a cultish like philosophy that the billionaires have been pushing for a long time. In this cult, money and power are their own objective outside of any utility to society.

The popularity of this cult really goes back to America never taking the time to reflect on slavery. Slave traders were the [original so called innovators](https://theconversation.com/how-the-shadow-of-slavery-still-hangs-over-global-finance-144826). The fast ships they used were latest inventions by others and the financing they actually did invent let them scale. Plus efficiency:

![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/how-are-billionaires-getting-away-with-it-d24abd39c4.png)

It doesn’t matter if Warren Buffet has actually benefited humans other than himself to earn billions. It doesn’t matter if Buffet made the world worse.

No one reflects on the impact of global financialization when evaluating Buffet. If a member of this cult were to reflect on Buffet’s impact then they would have to reflect on their own as well. Buffett explicitly rejects any kind of moral economy. In 2014 he said:

> I don’t think in making an investment decision on Berkshire Hathaway, or most companies — virtually all of the companies I can think of — that climate change should be a factor in the decision-making process.

This is exactly the slave trader ethos — do whatever you are allowed to do and don’t worry about it. Last week! this plaque was installed in Bristol:

![Image](https://disrael.github.io/blogs/assets/how-are-billionaires-getting-away-with-it-4e26e4de53.png)

The statue was put up *after* the end of the American civil war in 1865, 174 years after Colston’s death, as a statement piece.

Why would the people of Bristol, who were no longer benefiting from Colston — assuming they ever did, want a statue of him displayed prominently? It’s not American style racism as there were very few blacks living in Bristol in 1895 (now ethnic people are almost 20% and so the statue came down). **No it’s pride.**

Americans are proud of their billionaires and want to give them the benefit of the doubt — right up until it’s no longer reasonably possible and maybe a bit further. There is no national American identity feeling pride around unions, child labor laws, women’s suffrage, or 5 day work weeks because we are not currently very progressively exceptional.

America was never going to be a capital of history and culture like London, Paris, or Rome. Aside from Hollywood, what we exceptionally have is banks, tech, oil, and billionaires (who come in two flavors — tech and financial). Even when we used to have manufacturing that was tech also.

Much has been made of woke this or that, but the American, and in some ways global, identity crisis would be there even if humanity were all one race, gender, and nationality. We are no longer about reproduce at all costs so if we are not about religion or “innovation” then who are we?