Analyze the Billionaires of a Society to Gauge Its Economic Health | Ruchir Sharma | Big Think

So let’s focus on good versus bad billionaires. What do I mean by this? The good billionaires in a country typically tend to be from industries such as technology, manufacturing, and pharmaceutical. These are industries where it is all about that person’s skill and talent which is leading to this wealth creation.

On the other hand, the bad billionaires tend to be from industries such as real estate and mining. And what do I mean by that? In these industries, a lot of the wealth creation is done by giving the system or by having good government connections. And I think that any nation will have a few bad billionaires. But if you have too many bad versus good billionaires, that is a problem.

Now take the case of the United States. In the United States, in fact, the number of good billionaires far outnumbers the number of bad billionaires in this nation. And that is a good thing. Because even though the number of billionaires in this country is very large, even of the share of the total economy. But the fact that you have more good versus bad billionaires means that, in general, wealth creation is still respected in this country.

So you have people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who are great philanthropists, and so therefore they’re widely respected. Or you have the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, who create wealth by these kinds of innovative applications, technologies, and products. And that’s really what leads to them being respected as well.

Now there’s the very interesting case of Donald Trump, who we all like to speak about. There are a few people who would really dispute whether he’s really a billionaire. But I think let’s assume that he is one. And it’s true now that by the classic definition, he would be a bad billionaire because a lot of the wealth comes from industries such as real estate, and many people think he’s created this wealth by sort of being able to use government connections and other kinds of unfair means.

But the good thing is that because in this nation there are more good than bad billionaires, people still respect billionaires in general. There’s not a revolt against billionaires, unlike Russia or Mexico. In those nations, there is absolutely no chance that a billionaire would be able to run for office. That would be held against him or her.

And the other good thing is that Trump has been able to sort of project himself as a blue-collar billionaire. And I think that that is where it sort of gets interesting. That he’s able to project as someone who is again related to the masses, speak with the masses, and that is why I think that he remains popular even though he is a billionaire whose wealth is arguably coming from not great sources and would typically be classified in the bad billionaire basket.