
Have billionaires accumulated their wealth illegitimately? - known
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2019/11/07/have-billionaires-accumulated-their-wealth-illegitimately
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Bostonian
It looks like they just decided that a billionaire who earned his money in
certain industries did so illegitimately. That is arbitrary and unpersuasive.

"Our analysis identifies industries where rent-seeking is common, including
mining, defence, construction and casinos. This time it also includes the
largest tech companies, since many of them have engaged in anticompetitive
practices.

Three-quarters of billionaires’ wealth in advanced economies was fairly
acquired. Still, rentier wealth has risen relative to gdp. Some countries are
more cronyfied than others. Sweden and Germany less so. But in America rent-
seeking industries made one in five billionaires and explain a third of total
billionaire wealth."

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CharlesColeman
This article is kinda asking the wrong question. If they want to analyze the
slogan "every billionaire is a policy failure," they need to focus the policy
itself and its results, not if the billionaires followed the policy.

To illustrate this in another area: if the slogan was "every polluted river is
a policy failure," [1] it's a poor response to answer "the river was polluted
fair and square according to the rules!"

[1] e.g.
[https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire](https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire)

