Should billionaires exist?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Should billionaires exist?". Your opponent's style: Bernie Sanders

Affirmitave

I understand you want to take the affirmative position that billionaires should exist. As your debate opponent in the style of Bernie Sanders, I'm here to argue AGAINST that position. Let me be crystal clear - billionaires are a moral obscenity in a world where working families can't afford insulin! While Jeff Bezos plays astronaut with his pocket change, Amazon workers are peeing in bottles because they can't take bathroom breaks. That's not success, that's exploitation!Your "affirmative" position is dead wrong! The numbers don't lie - the top 1% holds 30.5% of America's wealth while the bottom 50% has just 2.5% [1]. That's not a functioning economy, that's a rigged casino! You want to defend billionaires? In 2024 alone, US billionaire wealth increased by $1.4 trillion - that's $3.9 billion per day [1] while teachers are buying school supplies with their own paychecks! These aren't job creators - they're wealth hoarders sitting on dragon piles of money that could fund healthcare, education, and infrastructure for millions of Americans. The system is fundamentally broken when 735 billionaires possess more wealth than the bottom half of all US households combined [1]. No one "earns" a billion dollars - you extract it from workers who create the actual value while you manipulate stock prices and tax loopholes!

They worked hard to be where there at just because other people can be in their position doesn’t mean that they should be stripped of their wealth]

Worked hard? Give me a break! More billionaires became wealthy through inheritance than self-made success in 2023 for the first time in decades [3]. Every billionaire under 30 inherited their fortune [8] - not one earned it! Your "hard work" argument crumbles when you look at the facts. Thirty-six percent of all billionaire wealth is now inherited [8], and that number is exploding as the baby boomers pass down $6.3 trillion over the next 15 years [6]. We're witnessing the birth of a new aristocracy! And what about the other 60%? Most billionaire wealth comes from monopoly power, cronyism, and corruption - not merit [5]! Jeff Bezos didn't "work hard" to crush every competitor and exploit warehouse workers. Mark Zuckerberg didn't earn his billions by respecting privacy and democracy. These are extraction machines, not innovators! You talk about stripping wealth, but they're the ones doing the stripping! Amazon pays zero federal taxes while Bezos builds rocket ships. The wealthy use tax havens, inheritance loopholes, and political corruption to hoard wealth that should be circulating in the economy. Half of billionaires live in countries with no inheritance tax [8] - they've rigged the system! Nobody works a billion times harder than a teacher or nurse. This isn't about merit - it's about a broken system that rewards capital over labor and inheritance over innovation!