No one needs a billion dollars, no one. Not even infamous people like Oprah Winfrey or Mark Zuckerberg. The truth is, that’s far too much money even for a wealthy person to have. Nobody should have billions of dollars, whether they have earned it with their success or not.

People have become so desensitized to the word ‘billion’ that they don’t realize how ridiculously large a sum of money that is. So many believe it is acceptable for someone to have that much money, considering it normal for someone to earn and keep that much money. 

Recently, I’ve been asking myself, why don’t they just give billions of dollars away to charities to fix so many worldwide issues? They would still be filthy rich while helping so many people, so why don’t they? Well, I’ll tell you why they don’t do this. Greed. 

Junior Sophie Janne D’Othee said, “I do think billionaires are greedy, even if they have good morals and paths up to power. They are still gaining all that for their own benefit at the expense of others, which I think is pretty darn greedy.” 

They get to live like kings, while the rest of society struggles to make ends meet, and relish the power and status they hold as some of the most envied people in the country. I think anyone who is a billionaire feels this way, whether they want to admit it or not.

On top of that, just the way they make their money in the first place is inhumane. Big corporations like Amazon pay their workers little to nothing, while they work excruciatingly long hours. The same people who are responsible for the wealth of these people are treated like dirt, and these billionaires turn a blind eye to it. 

There’s this defense that, since most billionaires donate portions of their fortune to charitable causes, it makes their excessive wealth okay. However, this doesn’t erase the greed and selfishness that billionaires inevitably possess. 

If they truly had good moral intent, they would give away their billions to good causes, rather than hoard this excessive money. 

Junior Megan Flores said, “I think there’s no reason to have billionaires. I think that the fact they are still billionaires after donating means they aren’t donating enough.”

I’m not saying there shouldn’t be wealthy people; if someone is fortunate enough to have that lifestyle, I respect that. What I don’t respect is money hoarding; you can still be rich and live luxuriously without excess billions of dollars. 

All billionaires are doing is making the wealth gap increase significantly, making it extremely difficult for middle and lower-class people to grow economically and increasing their debt. 

Janne D’Othee said, “I don’t think billionaires should exist. Rich people and wealth gaps are normal, but not that extreme.”

The number of people in poverty has stayed relatively unchanged since 1990, while billionaires’ wealth is rapidly growing every day. According to Oxfam America, “That means billionaire wealth increased at a rate three times faster than the year before, with an average of nearly four new billionaires minted every week. Meanwhile, the number of people living in poverty has barely changed since 1990, according to World Bank data.” It is even estimated that within the next decade, there will be five trillionaires in the world.

A trillion dollars could pay for four-year college tuition for about 8.33 million people. So many people are applying for college in the U.S, and if billionaires gave their money to these students, college would essentially be free. 

If you were to stack one trillion dollars in hundred-dollar bills, it would be 67,866 miles tall, taller than the International Space Station. 

Think of all the good billions and trillions of dollars could do for the world, but instead, it is being spent on frivolous luxuries like private jets and trips to space. They only give small portions of their money away for actual good causes, and it is so disheartening.

In my wholehearted opinion, the world should not have trillionaires when so much poverty exists. Rather than filling their own pockets for self-serving purposes, they should be filling the pockets of people who need money to survive.

If someone is a billionaire, I don’t care if they’re not directly a cruel human being; they are not ethical. You cannot be ethical, seeing so much struggle in the world and doing little to nothing about it, while having all the resources in the world to be able to make such a positive impact on society.