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[narrator] Money is a little different
for a billionaire.
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For a billionaire compared
to an average American,
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a trip on a private jet is like
a New York City subway ride.
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A Lamborghini is like a Little Tike car.
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And buying a private island is like
a down payment on a house.
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Billionaires aren't the 1%.
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They're more like the .0001%.
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What's the worst thing
about being a billionaire?
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Nothing.
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Nothing at all.
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They can just make a call
and meet with a world leader.
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At least a dozen are world leaders.
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[in Spanish] ...better times are coming.
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[cheering]
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[narrator] There are roughly a hundred
billionaires in the Chinese parliament.
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Billionaires are booming.
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In 1987, there were
an estimated 140 billionaires.
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In 2019, there are 15 times
as many billionaires
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with almost 30 times more wealth,
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totaling almost nine trillion dollars.
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If today's billionaires formed a country,
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it would be
the eighth wealthiest in the world.
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It's an extraordinary amount of wealth
that these people hold
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and they influence
so many parts of the world.
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[narrator] That influence has made them
symbols of inequality and a rigged system,
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fueling protests and
political movements around the world.
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I think people are sick and tired
of living in a nation and a world
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where so few have so much
and so many have so little.
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[narrator] But many of these billionaires
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made their fortunes by inventing things
that changed our lives.
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Some more so than others.
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So why are there
more billionaires than ever?
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And are they good or bad
for the world?
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[man] The wealthy enjoy
a life of ease and elegance.
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[man 2] Money's too valuable to spend.
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-Sold!
-[cheering]
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The gap between the super rich
and the middle class
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widens in dramatic fashion.
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Well, I'm looking forward to
my next million.
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[man] What will you do
with those extra dollars?
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I build companies and I support people
who are building new things,
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from social networks to rocket ships.
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[Obama] There's only so much you can eat.
There's only so big a house you can have.
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[man] What this country needs is
a little more Golden Rule
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and a little less rule of gold.
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I'm embarrassed to admit how long I have
been covering wealthy people.
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[narrator] Luisa Kroll helps create
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one of the most
popular billionaire rankings in the world.
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Around 1981, at the time
that the list was started,
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there were some obvious places
to look for wealth in the country.
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Places like Texas where you have
the huge oil fortunes.
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And then Silicon Valley where
tech was just starting to take off.
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And then in New York City,
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they literally walked around the city
figuring out who owned this or that.
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[narrator] It turned out it's
incredibly hard to track down wealth.
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Very few people thought
that they'd be able to pull it off,
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but in the end, in September 1982,
they published the first Forbes 400.
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[narrator] On that first-ever
wealth ranking
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were 11 heirs of John D. Rockefeller.
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He lived in the late 1800s
in the United States,
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an era called the Gilded Age,
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which saw the world's first-ever
self-made billionaires.
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In today's dollars,
Rockefeller and Carnegie
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are estimated to be
more than twice as wealthy
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as the richest person in the world today.
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This age was characterized not only
by this astounding wealth,
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but massive corruption.
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[narrator] Mark Twain coined
the term Gilded Age,
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because while the wealth was glittering
on the surface, it was rotten underneath.
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Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Rockefeller
got rich from their political connections,
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consolidating industries into trusts
and exploiting workers
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and they were barely taxed.
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Before this time,
wealth is hard to compare,
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but to be extremely wealthy,
you probably controlled an empire,
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like Augustus Caesar, emperor of Rome,
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or Empress Wu of China
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or Mansa Musa, ruler of the Mali Empire,
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who controlled
one of the largest sources of gold.
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His wealth was so legendary,
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his image was printed on one of the most
important medieval maps.
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But the Gilded Age tycoons made
their money a different way.
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They founded successful companies.
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What caused that massive
rise of wealth at the time
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was the creation for the first time
of a continental-scale economy
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in the United States
and the rise of major corporations.
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[narrator] Like Vanderbilt's railroads,
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which formed part of the more
than 200,000 miles of new track
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that connected
the continent for the first time,
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helping turn the U.S. into
an economic superpower.
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And billionaires are booming today
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because of an increasingly
global-scale economy.
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And that's helped
the whole world get wealthier.
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At a global level,
inequality has been declining.
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This is mainly driven by the fact that...
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some of the poor countries
are growing fast.
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[narrator] And in the last few decades,
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no country
has been growing as much as China.
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China, 40 or 50 years ago, was a country
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with the vast majority of people
in extreme poverty.
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[reporter] The Communist government
is pursuing
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what they call socialist modernization.
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[Sachs] Extreme poverty
is almost gone from China.
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Before 1978,
there were no Chinese billionaires.
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[narrator] By 2017, China was minting
two new billionaires a week
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and had the second highest number of
billionaires in the world after the U.S.
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[Huang] Then it's not surprising to see
entrepreneurs become very rich,
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accumulating wealth very, very fast.
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[narrator] It's a similar story in India.
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Their emerging economy lifted tens
of millions of people out of poverty
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and created over 100 billionaires.
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These are today's billionaires.
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Even for them, there's a huge wealth gap.
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The vast majority, 94%,
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are worth ten billion dollars or less.
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Five percent of them are worth
between 10 and 30 billion dollars
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and one percent of the list
are mega-billionaires,
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worth 30 billion dollars or more.
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Yeah, I look at people and go,
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"Damn, they have
so much more money than me."
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Then I kind of catch myself
and say, "Shut the fuck up, you idiot."
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[narrator] And while the tech industry
doesn't have
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the most billionaires overall,
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it's made the most mega-billionaires.
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There's something called,
"Winners Take All."
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[narrator] Digital products like websites
or apps don't take much manpower to build
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and can instantly reach a global market.
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There's a reason Google is synonymous
with searching the internet.
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That's where more than 90%
of all searches happen
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and its founders are the 10th and 14th
wealthiest people in the world in 2019.
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Facebook has more users than
any other social media platform,
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even excluding the ones they own,
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and its founder is the eighth
wealthiest person in the world.
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And almost 50% of all U.S. online shopping
happens on Amazon.
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In 2019, Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos
was the richest man on Earth.
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The celebrity billionaires
like Oprah, Kylie Jenner,
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and Michael Jordan are low
in the billionaire rankings,
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and none of them are on the list
for the work that first made them famous.
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Michael Jordan made
90 million dollars playing basketball.
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But his corporate partnerships
were worth about one billion dollars
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and so was his ownership stake
in a basketball team.
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He became a millionaire through his labor,
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but he became a billionaire
by owning capital.
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Capital is anything you own
that can make you money.
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A house can be capital.
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Stocks are capital.
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Your likeness can be capital...
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if you're Michael Jordan.
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Patents are capital,
like for drugs or technology.
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And copyrights, like for Mickey Mouse.
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I grew up around Disney
and all that came with that.
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You're not going to earn a billion dollars
pulling down regular income
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and paying regular income tax on it.
Just not going to happen.
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So ownership is what creates wealth.
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[narrator] Most wealthy people make
their money like everyone else
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through labor.
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But the richer you are,
the less your income comes from labor
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and the more it comes from capital.
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The .0001% are
an exceptional example of this.
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So, broadly speaking,
income produced in the economy
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is shifted away
from labor towards capital.
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That's the most basic underpinning.
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[narrator] And that's because global
brands don't just have global markets.
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They have a global labor pool
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and increasingly no need
to pay for labor at all.
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Take the textile industry.
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A series of innovations transformed it
over the last two centuries.
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Each one boosted productivity and profits.
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Today, almost all garment workers
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are in developing countries
where labor is cheaper.
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And now machines are starting
to replace human workers altogether.
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This is called the Sewbot.
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It automates what once took
delicate hand dexterity
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and can sew as many shirts per hour
as 17 factory workers.
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This can lower costs for consumers
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and bring more profits
to the owners of capital.
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The ownership of capital,
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particularly in the share ownership
of corporations,
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is very highly concentrated.
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Like the billionaire owners
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of the global brands H&M,
Zara, and Walmart.
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And once someone has capital like that,
it just grows.
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Money just makes money.
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It's like you put it in a room,
close the door
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and it has sex,
and then more money babies grow.
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That's kind of how it works.
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[narrator] As Edgar Bronfman Sr.,
heir to the Seagram's fortune, put it,
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"To turn $100 into $110 is work.
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To turn 100 million dollars
into 110 million dollars is inevitable."
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That's because if you
only have $100 in savings,
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it's hard not to spend
and it's hard to invest.
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But 100 million dollars
becomes 110 million dollars
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if you let it sit in the stock market for
an average year without lifting a finger.
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Very quickly, in a matter
of a couple of generations,
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you're going to find yourself
with a dynasty or multiple dynasties.
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And given the power of money
to control politics,
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it's just not something
that we want to see.
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[narrator] According to one estimate,
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13% of billionaires
inherited their billions
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and 56% are self-made.
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But it's hard to draw
a clean line between them
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because most people
who inherit money work to grow it.
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That describes another
30% of the world's billionaires.
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In 2014, we came up with
what we called a self-made score.
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And it ranged anywhere from one,
which was where you inherited your money
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and you pretty much
did nothing with it, you sat around
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and, you know,
ate bonbons or what have you.
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And then number ten were
the rags to riches story.
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Someone like Oprah Winfrey
would fall into that category.
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This year, we had Kylie Jenner
which was highly controversial.
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She basically figured out a way
to monetize her Instagram followers
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and her family's fame.
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There is a new youngest
self-made billionaire.
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However, some people think Kylie's title
needs to come with an asterisk.
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When you don't get it
from someone else,
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that's self-made.
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[woman] If you're born on third base
and you hit a home run,
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you're not really self-made.
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[narrator] Other types of self-made wealth
are controversial too.
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[Kroll] When we began to put
the Russian billionaires on the list,
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the oligarchs, we weren't quite sure
what else to call these people.
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[narrator]
Some people call them kleptocrats.
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It's from the Greek kleptes meaning thief
and kratos meaning power.
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It refers to politically-connected people
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who get rich off a country's
natural resources.
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That's what happened when
the Soviet Union fell in 1991.
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Russia now has nearly 100
so-called self-made billionaires.
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There wasn't a category for,
well, kind of helped
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get these assets on the cheap by stealing
or colluding with the government
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or whatever you want to call it.
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Good and bad has to do
with how you obtain your wealth.
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Do you obtain your wealth
at the expense of everybody else?
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Or do you create additional wealth
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creating great products
for the rest of the society?
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These are two fundamentally
different ways of wealth creation.
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[narrator] In the Gilded Age, billionaires
gave much of their wealth back to society,
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like Andrew Carnegie.
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[Carnegie] The public verdict
will then be...
238
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the man who dies thus rich
239
00:12:43,721 --> 00:12:45,431
dies disgraced.
240
00:12:45,514 --> 00:12:49,602
He said it was actually a shame for
a rich person to die with their wealth.
241
00:12:49,685 --> 00:12:52,229
That's why wherever you go,
242
00:12:52,313 --> 00:12:55,941
you see Carnegie Institutes,
Carnegie Libraries, Carnegie Hall,
243
00:12:56,025 --> 00:12:57,651
Carnegie Mellon University.
244
00:12:57,735 --> 00:13:02,615
You see a legacy of giving back the money.
245
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[narrator] That tradition continues today.
246
00:13:04,742 --> 00:13:08,537
At least 200 billionaires
have signed the Giving Pledge,
247
00:13:08,621 --> 00:13:11,373
vowing to give away
at least half of their wealth.
248
00:13:11,957 --> 00:13:14,376
And they're doing things
that governments traditionally do
249
00:13:14,460 --> 00:13:16,879
like fighting infectious diseases,
250
00:13:16,962 --> 00:13:19,465
funding the construction
of Olympic facilities,
251
00:13:19,548 --> 00:13:23,511
as several Russian billionaires did for
the Sochi Winter Games in 2014,
252
00:13:23,886 --> 00:13:25,638
and ensuring college is affordable.
253
00:13:26,931 --> 00:13:30,893
And my family is making a grant
to eliminate their student loans.
254
00:13:30,976 --> 00:13:32,770
[cheering]
255
00:13:32,853 --> 00:13:35,272
[narrator]
Or repairing critical infrastructure.
256
00:13:35,356 --> 00:13:38,567
Where the state of Michigan
and the city of Flint have failed,
257
00:13:38,651 --> 00:13:39,985
billionaire Elon Musk...
258
00:13:40,069 --> 00:13:41,612
...is pledging to fix the water crisis...
259
00:13:41,695 --> 00:13:45,491
...is vowing to get clean water
to every home in the city. Good for him.
260
00:13:45,825 --> 00:13:49,286
[Disney] There was a lot of talk about
how we could just raise $55 million
261
00:13:49,370 --> 00:13:51,455
among rich people and
fix the Flint water problem.
262
00:13:51,539 --> 00:13:54,291
And I was ferociously against that.
263
00:13:54,375 --> 00:13:57,211
There has been, of course,
a great deal of philanthropy and charity
264
00:13:57,294 --> 00:13:58,337
and that's great,
265
00:13:58,420 --> 00:14:01,715
but the problem here
is a structural problem.
266
00:14:01,799 --> 00:14:05,469
You do not want our citizens
to be at the mercy
267
00:14:05,553 --> 00:14:07,930
of private unaccountable individuals
268
00:14:08,013 --> 00:14:11,308
who might or might not
fix the problems that you have
269
00:14:11,392 --> 00:14:13,811
with your infrastructure,
with your governments,
270
00:14:13,894 --> 00:14:15,354
with your basic human rights.
271
00:14:16,146 --> 00:14:19,316
[narrator] Governments raise money
for these public services through taxes,
272
00:14:19,400 --> 00:14:20,943
but in most wealthy countries,
273
00:14:21,026 --> 00:14:24,822
individual's labor income is taxed higher
than their capital income.
274
00:14:26,073 --> 00:14:29,243
So, already what the tax system
has decided to do
275
00:14:29,326 --> 00:14:34,331
is to tax work at a higher rate
than it taxes ownership.
276
00:14:34,415 --> 00:14:37,960
I don't have a problem writing
a check for more money. I really don't.
277
00:14:38,043 --> 00:14:41,088
I'm not here to say that
I should pay 90% taxes
278
00:14:41,171 --> 00:14:43,632
because then that's
going to change what I do
279
00:14:43,716 --> 00:14:47,553
from investing in entrepreneurs
and investing in start-ups
280
00:14:47,636 --> 00:14:49,638
and investing in philanthropy.
281
00:14:50,180 --> 00:14:53,309
[narrator] And even if a country
increases its taxes on the wealthy,
282
00:14:53,392 --> 00:14:56,228
in a globalized world,
that's hard to enforce.
283
00:14:56,854 --> 00:15:00,774
I think the best analogy
for the offshore financial system is...
284
00:15:00,858 --> 00:15:02,860
it's like an--
an ecosystem.
285
00:15:02,943 --> 00:15:07,323
It's a series of small countries,
sometimes large countries,
286
00:15:07,406 --> 00:15:09,867
and they each carve out
a little realm of the law.
287
00:15:10,701 --> 00:15:14,622
[narrator] Like avoiding income taxes.
That's a specialty of the Cayman Islands.
288
00:15:14,705 --> 00:15:17,458
So you got a building
in the Cayman Islands,
289
00:15:17,541 --> 00:15:18,918
one building,
290
00:15:19,001 --> 00:15:23,631
which hosts, "hosts", 20,000 companies.
291
00:15:23,714 --> 00:15:26,675
It's a postal address
that allows them to take advantage
292
00:15:26,759 --> 00:15:28,636
of the Cayman Islands' tax breaks.
293
00:15:29,428 --> 00:15:31,931
[narrator] For shirking corporate taxes,
you can go to Luxembourg
294
00:15:32,014 --> 00:15:33,557
or the U.S. state of Delaware.
295
00:15:34,725 --> 00:15:36,602
And for avoiding inheritance taxes,
296
00:15:36,685 --> 00:15:40,689
one of the most popular spots is
the European island of Jersey.
297
00:15:41,106 --> 00:15:44,318
[Harrington] The Cook Islands,
sometimes known as the "Crook Islands",
298
00:15:44,401 --> 00:15:48,656
specializes in helping people
hide assets from creditors
299
00:15:48,739 --> 00:15:50,157
and that's really all that they do.
300
00:15:51,033 --> 00:15:54,119
[narrator] The world got
a glimpse into this system in 2016.
301
00:15:54,203 --> 00:15:56,705
New revelations on how
the rich and powerful hide cash
302
00:15:56,789 --> 00:15:58,374
are rocking countries around the world.
303
00:15:58,457 --> 00:16:00,626
Now being called the Panama Papers.
304
00:16:00,709 --> 00:16:03,587
Eleven million Panama Papers
to be precise.
305
00:16:03,671 --> 00:16:06,715
It's a leak from a Panama law firm
called Mossack Fonseca.
306
00:16:06,799 --> 00:16:08,801
These Paradise Papers, it's another leak--
307
00:16:08,884 --> 00:16:12,221
...exposing how some of the world's
wealthiest and most powerful people
308
00:16:12,304 --> 00:16:14,264
...hide their money in offshore accounts.
309
00:16:14,348 --> 00:16:17,726
[Harrington] I think one of the...
big lessons was this rogue's gallery
310
00:16:17,810 --> 00:16:19,478
of faces that came out of it.
311
00:16:19,603 --> 00:16:24,858
It was this motley crew of
sports stars like Lionel Messi
312
00:16:24,942 --> 00:16:27,027
and entertainers like Jackie Chan
313
00:16:27,111 --> 00:16:30,239
and then Queen Elizabeth
and some members of the House of Lords.
314
00:16:30,322 --> 00:16:33,742
[narrator] But the big shock came
when people crunched the numbers.
315
00:16:33,826 --> 00:16:37,538
An analysis of Scandinavian countries
found that on average
316
00:16:37,621 --> 00:16:40,666
most people avoid paying
5% or less of their taxes.
317
00:16:41,333 --> 00:16:45,671
The wealthiest .01% don't pay about 25%.
318
00:16:46,171 --> 00:16:48,966
In total, the equivalent of 10%
of the world's GDP
319
00:16:49,049 --> 00:16:51,385
was stashed in offshore bank accounts.
320
00:16:51,468 --> 00:16:53,679
That's trillions of dollars.
321
00:16:54,096 --> 00:16:55,806
Russia was one of the worst hit.
322
00:16:55,889 --> 00:16:58,642
The .01% stashed more than half
323
00:16:58,726 --> 00:17:00,936
of their wealth in offshore accounts.
324
00:17:01,020 --> 00:17:04,189
That's a lot of missing tax revenue
for public services...
325
00:17:04,773 --> 00:17:06,942
or things like Olympic facilities.
326
00:17:08,027 --> 00:17:11,280
And everyone who turned up
in these leaks likely got some help.
327
00:17:11,989 --> 00:17:15,242
[Harrington] They're not sitting around
boning up on their yachts
328
00:17:15,325 --> 00:17:17,369
on the tax code of the Cayman Islands.
329
00:17:17,453 --> 00:17:19,705
Wealthy people hire folks to do that,
330
00:17:19,788 --> 00:17:22,958
just like they hire folks
to clean and maintain their homes
331
00:17:23,042 --> 00:17:25,044
or cook for them or nanny their children.
332
00:17:25,127 --> 00:17:28,464
[narrator] Billionaires may be
the eighth wealthiest nation in the world,
333
00:17:28,547 --> 00:17:31,842
but they're also, in many ways,
people without a nation at all.
334
00:17:32,926 --> 00:17:35,012
With expert help,
they can pick and choose
335
00:17:35,095 --> 00:17:37,347
the laws of whatever country they like.
336
00:17:37,431 --> 00:17:43,312
Globalization has opened up all sorts
of addresses to hide the money.
337
00:17:43,812 --> 00:17:45,647
[narrator]
This is known as Billionaires' Row,
338
00:17:45,731 --> 00:17:49,735
an enclave of luxury high-rise towers
south of Central Park in New York City,
339
00:17:50,319 --> 00:17:52,738
the city with the most billionaires
in the world.
340
00:17:53,238 --> 00:17:55,908
And you see, in New York City,
these billionaires are buying
341
00:17:55,991 --> 00:17:57,826
these luxury--
"Luxury" is the understatement.
342
00:17:57,910 --> 00:18:00,788
These condos worth tens
and tens of millions of dollars.
343
00:18:02,831 --> 00:18:06,502
[Lenz] Our average sale is
slightly over 18 million dollars,
344
00:18:06,585 --> 00:18:09,171
and our average client
345
00:18:09,254 --> 00:18:12,925
has a net worth in the hundreds
of millions to billions of dollars.
346
00:18:13,008 --> 00:18:17,596
New York real estate is--
is part of that global ecosystem
347
00:18:17,679 --> 00:18:19,723
of hiding wealth from the law,
348
00:18:19,807 --> 00:18:22,059
laundering money,
and doing all sorts of things
349
00:18:22,142 --> 00:18:24,478
that really skirt the edges of legality.
350
00:18:24,561 --> 00:18:26,313
[Lenz] People who wanted a store of value,
351
00:18:26,396 --> 00:18:29,483
they wanted a safety deposit box
in the sky perhaps,
352
00:18:29,566 --> 00:18:33,028
and they're buying property
to have their money secure,
353
00:18:33,112 --> 00:18:35,781
perhaps away from their home country
354
00:18:35,864 --> 00:18:39,451
where it may be taxed or taken or they
don't know what happens tomorrow.
355
00:18:39,535 --> 00:18:43,455
[narrator] In early 2018,
72% of apartments that cost
356
00:18:43,539 --> 00:18:45,040
more than 10 million dollars
357
00:18:45,124 --> 00:18:47,292
were purchased using LLCs,
358
00:18:47,376 --> 00:18:49,545
which often let the buyer
remain invisible.
359
00:18:49,628 --> 00:18:51,880
You just have to set up an LLC or a trust
360
00:18:51,964 --> 00:18:55,843
or an LLC owned
by another LLC owned by a trust.
361
00:18:55,926 --> 00:18:58,679
So it would be almost impossible
for anyone to search out
362
00:18:58,762 --> 00:19:00,055
who the ultimate owner is.
363
00:19:00,514 --> 00:19:02,558
[narrator] And this is
just one reason it's hard to know
364
00:19:02,641 --> 00:19:04,893
exactly where all the billionaires are
365
00:19:04,977 --> 00:19:06,562
or how many there are,
366
00:19:06,645 --> 00:19:08,856
or how many billions they have.
367
00:19:08,939 --> 00:19:11,733
Governments don't track wealth
on a global scale,
368
00:19:11,817 --> 00:19:14,736
so rankings like Forbes
are the best sources we have
369
00:19:14,820 --> 00:19:16,196
and they're not reliable.
370
00:19:16,989 --> 00:19:18,824
I think the Forbes 400 list
371
00:19:18,907 --> 00:19:22,786
or any of the rich lists that get
published are highly misleading.
372
00:19:22,870 --> 00:19:25,747
They are based on
publicly available information.
373
00:19:25,831 --> 00:19:28,834
If an individual's
primary source of wealth
374
00:19:28,917 --> 00:19:30,878
is stocks in a public company,
375
00:19:30,961 --> 00:19:33,130
you just look up
the number of shares that they own,
376
00:19:33,213 --> 00:19:37,301
multiply times the price
and if it's over a billion dollars, voilà!
377
00:19:37,384 --> 00:19:41,680
But many people all over the world
are wealthy from other sources.
378
00:19:42,306 --> 00:19:43,473
[narrator] For most billionaires,
379
00:19:43,557 --> 00:19:45,642
around two thirds
of their wealth is private.
380
00:19:45,726 --> 00:19:48,145
Billionaires may not even know
how much money they have.
381
00:19:48,478 --> 00:19:52,691
Like the oil tycoon Nelson Bunker Hunt
once explained to the U.S. Congress.
382
00:19:52,774 --> 00:19:54,860
Do you have any notion
of how much you're worth?
383
00:19:54,943 --> 00:19:57,821
People who know how much they're
worth generally aren't worth too much.
384
00:19:57,905 --> 00:19:59,573
[man] Well, that's--
You're absolutely right.
385
00:19:59,656 --> 00:20:03,035
Once you buy an asset
that's not publicly traded,
386
00:20:03,535 --> 00:20:05,996
it's really whatever you want
to value at.
387
00:20:06,079 --> 00:20:08,498
There's people in the political arena
who've done that.
388
00:20:08,582 --> 00:20:13,545
[Kroll] Donald Trump and his father
were listed on the very first Forbes 400.
389
00:20:13,629 --> 00:20:17,591
And even in that very first listing,
there was a note that said
390
00:20:17,674 --> 00:20:20,385
"They say they're worth 500 million."
391
00:20:20,469 --> 00:20:23,138
[narrator] Entrepreneurs may want to be
on the cover of Forbes.
392
00:20:23,222 --> 00:20:25,974
They have something to gain
from being known as wealthy,
393
00:20:26,058 --> 00:20:28,018
but a lot of billionaires don't.
394
00:20:28,101 --> 00:20:30,395
So even Forbes
acknowledges it underestimates
395
00:20:30,479 --> 00:20:32,189
the amount of wealth in the world.
396
00:20:32,272 --> 00:20:35,400
We always wonder just
how much wealth we're missing.
397
00:20:35,484 --> 00:20:39,404
It's something that quite frankly
sometimes does keep me up at night.
398
00:20:40,614 --> 00:20:41,865
[narrator] Back in the Gilded Age,
399
00:20:41,949 --> 00:20:44,451
the first billionaires didn't
just give away their money.
400
00:20:44,534 --> 00:20:45,953
The government stepped in.
401
00:20:46,036 --> 00:20:51,375
[Sachs] The Progressive Era
began a new way of regulation,
402
00:20:51,458 --> 00:20:56,046
breaking up the major trusts
like Standard Oil.
403
00:20:56,129 --> 00:21:01,176
Teddy Roosevelt was famously
called the "trust buster" for this.
404
00:21:02,511 --> 00:21:06,181
[narrator] In a globalized world, reining
in wealth looks a little different.
405
00:21:06,265 --> 00:21:09,601
The European Union
has put tax havens on a blacklist.
406
00:21:10,143 --> 00:21:12,104
But the results remain to be seen.
407
00:21:12,229 --> 00:21:14,940
And in the U.S., politicians on the left
have started pushing
408
00:21:15,023 --> 00:21:17,359
for much higher taxes on the wealthy,
409
00:21:17,442 --> 00:21:19,611
which a majority of Americans agree with,
410
00:21:19,695 --> 00:21:21,530
and even some billionaires do too.
411
00:21:21,613 --> 00:21:23,365
I should be paying more taxes.
412
00:21:23,448 --> 00:21:25,492
Should taxes on people like you be raised?
413
00:21:25,575 --> 00:21:26,493
Of course.
414
00:21:26,576 --> 00:21:29,913
The taxation system
has tilted toward the rich
415
00:21:29,997 --> 00:21:32,874
and away from the middle class.
And I think it should be addressed.
416
00:21:32,958 --> 00:21:35,335
The manner with which you accrue wealth
417
00:21:35,419 --> 00:21:39,423
is a relevant public policy topic.
418
00:21:39,506 --> 00:21:40,716
Morality...
419
00:21:41,508 --> 00:21:42,884
that's their own thing.
420
00:21:42,968 --> 00:21:45,429
That's between them and their priest.
421
00:21:45,929 --> 00:21:48,098
[narrator] Our relationship
to billionaires is complicated.
422
00:21:48,682 --> 00:21:51,226
We've made them celebrities
if they weren't already.
423
00:21:51,310 --> 00:21:52,978
We've made them powerful.
424
00:21:53,061 --> 00:21:55,647
And they do some incredible things
with their money,
425
00:21:55,731 --> 00:21:57,774
sometimes more efficiently
than governments.
426
00:21:57,858 --> 00:21:59,860
So it's not the individuals
that I'm worried about.
427
00:21:59,943 --> 00:22:05,532
It is a system which allows this kind of
massive income and wealth inequality.
428
00:22:06,408 --> 00:22:10,162
[narrator] That nation of billionaires
might soon be the richest in the world.
429
00:22:10,245 --> 00:22:12,873
And while their money
might not live in one country,
430
00:22:13,999 --> 00:22:15,542
we'll all live in theirs.
431
00:22:16,501 --> 00:22:18,337
[theme music playing]