Do billionaires help or hurt the economy?

[00:00:00]capitalism is the best system of its kind. And the great thing about capitalism is that it does incentivize value creation, which is sort of the rising tide that lifts all boats.

[00:00:09]>> It's obviously true that the tech boom, for example, has created a lot of billionaires, something that we didn't used to have in America to speak of. But it's also true that what we see is the upper middle class pulling away from the middle class, right? My life can be getting better, but if Bill Gates' life is getting better even faster, then he's pulling away from me. Which matters more?

[00:00:32]>> My response to that is like, actually we haven't really figured out these problems because one in 10 Americans still live in poverty today. So, if all of those things are true and you add it at the same time, you start to believe that the system doesn't work anymore if there is a large plurality of people who are still struggling. And there are questions over whether even the poverty line is being too generous. It's possible that actually the number is a lot higher than one in 10.