(Reading note: Read “$100,000” as “one hundred thousand”, not “one hundred thousand dollars.” Read “$10M” as “ten million”, “$10B” as “ten billion”, and “$1T” as “one trillion”).
On August 26, 2020, Jeff Bezos became the richest individual in history, with a net worth of $200B.
Kill The Trillionaires
by Robert Rutledge
Bring yourselves
In your millions
Wait until dusk
Steal along the low-slung hillsides
Bring torches to light a way
Fan out along the meadowlands
Spy their houses
In the tiny distances
Draw a line in the sand
On the beaches
The systems are down
A conspiracy of power line employees
Security guards at the gates
Interior telemonitoring
Satellite communications workers
The backup electricity does not hum
All is silent in the walls
The corridor is empty
It is dark
Ask them, as you wake them from their beds
What is the Gini today?
Do not listen for their answer
Like the weather which does not touch them,
They do not know it
Sociologists say, no one is any happier
When they have $100M instead of $50M.
$20B instead of $10B.
Or fifty times as much.
A typical family in the United States
Has $100,000 in wealth.
And to them the wall to $300M
Seems unscalable.
To someone with $300M
The wall to $1T seems similarly unscalable.
Imagine having $300M, and feeling about Trillionaires like you do
About someone with $300M.
A Trillionaire bought a
$100M dollar home
An apartment
A New York apartment.
They will never go to there
Money
Used for a nothing
beyond imagining
If a typical American
$100,000 in wealth
wished to buy a home
Using a similar fraction of wealth
That home would cost ten cents.
You cannot buy a home for ten cents
A typical home in the US
Costs $250 thousand
It has a cul de sac, and a small brown lawn
It is in a small town, with poor schools
Broken sidewalks
To buy this home using a similar fraction of wealth
As the Trillionaire’s New York Apartment
You must own $2.5 Billion.
The Trillionaire thinks
Their New York apartment
Has a small brown lawn
With poor schools
They will never go to there.
Billionaires: join us in our murderous quest.
We do not talk about your health and disabilities
We do not talk about your gender
We do not talk about your color
We do not talk about your sexuality
Let us talk about
Concrete solutions that are productive
Drag the Trillionaires from their beds
Down long hallways
Lined with digital brocade wallpaper
There will be blood.
On the quartz floors all along the way
Down the travertine split back staircase
Out into the courtyard
Have a trial
Or not
And split them in two.
We will not line them up against a wall
We will put them into ever taller and skinnier buildings
Of New York Apartments
And tip them over.
Or chop them in two
Or shoot them in the head
Kill their children and spouses and lovers, their heirs of every category
The sin of the wealthy is mathematical
Their wealth grows like time
If it grows (1+0.07)^T. If T is 10 years
Their wealth is doubled.
Never consumed
Unstoppable like time.
Let them whine about the punitiveness of taxes
While they bleed in the wealth of murder
The sin of the people is need.
The sin of the wealth is not greed
Desire don’t enter into it
The sin of the wealth is a passive, unthinking exponential growth
In their last moments,
laying in the driveway gravel
They look up with fish eyes
“I do not know how I got here”
They realize.
When all hope is gone.
When all security guards are gone.
When the torches have all flickered out
In the tiny distances
Along the low-slung hillsides.
And as the footfalls are forgotten
along the meadowlands
Remember, then -
How unscalable is the wall of $100,000
To one with only $30
In his pocket.