Economist William Nordhaus estimated that innovators capture only about 2% of the total value their inventions create, with the rest flowing to consumers as cheaper goods, higher wages, and better lives. If you think about it, that means the billionaire is the tiny visible tip of an enormous welfare iceberg. Confiscate the 2% and you mostly punish the people willing to take the risk, while the other 98% still happened. Read his NBER paper here: Schumpeterian Profits in the American Economy. It's the strongest quantitative case I know that billionaire fortunes are a bargain for society, not a theft from it.
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