This week on Thinking Is Cool 💰

Welcome back to Thinking Is Cool, the podcast and newsletter here to make your next conversation better than your last. I’m your host Kinsey Grant. If this email was forwarded to you, sign up here.

Subscribe now

Stop what you’re doing right now and turn on one of these three songs: “Billionaire” by Travie McCoy, “Rich Girl” by Hall & Oates, or “Money, Money, Money” by ABBA. Today, we’re asking ourselves whether billionaires should exist. The mood has to be right.

Good morning, everyone. It’s a beautiful day to bounce back from a long weekend with a nice, short week. I’ve heard really good podcast episodes pair wonderfully with Tuesdays that feel a little like Mondays.

As luck would have it, I have a really good podcast episode ready for your listening pleasure. It’s one I’m particularly proud of, in fact. Nothing makes me beam from ear to ear quite like a scathing review of the powers of wealth accumulation in our country.

As always, you have listening options:

• Option 1: Read this newsletter for background and then go listen to the episode on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you get podcasts. Recommended for people who started saving for retirement before college graduation.

• Option 2: Go listen to this episode on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you get podcasts, and then come back to this newsletter for more context. Recommended for people who think money is made to be spent.

Grab your Gucci loafers and let’s dive in.

This Week on Thinking Is Cool 💰

When you read the headline, “Richard Branson Will Beat Jeff Bezos to Become the First Billionaire in Space,” it’s easy to forget just how bonkers it is that this is even a story worth covering. We’ve become so desensitized to the ultra-wealthy and their literal out-of-this-world pursuits that we think a billionaire space race is a totally cool, totally normal thing.

It’s not. It’s not cool or normal that we live in the kind of world where the ultra-rich have accumulated such vast, jaw-dropping wealth that they’re racing each other to be the first billionaire in space. And for what it’s worth, dogs first went to space in 1957...it’s not that impressive.

But this billionaire space race is just the most recent symptom of the illness that is a deeply flawed capitalist system of wealth accumulation. When you have so much money you can’t possibly spend it all in one lifetime on this planet, you have no choice but to take it to another.

This week on Thinking Is Cool, we’re holding a referendum on the systems that allow for such ghastly wealth accumulation. I’m asking this question, which is in fact as loaded as it seems: Should billionaires exist?

There are reasons to suggest that they should: They can provide capital for things like extraterrestrial travel that otherwise might not get funded. They can create jobs, millions of jobs in some cases. They can be aspirational figures of success.

But for every indication that billionaires should exist, there’s an equal and opposite indication that they should not: They rarely pay their taxes in the ways you think they should. They perpetuate the toxic ideals of a system that you and I will never be able to fully take advantage of. They have more money than any one person needs—money that, because it belongs to them, will never belong to the masses.

That’s what this episode of Thinking Is Cool is about. Giving an honest assessment of today’s systems of wealth accumulation and what they mean for more than just Jeff Bezos or Richard Branson. We’re considering whether it should be possible to become a billionaire...and in doing so, coming to terms with just how much money $1 billion really is.

To me, this episode touches on so many profoundly powerful ideas governing our society, from the ways money flows through the economy to the tenets of the economy itself. I genuinely loved putting this podcast together, and I hope you’ll listen and see why.

Part of the joy I got out of this podcast lies in the research I did to craft it. There has been such a tremendous amount of truly good journalism about billionaires and the ways they make money. Here are some pieces I found particularly useful:

• From ProPublica, “The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax”

• From the NYT Opinion, “Warren Buffett and the Myth of the ‘Good Billionaire’”

• And a fun one from The New Yorker, “How to Become a Billionaire in 2021”

And the other major source of joy in creating Episode 8 of Thinking Is Cool? The intelligent thought-starters so many of you sent in when I said I was making this one. I’ll share a few I noodled on over the weekend:

• Billionaires have essentially created entire industries built to serve just them. Think about the market for luxury mega-yachts...would it exist without billionaires to serve as clientele? And if it didn’t exist, would that talent be better deployed elsewhere?

• We all talk about the scourge of wealth inequality on society, but we’re lying if we say we don’t want to be billionaires, at least a little. Why is that?

• Does the idea that you can hustle your way to $1 billion in net worth do more harm than good for society?

I hope you’ll listen to the episode and ask yourself (and your group chat) these questions. You have my money-back guarantee that a hearty conversation will most certainly break out.

Never swim right after eating, never cross the street without looking both ways, and never make a promise you can’t keep. Words to live by.

The last one is easy for me because of our sponsor, HMBradley. I’ve been promising you all summer that choosing HMBradley is a no-brainer... and now, I’m making good on that promise.

I know—promising best-in-class savings tools and automatic credit card rewards is a lot. But HMBradley really is in a category of its own when it comes to making your money work for you.

And the proof is in the pudding: In a world where most “high yield” accounts have been dropping their interest rates, HMBradley hasn’t changed a thing in over a year. In fact, they keep designing more rewards into every aspect of the experience1.

Just head to hmb.to/ThinkingIsCool to see what everyone’s talking about and to learn why this is the next big thing. That’s hmb.to/ThinkingIsCool.

Now, to the details of this week’s episode →

Who: Due to the fact that billionaires actually don’t really care for being asked whether they should in fact exist, this week’s guest list isn’t long...but boy oh boy is it stacked with super insightful people.

• Teddy Schleifer is a talented reporter who covers billionaires and the mega-wealthy. He’s written for CNN and Recode and now he’s starting a new media company called The Stratosphere.

• Noah Wossen is the CEO and cofounder of Gthr, a startup endeavoring to build the future of sports.

Where: Wherever you get podcasts like on Apple, Spotify, or literally anywhere else

Why: Because I know you wonder what the internet means when it says “eat the rich.” Time to give it a little more thought.

See you Friday for another edition of the Thinking Is Cool blog. Have the best week ever.

—Kinsey

Deposit accounts are provided by Hatch Bank, Member FDIC. Go to www.hmbradley.com/apys to see current rates and the full Savings Tiers terms and conditions. The HMBradley Credit Card is subject to credit approval. The HMBradley Credit Card is issued by Hatch Bank under a license from Mastercard. Go to www.hmbradley.com/credit-card-terms to learn more about the Cash Back Rewards Program. This is a paid endorsement.