a thought exercise in Rawls’ Theory of Justice
US household wealth rose to $181.6 trillion at the end of 2025.1 If that wealth were spread equally to every person in the US, that would mean $545,000 in the bank for each person. So, your prototypical family of four would have $2,180,000. This does remind us that, in aggregate, the US is a very rich country.
This little calculation returned me to the question of why we allow billionaires to exist in our society. Remember, a billion is a thousand million. This is a very big number. One might also wonder why we even have centi-millionaires? The existence of such concentrations of wealth in individual hands is not the result of the laws of the universe.
The political philosopher John Rawls proposed a theory of justice in 1971 that is now widely known. The central notion is: a just society is one in which people set and agree to laws, regulations, and rules without knowing their own position in that society. In the case of billionaires, they would have to think that they might be the homeless person they avoid on the street. Would they think our current society fair and just from that perspective? I doubt it.
Keep in mind that billionaires only exist because of their control over our politics and the government that sets the laws and regulations that drive so much wealth into their hands. It is not because they are clever, persistent, morally upstanding, and virtuous people.
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