Taiwo Owoeye The Morality-Evidence Gap The conventional wisdom across time and space is to demonise the rich and romanticise the poor and blame their misery on the exploitation by the rich. Yet, what the evidence shows is the exact opposite. The more billionaires a country has, the higher their income level provided those billionaires add value to the economy.
For example, when you run the data on four variables -population, number of billionaires, income per person and the cost of 1GB of mobile data-for Nigeria and India-the difference is striking. India has 205 billionaires, Nigeria has four.
The ratio is 51 to 1. Nigeria’s population is 230 million, India has1.46 billion people. The ratio is 1to 6. If the ratio of the population of the two countries is to match that of the billionaires, Nigeria needs 24 billionaires, not four. So, the obvious question is what has that got to do with poor people in both countries?
The answer is interesting. India’s income per person at $3k is three times that of Nigeria’s at $800. Also, the cost of 1GB of mobile data in Nigeria at $0.38 is 2.5 times that of India at $0.16. Now we can all see that more billionaires are good for the poor. The question is, why do the poor think otherwise? There is a long and enduring history behind this thinking.
A Rich Man, A Camel, and A Needle
A little more than 2000 years ago, a frail looking son of a carpenter started a small Jewish sect that would later dominate the world for centuries. His central message is to have compassion on the poor, heal the sick, and fill in the gap created by the exploitative society of that era.
In one defining moment in his ministry, he asked a rich man to sell everything he had and follow him and the rich man became very sad and walked away. Jesus Christ then told a story about a needle, a camel, and a rich man. The message stinks, and every society since then seems to demonise the rich as the bad guys and the poor as the good guys.
The reality, however, is different. Every society needs rich guys to create values without being exploitative. What history has shown is that it is possible to strike this delicate balance as a society evolves.
The Robber Barons: American Richest Created Values But They were Demonised
During the third quarter of the 19th century- 1870s- , a term that describes the exploitative practices of American richest people became popular – The Robber Barons.
The list was impressive – J.P. Morgan, Rockfeller, Carnegie, Mellon, Sandford, Vanderbilt, among others. They used their influence with the politicians to create monopolies across different sectors and became obsessively rich in the process. Yet, the values they created and the restless attack against them by the radical left made them improve the lives of ordinary Americans in the long-run.
For example, Standard Oil which was owned by J.D. Rockefeller created efficient oil exploration techniques that substantially reduced production cost and expanded mobility across the globe.
Besides, at the dawn of the 20th century pinched by guilty consciences, the Robber Barons created huge endowments in education, science, health care, arts and other charities that made America a better place.
George Orwell was Wrong: How Communist China Became Rich
The famous American economist, Paul Samuelson, famously remarked about China: ‘When this sleeping giant wakes up it will shake the world’.
The sleeping giant woke up in 1978, when President Deng Xiaoping started his reform. The basis of Paul Samuelson’s remarks was the fact that Chinese were creating wealth and values in Taiwan, Hong-Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, among others where they dominated their economies.
The ruinous communist rule of Chairman Mao constrained them in mainland China. When President Deng started his reform in 1978, China unleashed its potential.
The results were remarkable. Its GDP jumped from $157 billion in 1978 to $18.74 trillion in 2024. I won’t bother to do the percentage increase.
Today, it has more billionaires than any other country except the United States. If you add American billionaires with Chinese origin, they may likely have more than the Yankees.
India: The Rajahs Embraced Reforms and Modi Took the Baton
During the first three quarters of the 20th century India was a basket case of inefficiency. Its growth rate was so low that it was dubbed the ‘Hindu economic growth rate’. The country was poor and badly run, economically, by the Ghandis who think Karl Marx knows everything. Then in the 1990s Manmoham Singh, a Sikh academic, became their Prime Minister and started his own reforms.
The effect was extraordinary as India turned the corner. The Hindu nationalist, Narendra Modi, who became Prime Minister in 2014, has increased the tempo of the reforms. India today has more billionaires than any other countries in the world except, you guess right, China and the United States.
Eddie Guinness Confronted His Demons and Lifted Irish Poor
In the Netflix series – ‘House of Guinness’ – currently running as top 10 in the streaming platform, the story of Irish brewer, Arthur Guinness was told in eight episodes. When Sir Arthur Guinness died in 1803, he left his brewery to his two eldest sons – Arthur Jnr and Eddie.
Eddie was the visionary who turned Guinness to an international brand by expanding to the United States and the rest of the world. But he faced difficulties from Irish nationalists who were given the brewery problems.
One morning he did something extraordinary. He introduced a pension scheme for his workers that paid them their full salary after retirement at 65 years for the rest of their life and later introduced a comprehensive health insurance scheme. When his brother, Arthur, questioned the logic of his decision, he simply said selfish interests of the Guinness family and self-enlightened interests of his poor workers need to converge for stability
. Guinness would later become one of the popular beer brands globally for centuries. Interestingly, Nigerians consume the black stuff more than any other countries in the world, except, the United Kingdom.
