When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman raised billions to build a better future for humanity, or Elon Musk launched a car company into space, the world watched in awe. Yet when Garry Tan, CEO of Y Combinator, wore a T-shirt saying, “We should have more billionaires,” the internet lost its mind.
That five-word slogan sparked outrage. But it also exposed a fault line in how we think about success, innovation, and inequality. It’s time we confront an uncomfortable truth:
If we want progress—real, sustainable, transformative progress—we need more billionaires.
Not the ones who sit atop dynasties of inherited wealth. Not the extractors. But the builders. The risk-takers. The ones who, like it or not, fund the future.
The Math: $1 to the Billionaire, $45 to the World
Nobel laureate William Nordhaus studied the economics of innovation and reached a surprising conclusion: the vast majority of the value created by technological breakthroughs doesn’t go to the innovators themselves. It goes to society.
In his landmark paper, Nordhaus found that innovators capture just 2.2% of the social surplus they generate. The remaining 97.8%? It flows outward. To consumers, workers, downstream businesses, and the broader economy.
In simple terms:
For every $1 a tech founder earns, society gains $45.
That billionaire’s profit you resent? It may be the best bargain humanity gets.
Who’s Paying Their Share?
The common retort is: “They don’t pay taxes.” That claim doesn’t hold up. In the United States, the top 1% of earners—those making over $699,000 a year—earned 26% of all income in 2021, but paid 46% of all federal income taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom 50%, earning under $48,700, paid just 2% of income taxes, while earning 10% of the national income. This isn’t to minimise hardship or suggest the tax code is perfect. But let’s get the facts straight: high earners are footing a disproportionate share of the bill. That’s not a defence of wealth hoarding. It’s a defence of economic reality.
The Real Problem: What Kind of Billionaires Are We Producing?
Not all billionaires are created equal.
The troubling rise of inherited wealth, now outpacing entrepreneurship in some regions, is something to worry about. So is monopolistic behaviour, tax avoidance, and unchecked lobbying. But to conflate all billionaires with bad billionaires is lazy thinking. Some of the most consequential innovations of the 21st century (solar energy, reusable rockets, AI infrastructure, mRNA vaccines) were driven not by governments or NGOs, but by billionaires who believed they could bend the future. Would these technologies exist without them? Perhaps. Would they have emerged as quickly? Doubtful. The world doesn’t just need money. It needs conviction capital: high-risk, high-vision bets that institutions are too slow or too cautious to back.
From Criticism to Construction
Wealth inequality is real. But knee-jerk billionaire bashing is not a solution. It’s a symptom of deeper societal anxiety: about housing, opportunity, wages, and the erosion of the middle class. We should tax smarter. Regulate more transparently. Ensure antitrust enforcement keeps markets open. But the goal should never be to punish success. It should be to channel it. A society that punishes ambition will soon find itself with neither billionaires nor breakthroughs.
Garry Tan Was Right
When Garry Tan wore that T-shirt—“We should have more billionaires”—he wasn’t celebrating yachts or private jets. He was making a harder, more controversial point:
That ambition shouldn’t be a sin. That wealth created through value, not inheritance, should be encouraged. That the people crazy enough to bet on impossible ideas shouldn’t be punished for succeeding.
In a time of cynicism, his message sounded tone-deaf. But behind the provocation was a truth most are afraid to say out loud:
We don’t need fewer billionaires. We need better ones. And we need more of them. Not because billionaires are perfect. But because the future is expensive, and someone has to build it.
So yes, Garry Tan was right.
