Billionaires and the politics of envy

Billionaires are an ultra-elite social class whose numbers are growing alongside their obscene wealth while others struggle, suffer or even die. They represent a scourge of economic inequality, but how do they get away with being viewed as a ‘force for good’?

In 1974, a year before she became leader of Britain’s Conservative Party and five years before being elected prime minister, Margaret Thatcher stated that she rejected ‘vehemently the politics of envy, the incitement of people to regard all success as if it were something discreditable, gained only by taking selfish advantage of others’. In 1983 United States President Ronald Reagan echoed the same sentiment. ‘If we’re to rebuild our beloved land, then those who practice the politics of envy, … must rise above their rancour and join us in a new dialog … and make America great again.’. 

As the neoliberal era was beginning to take shape, Thatcher and Reagan told the world that if economic progress was the goal, then inequality was necessary. The liberated rich would lead the world, and everyone would benefit in the long run, so the story went. As national economies the world over embraced economic deregulation, corporate tax cuts and the virtual end of trade protectionism, a newly globalised world economy emerged, intoxicated by the promise of economic freedom and shared prosperity. The experiment failed. Neoliberalism has led to widening economic inequality and the emergence of a conspicuous billionaire class.  

Ideology is much stronger than facts and reducing calls for equality to a politics of envy remains part of regressive conservative politics to this day. In 2022, at the depth of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of Australia’s largest corporations were under attack for taking government handouts to support the payment of wages to their employees, while simultaneously giving lavish bonuses to their executives. Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison waved off the scandal. ‘I’m not into the politics of envy,’ he said. Even Labor Prime Ministers are not immune. When people complained about Anthony Albanese buying a $4.2 million home in 2024, they too were accused of the politics of envy.  

Dismissing one’s political adversaries by accusing them of a politics of envy comes hand in hand with the moralisation of unequal wealth and the justification of economic inequality. This is a topsy-turvy world where demands for justice are dismissed as selfishly motivated, bred out of unchecked absorption by the deadly sin of envy. The flip side of the politics of envy is the idea that the wealthy should be revered rather than begrudged. By this account, being rich means being a hard-working ‘winner’ whom others should respect and admire, exponentially so for billionaires. Billionaires are aspirational role models for many people, presented as benevolent and effective – good, even. 

The politics of envy reflects a political conviction that economic inequality is both economically necessary and the fair outcome of a meritocratic society.

If you are not rich it is your fault – you are a loser. Fortunately, public awareness and political activism against billionaire excess and calls to action to address inequality are growing. Economist Thomas Piketty, whose extensive and renowned studies on inequality put him in a position to understand the true devastation it can cause, remains inspiringly optimistic. ‘History teaches us that elites fight to maintain extreme inequality, but in the end, there is a long-run movement toward more equality, at least since the end of the 18th century, and it will continue,’ he argues. Such hopefulness, combined with a faith in the possibility of progress, can animate a political will to change things for the benefit of the vast majority of the world’s citizens. No seemingly entrenched and immovable state of injustice is fixed as if history was standing still. 

What is decried as the politics of envy is, in fact, a call for economic justice. The call was seen in activist movements such as Occupy Wall Street in 2011. It is around today everywhere from the ‘tax the rich’ movement, to the so-called ‘eat the rich’ genre of movies that explore themes of capitalism and inequality. New demands for equality can be found in the resurgent socialism of Bernie Sanders in the United States and Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom. What is clear is that in recent years there has been a growing discontent with the wealth and power controlled by the world’s most rich.  

Acclaimed author Ursula LeGuin stated, when being awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2014, that: ‘We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.’ As a footnote to LeGuin’s insight, it can be added that under contemporary capitalism, there is a profound risk returning to something akin to the divine right of kings, only now those kings are billionaires. All the more reason to resist. All the more reason to demand justice. All the more reason for change. 

This is an edited extract from: Carl Rhodes (2025) Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire, Bristol University Press.