How To Become a Billionaire (Script & Sources)

Good morning, bad news, just 8 billionaires now control more wealth than 3.6 billion people - and this trend is only getting worse, with the number of billionaires doubling in the last decade, while hundreds of millions of families around the world live on less than $1.90 a day.

Now, that might seem unfair, but actually I have good news. We can solve income inequality, and it’s extremely simple. All you have to do… is become a billionaire. But I understand that not everyone knows how to do that, so here are four easy steps to get your net worth from aww to ooh:

Step one: Be born rich. This is the easiest one, it involves literally zero effort. About 2/3rds of 2012 Forbes 400 list were already born rich. 88 of them came from upper middle class families, 48 of them inherited at least a million dollars, 28 of them inherited at least 50 million dollars, and 84 of them were already born billionaires so – mission accomplished right there. Just, whatever you do, don’t be born poor. Remember: Apple, Amazon, Google, even Disney were all started in garages – and roughly a third of the country doesn’t have one of those. So, do your best to try and inherit an emerald mine, it’ll go a long way.

Step two: Invest. But not in people. Whatever you do, don’t let regular folks like employees or smaller companies take your money, even if they make all of your money for you. Instead, invest in your own companies, or in real estate, or art if you wanna do a little legal tax fraud – look at companies like Amazon, Kroger, Home Depot, and especially WalMart – what do they all have in common? They treat their employees like dirt, and make their owners outrageously rich. It’s no secret that the basis of the American economy is the exploitation of workers who don’t have the leverage to negotiate for more money, while the richest one percent collect nearly all of the value of their labor, and then use that value to further disenfranchise their workers, not to mention bribing Congress to pass laws that make sure they don’t have to contribute to the country that made them wealthy. If you want to make a billion dollars, and keep it, you’d better not even think about using it to enrich anyone except you and your friends.

Step three: Gamble! Not with your money of course, that’s risky. You could lose it. Instead what you should do is take trillions of dollars of other people’s money, pay them next to no interest, use it to invest in extremely unstable markets with high yields, and take all of the profits. Now, of course normal people can’t do this, but if you’re a bank, or investment firm, it’s totally legal and actually the basis of how financial services companies make most of their money, which grows the stock market that they own 90% of.

Now, gambling isn’t always a sure thing, that’s what makes it so fun. So, you might be asking, “what happens if the very risky investments I made fail?” Well, don’t worry, it’s not your money! And because there’s so much money at stake, the government will always bail you no matter who’s president. In fact, in 2008 the CEO of Lehman Brothers received half a billion dollars right before the company filed for bankruptcy and the economy crashed. You literally can’t lose. So what if everyone except you is thrown into a multi-generational financial crisis and millions of people lose their homes and jobs, completely removing the middle class’s ability for any financial mobility while spiking the suicide rate. Just buy a mega yacht, and crash it into the Caribbean, I promise you’ll feel better.

Step four: Don’t pay your taxes. Now there are a few ways to do this. You can always hire an accounting firm to find ridiculous loopholes in the tax code, like writing off a private jet. You can spent a little more money and bribe, sorry, I mean “lobby” Congress into passing a ridiculous tax bill that puts the country and middle class deeply in debt, and raises taxes on everyone else so that the only actual beneficiaries are the ultra-wealthy. 

You can also just funnel your money out of the country by establishing shell companies that divert your billions into offshore tax havens – and good news, even if a team of journalists exposes trillions of dollars of fraud, tax evasion, and illegally bypassing international sanctions, absolutely NOTHING will happen. Well, to you that is, one of the journalists who led the Panama Papers investigation was murdered with a car bomb. But, you get to keep your money, and that’s what’s important. Also, don’t forget, you don’t actually even have to pay your taxes if you’re rich because the IRS doesn’t have the resources to audit you, because your friends in Congress keep cutting their budget.

So, there you are: follow those easy steps and you’ll be right up there with the big boys, (and they are almost all boys). Whether you inherit, steal, defraud, or gamble your way to the top, just remember it’s literally impossible to EARN a billion dollars.