How Much is Too Much?

by Florence Sprague

For at least the last 25 years, I have been hearing, sometimes sporadically, that the

distribution of wealth in this country was becoming ever more uneven, with the extremes, first approaching, then exceeding those of the Gilded Age. Today the phenomenal wealth of some billionaires, centibillionaires, and even trillionaires, is incomprehensible. In the Reagan era the image given to represent great wealth was how many dollar bills would it take to reach the moon---2.47 billion laid end to end, or 3.52 trillion if stacked on top of one another. A trillionaire’s wealth could stretch to the moon and back over 200 times.

Recently, I read a description that really made an impression—“everything is free” when you are a centibillionaire. [Check out the article in the May 2026 Atlantic Monthly, "Everything is Free and Nothing Matters" by Noah Hawley, online title “What I Learned about Billionaires at Jeff Bezos’s Private Retreat”] At first, I paused and thought-- what, are people ingratiating themselves to the uber-rich by pointlessly giving them free stuff. No, the author means that nothing costs enough for a person of such great wealth to perceive a perturbation in their financial situation.

Nothing they can spend money on makes a dent. They are uber-wealthy before they spend on X and uber-wealthy afterwards. Even really big expenditures. The net effect is that it feels like everything is free. Whoa. No need to budget. No need to balance the books. (Though some army of accountants, somewhere, is sure to be diligently counting the pennies and managing the tax loopholes.) Now THAT is outlandishly rich. 

That just feels immoral, when so many people have to get by on so little, scrimping and pinching each month.

In my mind, the Gilded Age, roughly the last quarter of the 19^th century, was a time of excess and inequity and the country had to work hard to rebalance the economy, an uneven process marred by strikes and labor violence, two world wars and a major depression. And even then, the economic recovery and success felt in the 1950s and 1960s was not equitably distributed to all parts of society.

Now massive wealth disparities are back with a vengeance, greater than ever. 

We’ve all heard that Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all of the others. Well, I feel rather like that about capitalism these days. Unfettered capitalism, where profit is the only outcome that is rewarded, and nothing unrelated to profit is required, rewards greed and selfishness. It does not reward investing in the community, it does not reward respecting your employees, it does not reward the provision of health care and education to all people, and it does not reward kindness or generosity or even honesty. 

Communism may sound ideal in theory, but in practice it does not live up to the hype. Humans still create classes and abuse others cruelly in the name of “principles and progress.” Socialism has promise, but is tainted in this country, as too much like communism. But capitalism as currently practiced in this country is failing to take a long-term perspective when it decides how to invest in the physical, financial, or human capital of the country. We are being greedily short sighted, and we will pay the price.

It may feel to a few like everything is free, but the rest of us know that there is no free lunch.

But wait, the feeling gets worse…