“When you can buy your way out of any mistake, when you can fire anyone who disagrees with you, when your social circle consists entirely of people who need something from you, the basic mechanism by which humans learn that other people are real goes dark.” Noah Hawley in The Atlantic April 20, 2026
After my double knee replacement, I had a handicapped parking placard hanging from my rearview mirror for four months and I loved it. At first, when I could barely walk, it was so helpful to be in the closest possible parking spaces to every office and store. Later in my recovery, it was simply helpful as I carried groceries.
Also, every time I pulled into a designated space with a sign like the one above – warning that those parking in those spaces without a placard would be charged at least $250 – I thought about Jeff Bezos. While $250 (“minimum”) would be a hardship for many of us, it would not make a wealthy person blink.
Let’s say that money is not a problem for me and it’s raining hard and I don’t want to get wet and I happily risk paying $250 to park closer to the coffee shop. It’s only $250.
Only empathy would keep a wealthy person – who could easily pay the fine – from parking in those spots. This article by Noah Hawley is an excellent explanation of how billionaires lose their sense of empathy as their bank accounts exponentially grow. This is also true for millionaires, but – and I’m just going to say it here – I believe that there should be no such thing as a billionaire. I believe that billionaires need to pay their fair share of taxes even if it means that they become mere millionaires. It’s the right thing to do for the wellbeing of our nation.
“When Musk took a chainsaw to the federal government as part of the inside joke he called DOGE, he did so with the air of a man who believed that nothing matters—poverty, chaos, human suffering. He was having fun.”
According to the Vaia educational app, it would take about 2738 years to spend a billion dollars if you spend $1000 each day. It would take almost three years to deplete a billion dollars if you spent 1 million each day. If you are a multi-billionaire like Jeff Bezos or an Elon Musk – or even a philanthropist like Mackenzie Scott (formerly Bezos) it would be almost impossible to spend those billions of dollars in one lifetime.
Although Mackenzie Scott has donated over $26 billion – mostly to HBCUs – her wealth continues to grow at a pace that will never be even slightly exhausted much less drained. She’s an example of a wealthy person whose life’s meaning involves transforming the world for good – and not in a performative way. (Note: Bezos granted the actor Eva Longoria $50 million in his annual “Courage and Civility Award” a couple years ago which feels a little showy. Ms Longoria is herself a millionaire.)
We cannot force people to do the right thing. We cannot compel people to to share.
But people who have experienced hardship are more likely to be generous to others if we feel gratitude. We who have been blessed with some semblance of suffering ourselves are not repulsed by the suffering of others. Our own President, who is currently a billionaire even if he’s never been one before, seems to be repulsed by injury even in the sacrificial cause of freedom.
(General Mark) “Milley had chosen a severely wounded Army captain, Luis Avila, to sing “God Bless America.” Avila, who had completed five combat tours, had lost a leg in an IED attack in Afghanistan, and had suffered two heart attacks, two strokes, and brain damage as a result of his injuries. To Milley, and to four-star generals across the Army, Avila and his wife, Claudia, represented the heroism, sacrifice, and dignity of wounded soldiers.
It had rained that day, and the ground was soft; at one point Avila’s wheelchair threatened to topple over. Milley’s wife, Hollyanne, ran to help Avila, as did Vice President Mike Pence. After Avila’s performance, Trump walked over to congratulate him, but then said to Milley, within earshot of several witnesses, “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” Never let Avila appear in public again, Trump told Milley.” Source.
Unimaginably sums of money can destroy the soul. It’s biblical. Again, Noah Hawley:
The world has always been run by rich men. But they directly engaged with the world around them, using their wealth and power to muscle it into its most profitable form. And although today’s billionaires are clearly manipulating society to maximize their own profit, something else is also happening—a disassociation from the reality of cause and effect, from meaning and history. These men no longer feel the need to change the world in order to succeed, because their success is guaranteed, no matter what happens to the rest of us.
As our nation celebrates 250 years, the divide between rich and poor is expanding. And it’s making us less the country our nation’s founders intended, less the people God created us to be. It’s a spiritual problem that I hope those in power – both the politicians and the theologians – will address with courage.
A Church for Starving Artists 