Microsoft Corp. co-founder Gates and former CEO Steve Ballmer have also soared, long after they left the company. Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, whose fortune is tied up in the world’s largest oil refinery -- has also profited from the shift online. Shares of Reliance Industries Ltd., the conglomerate he controls, have risen 40% this year as the company has expanded into digital and retail businesses, making him the fifth richest person in the world.
Among the top 10, only two have seen their wealth decline in 2020: luxury mogul Bernard Arnault and Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Warren Buffett. While tech has surged, more than 200 of the 500 billionaires tracked by Bloomberg have lost money this year.
Giant tech companies control the infrastructure of the digital economy in a similar vein to how Gilded Age trusts monopolized America’s industrial economy at the turn of the 20th century. Yet in 1900, the five largest U.S. companies had combined market values that equaled less than 6% of the nation’s economy, according to estimates by Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist Daron Acemoglu.
Currently, five of the largest American tech companies -- Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, and Microsoft -- have market valuations equivalent to about 30% of U.S. gross domestic product. That’s almost double what they were at the end of 2018.
The economic power of the Robber Barons created a fiery counter-reaction, in violent labor unrest and the adoption of reforms that once seemed radical, like the Sherman Antitrust Act and a federal income tax. Compared to the political difficulties faced by John D. Rockefeller and other early 20th-century industrial magnates, government moves against Big Tech have been relatively mild. At least so far.
On the left, politicians including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders have delivered blistering attacks on widening inequality and the growing wealth of billionaires. Protesters have gathered outside Bezos’s Manhattan penthouse, demanding a wealth tax. Facebook employees have spoken out about their employer’s role in spreading disinformation and hate speech.
New Gilded Age
Monopolists like Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie helped repair their public images with large-scale philanthropy, a move echoed in this new Gilded Age.
The Giving Pledge, a commitment to give away the majority of your wealth in your lifetime, was founded by Gates and Buffett. Zuckerberg also has stepped into the realm of philanthropy, establishing the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, or CZI, in 2015 with a goal to “advance human potential and promote equality.”
But even these acts have sparked criticism.
“The modern ultra-billionaire is someone who feels a right, in many cases, to privately govern the people of the United States,” said Anand Giridharadas, author of “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” an influential critique of billionaire philanthropy.
Gates’s generosity and activism during the pandemic has earned him widespread praise, but it’s also attracted conspiracy theorists suspicious of his motives. A YouGov and Yahoo News poll found that 44% of Republicans and 19% of Democrats believed Gates wanted to use vaccinations to give people tracking implants.
The criticism of Bezos also hasn’t let up, even as his giving increased recently with a $10 billion commitment in February to fight climate change and a $100 million donation in April to the nonprofit Feeding America. When he made the announcements, his wealth had already grown by significantly more than those amounts this year. He hasn’t signed the Giving Pledge.