Howard Schultz of Starbucks fame resents the term billionaire.
He calls it a moniker.
He was talking to Bernie Sanders as Bernie Sanders was interrogating him in a Senate hearing.
Howard Schultz reminded everybody that he grew up on the other side of the tracks.
He says he grew up in public housing.
He says that his parents never owned a house.
I will agree with everything that he states about his background.
I like rags to riches stories, and so I admire him for that.
Schultz then states that he went on to earn billions of dollars.
He emphasizes that he earned that money.
That is where I will disagree.
Howard Schultz is wrong, dead wrong.
He didn’t earn his billions of dollars.
He was given those billions of dollars because of a broken system.
He was not entitled to those billions of dollars.
We don’t pay neurosurgeons billions of dollars. We don’t even pay them hundreds of millions of dollars.
We don’t pay cardiothoracic surgeons, cardiologists, or neurologists billions or hundreds of millions of dollars.
We don’t pay them that kind of money because we have a social contract with each other in which we agreed to not rip each other off too badly.
Yet, for some reason, because of a broken system, corporate CEOs, sports stars, music personalities, and computer jerk offs from Palo Alto are allowed to violate this social contract and make hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars.
It’s wrong.
They shouldn’t have been allowed to make this kind of money.
They violate the social covenant we have with each other to treat each other financially with a certain measure of respect.
It doesn’t matter that Howard Schultz grew up on the other side of the tracks.
He’s not on the other side of the tracks now.
What happened to him is what happens to so many people who come from impoverished backgrounds.
Howard Schultz got addicted to money .
He went ape.
It’s easy to do.
Money is no different than cocaine or heroin.
Howard Schultz is so addicted to money he can’t see the needs of the people who work beneath him.
He fights unionization to the hilt.
He will go to the mat with his life in order to prevent unionization.
Here is a man with billions of dollars, and he can’t give up one of them in order to make life a little better off for his Starbucks baristas.
It’s a disgrace.
He’s addicted to money.
And his arguments are false.
He didn’t earn his billions of dollars.
Through a broken system that he took advantage of, he stole billions of dollars.
Fine, he doesn’t like the moniker billionaire?
Okay, how about oligarch?
How about kleptocrat?
How about thief?
OK, babe, I hear your arguments; you are saying that he made Starbucks what it is today. He’s entitled to all the money in the world.
Veto.
Sincerely,
Archer Crosley
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Cowboy Archer 
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