Imagine there's no billionaires

If you've ever heard the line, every billionaire is a policy failure, it might hit your ear as just another empty or vague catchphrase, or even worse, a useless hashtag. But is it actually vague? And more importantly, is it actually useless. Beneath the sentiment is a serious policy question.

Is the existence of billionaires a sign that we've engineered unsustainable levels of inequality? The word unsustainable is key there, because if we set aside, for the moment, moral questions about what's right and wrong, And just ask if this kind of inequality represents an existential threat to democratic societies, it's not clear what the answer is, or at least it's not simple. But I do think there's more than enough reasons to suppose that what we're doing now isn't sustainable. And if that's true, what should we do?

do about it. I'm Sean Elling and this is the gray area. Today's guest is Ingrid Robenz. She's a political philosopher and economist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

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