The Social Impact of Successful Business People: How Wealth Creation and Spending Benefit Society

Ruihan Sun

doi:10.58445/rars.1570

##article.authors##

Ruihan Sun The High School Affiliated to Renmin University of China

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.58445/rars.1570

Keywords:

wealth, social impact, business

Abstract

Over the past few decades, the distribution of wealth has become increasingly uneven (Swanson, 2015). In the US, the share of overall wealth held by the top 1% increased from around 25% in 1980 to more than 40% today (Bagchi & Svejnar, 2015). Given the severity of wealth inequality, successful business leaders are often criticized for earning and spending tremendous amounts of money while less affluent people struggle to make ends meet. Therefore, it is important to know whether business leaders benefit society under this configuration. On the whole, successful business leaders benefit society both by making and spending their money.

However, this conclusion is only valid if business leaders make and spend their money legally. Monopolistic practices, tax evasion, and illicit competition harm others' interests. Likewise, funding political campaigns, buying insider information, and bribery are also beyond our scope of discussion, since all of these illegal behaviors are conducted at the expense of others’ interests.

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