On the Existence of Billionaires: An Apolitical Analysis

This project explores the existence of billionaires through an apolitical lens, focusing on the balance between the economic costs and benefits of consolidated wealth. The primary motivating question is:

Does the cost of consolidated wealth outweigh any economic benefit?

Objectives

• Analyze the positive economic impact of billionaires, including job creation, innovation, and philanthropy.
• Investigate the potential costs of wealth concentration for the average citizen.
• Compare the economic benefits provided by billionaires to the potential costs, such as reduced social mobility and any decrease to the average quality of life.

Scope

This project is purely analytical and does not advocate for or against any policies, ideologies, or systems. The goal is to present objective findings based on data and evidence.

Data Sources

• Original Data Source: Forbes Billionaires Evolution
• I added data to create billionaires_master. For a complete list of sources utilized to fill out missing data, see sources.txt.

Methods

• Data collection and cleaning using Python
• Statistical analysis to evaluate economic contributions and costs.
• Visualization of trends in billionaire demographics and their economic impact.

Key Computed Variables and Statistics

• avg_wage: the average hourly salary of employees compiled over top five held companies.

Questions to Explore

1. What is the economic cost of billionaires for the average citizen, and how does it compare to their economic contributions?
2. How do billionaires influence job creation and innovation?
3. What role do billionaires play in philanthropy and societal support?
4. How has the number and wealth of billionaires evolved over time?
5. Why do some industries produce more billionaires than others?
6. How have corporate profit margins changed over time?

Tools and Technologies

• Programming languages: Python
• Libraries: Pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib, Seaborn

Contributing

Contributions to this project are welcome! If you'd like to contribute, please:

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature-name).
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m "Add feature").
4. Push the branch (git push origin feature-name).
5. Open a pull request.

Disclaimer

This project is for research and educational purposes only. Any findings or opinions are my own and do not reflect that of my employer.