Should Personal Net Worth Be Capped at $1 Billion?

I’ve seen calls to peg everyone’s net worth at $1 billion. I believe no one actually holds that much in real assets, so I used Nigeria’s hospitality sector to illustrate. With ₦500 million you can build a 30-room hotel. That’s about $350,000. A 1,000-hotel chain would cost $350 million and employ over 20,000 people. A $1 billion investment could build 3,500 hotels and employ around 100,000 staff outside highbrow areas. That figure also needs to cover interest during long construction phases. So in real terms, $1 billion can truly employ 100,000 Nigerians. Is there any individual on Earth who can personally fund and oversee that scale? I doubt it. This raises the question: should net worth be capped by law? One idea is to make everyone an investor first, so asset growth is more evenly spread. But if extra wealth above $1 billion must be surrendered, we’d need a fair way to credit those whose capital is taken. Remember, stock-market valuations can double overnight and aren’t “real” in the same way physical assets are. Any cap would force us to debate the role of public trading itself.

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