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If you pay any of your employees a non-living wage you're not "earning" your billions. You hire someone you're expecting them to show up, but also be well rested, hydrated, clothed, physically healthy, mentally fit, and motivated. They can't be all of those things if you're not compensating them well enough and providing them the flexibility life demands. If your employees depend on government services just so they can show up to work then it's the taxpayers that are padding your pocket, not your own "hard work".
Not arguing against you, just using your comment as a jumping off point:
If you are part of the owning class, you aren't "earning" your wage. You are skimming the surplus value created by your employees and calling it "profit"
Capitalism not only encourages exploitation, but requires it. The whole purpose of capitalism is amassing capital, maximization of profit, and the way to do this is through taking the surplus value created by employees.
For example, when a car is created, raw materials go in and are assembled (at least in part) by people. The value created by turning those raw materials into a car is created by the employees that turned it into a car. The difference between the fair market value of that car and the raw materials put in is the value added by the worker.
If we were to actually pay these workers what they are worth, by the value they added to that car, there would be no profit. But because capitalism incentivises maximization of profit, the owning class pays you a wage that is always less than that value added, and they have incentive to make that wage as small as you are willing to take, after all, you can't build the car yourself because you do not own the means of production
And therein lies the fundamental problem of capitalism. He who owns the means of production has the power.
Editing to add: If the workers owned the means of production, then there would be no reason for the owning (billionaire) class to exist -- because they don't actually do anything, they just own things.
Poverty wages are not evidence of a broken system, they are evidence that the system is working exactly as intended. We need an economic system that does not incentivize profit, period.
How about Taylor Swift? By all accounts she pays her employees very well. I realize as with any rule there will be exceptions, and I'd say there are a few. Very few.
She's not Mother Teresa, but not an absolute monster either, and just barely a billionaire. Most of that billion is intangible assets, she doesn't literally have $1 billion in her bank account.
It's hard to hate or speak against someone like that when they're so insulated and it's not clear how much class consciousness they even have. At the same time, someone like that could obviously do more.
Most of Taylor Swift's wealth comes from the record label, not her employees' labor. UMG certainly is a mega corporation that monopolizes the industry and is valued at tens of billions of dollars currently.
This is exactly why I don't like this hard "billionaire" line. Because it detaches the argument from how they amassed their wealth and instead focuses on "they're wealthy so it's bad". I don't know enough about Swift to know if she in the socialist sense "earned" her wealth, but let's say that she did. Let's say her labor is that valuable and within the framework of of what she can reasonably influence she hasn't deliberately exploited anyone for her benefit. If she put in the labor and walked away with a billion, what is wrong with that? Are we supposed to virtue signal and claim that she should've gone above and beyond to make sure every penny was ethically obtained? Are we supposed to perpetuate the capitalist misinformation that socialism is when you're not allowed the fruits of your labor is it makes you too rich?
And are we also supposed to turn a blind eye to all the investor leeches who do no actual labor but take a profit margin from the labor of others? You know, as long as their wealth stays below a billion. Are you some kind of an ethical capitalist if you give away every penny that would make you a billionaire?
Yes, the vast majority (if not all) billionaires haven't earned their billions but I think we should be emphasizing how they made their billions instead of the fact that they have a billion. It's far more important to get rid of the leeches than it is to get rid of billionaires. Even if there aren't any ethical billionaires getting rid of them isn't going to get rid of all the multi-millionaires who are doing the same horrid shit.
If your scenario were true then we need to change the system, or how we teach our children what is right or wrong.
If I was Taylor Swift in your example, I would split all of the money with everyone who helped put my shows on, since its literally impossible for me to do it alone.
Part of the problem is that people see Taylor Swift as a one person act, when its hundreds. This puts her up on a pedestal, and everyone else is forgotten.
Taylor Swift isn't THE problem, but she is absolutely a symbol of the problem.