Mega pop star Taylor Swift broke sale records Oct. 3 with the release of her new album, “The Life of a Show Girl.” The artist, beloved by millions, is now worth $2 billion. It seems impossible to stop her warpath of success. Despite her impressive accomplishments, I think it’s about time we stop putting the billionaire on a pedestal.
Swift has amassed her fan base with music rich in themes of feminism and relatability, all while promoting progressive views. Sadly, Swift lost her relatability long ago.
You cannot be a progressive while being a billionaire. To be one is to directly violate the obligations of the other.
To be a progressive is to center your practice — your career — in empathy, so that social reform may be implemented. Swift may claim to care about the average person, but by being and staying a billionaire, her moral compass points straight down into hell.
To illustrate why the billionaire artist probably shouldn’t be a person people look up to, you have to visualize just how much a billion dollars actually is. If Taylor Swift spent $10,000 every day, she’d run out of money in 547 years. That unimaginable amount of wealth is ridiculous. Seriously, what is one person going to do with all that money?
No one needs a billion dollars. It’s impossible to spend it all in one lifetime. So, as any good person would, wouldn’t you feel some moral obligation to help others with your obscene amount of wealth?
Swift is no stranger to donating money, but the donations obviously haven’t made a dent in her pockets, considering she’s still **a billionaire. What she gives is but pocket change to her, yet it’s impressive to the average person because they could never imagine being as rich as her.
If the amount of money she has doesn’t make you angry, maybe what she chooses to do with it will. In 2022, Swift emitted 8,300 metric tons of carbon from using her private jet alone. That’s 1,800 times what the average human emits annually. A causal plane ride to her is an environment-destroying machine to you and me.
Before her fans get out their pitchforks, let me just say that I don’t hate her music. She has some amazing songs, some better than others, but still, I’d be lying if I said she was talentless. I’m not here to attack her success; rather, what she chooses to do with that success.
The ethical billionaire cannot exist, not in the current society we live in. To be a billionaire is to deny yourself a conscience. Empathy is poured down the drain and economic gain becomes the top priority. Any billionaire is no friend of mine.
We must stop blindly supporting all **billionaires, not just Swift. Rihanna, Kylie Jenner and Elon Musk are all people who have accumulated massive amounts of wealth and fame. We support them because we think they’re pretty, we like their songs or we think their impractical cars are cool.
In doing so, we fund their wealth and therefore their power. Just as we would vote for a political leader, we must choose the people we put in the spotlight wisely.
As painful as it may be to discover your idol may not be the best person, they all have to be put in their place. No one is above criticism. When we forget that, we make it possible for people to accumulate massive amounts of wealth without dealing with massive amounts of responsibility.
This article appeared in Vol. LX, Issue V, published Oct. 27, 2025.
