My views on wealth and taxes have been greatly shaped by the West African environment in which I grew up. In my boyhood years in Ghana, the country’s population was overwhelmingly poor, but there was a small number of fairly rich people. No one knew how they acquired their wealth though.

It was a similar story in the neighboring countries, including Nigeria. There were few large private enterprises in the region at the time. The vast majority of the rich people were government officials, and the common assumption was that they got wealthy by looting state assets. It was something they could do with impunity because there was little in the form of institutional checks on them.

It is a tragedy that this brazen theft is still prevalent. If anything, it has gotten worse over time. Millions of people have been immiserated over many decades by the rampant corruption. Many of my siblings and their families, as well as close friends, still live in Ghana. They are among the victims. I therefore have plenty of reasons to be angry at the depravity of the ruling elites.

I have no such justification to be offended by the riches of America’s wealthy class. I know how the likes of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk became fabulously rich. These are legitimate businesspeople who took risks, made sacrifices and worked extremely hard over many years to get to where they are today. In some respects, they were also incredibly lucky along the way. But that isn’t something I can hold against them. I don’t get mad at someone who wins a $1 billion jackpot.

The truth is, many of these people have become incredibly wealthy because they created products that most of us purchase. We buy them because we find them highly useful. I often think about all the communication tools we have at our disposal today. When I left Ghana in my early twenties to go to college in the Soviet Union, I practically lost contact with my family and my girlfriend whom I left behind. I could only write letters to them. It took about three months, sometimes more, before I received any responses back. It was a nightmare. Life would have been a lot easier for me and my loved ones had cell phones and email been available in those days.

That is just one example.

The way I see it, America is such a wide-open field that each one of us can dream up an entrepreneurial idea, take a shot at it, and see what happens. Nothing stops us from doing that. It is true that the playing field is never level in life. Access to opportunity is often determined by family circumstances, geography, nationality, culture and a host of other factors. But there have always been some young people who have everything they need to grow up and become highly successful adults but don’t capitalize on their opportunities. And then there are those who come from nothing and end up hitting it big. Despite that complex web of factors, the fact remains that in theory, the path to affluence is open to everyone in America.

In many ways, we Americans live in a highly individualistic culture. But even then, no one in this country becomes phenomenally successful on their own. Even geniuses like Musk and Bezos heavily leverage society’s assets to build and sustain their enterprises. There is no question therefore that the ultra-wealthy owe a large debt to society.

Are there mechanisms that can be used to quantify that obligation? I recently explored that question.

The ideal way, in my view, would be to calculate an amount for each individual or entity based on how much we think they have taken from society. We could then have them pay in the form of taxes over set periods of time. Future debts could be estimated in the same fashion. However, there are no easy ways of doing those kinds of individualized assessments and so governments resort to generalized taxation.

Even though I have a generally favorable view of rich people in America, I agree that some of their actions deserve scrutiny. The wealthy use their power to influence politics in non-altruistic ways. They are able to shape tax policies to their benefit, for example. Historically, businesspeople have always tried to curry favor with high-level government officials, but some individuals and corporations have taken it to unseemly levels under this current administration. Journalistic independence has become a casualty in some cases.

One of the perennial complaints against corporations is that they don’t pay their workers fairly. Corporate bosses always counter that they do. They argue that if they didn’t, labor would move elsewhere because America is a free-market system. That is true, but to a point. Salary benchmarking means that it takes just one or a handful of enterprises to set compensation levels that then become “the reigning competitive industry wages.” It may not be active collusion by corporations to pay workers the least they can get away with, but such benchmarking can produce the same effect.

All of these arguments between the ultra-wealthy and mere mortals like me who form the rest of society will go on till eternity. But there is one question that I am constantly thinking about and trying to find an answer to: Why are super rich people so reluctant to give more of their wealth to society?

Some of America’s rich individuals have accumulated so much wealth that there is no possible way they and their families can spend all of that, even in multiple lifetimes. Just a couple of days ago, Musk became the world’s first trillionaire. I have written in the past that it is none of my business what wealthy people decide to do with the money they have earned. But I am intrigued by the question nonetheless.

Given how intensely rich people are vilified by the rest of society, I have always thought that life would be a whole lot better for them if they opened their fists just a bit more. A little more generosity on their part would buy them a lot of goodwill, which is something some tech companies urgently need right now.

The growing backlash against data centers across the country is partly due to the fact that a lot of people don’t feel they will benefit much from the massive wealth that the AI revolution is expected to generate. Why deal with all the disruptions that the building of these giant facilities will cause, and tolerate increases in electricity prices, if out-of-towners will simply take all the money and run after all is said and done. That sense of exclusion from economic gains, which so many Americans have, will continue to fray the country’s social fabric. That cannot be good for anyone, no matter how rich they are.

For now, America’s wealthy class appears willing to endure all the vitriol that is directed at it. There doesn’t seem to be any inclination on its part to pay even slightly more in taxes. That, to me, means there are other motivations in play other than simple greed.

I know about the concern rich people often express that if they opened their wallets even slightly, politicians and the general public would keep coming back for more to fund ever-growing social programs. Better to keep the door shut, the wealthy class seems to say.

While we pray for the Lord to touch the hearts of our brethren who have been blessed with bountiful harvests, I will continue to comfort my soul with the research findings of Yale University economist William Nordhaus. He has shown that historically, innovators have kept for themselves only about 2 percent of the total surplus they generate. Published data show that for tax year 2022, America’s top 1 percent paid 40.4 percent of federal income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid just 3 percent of federal income taxes. Of course, life could always be better.

One thing I also try to keep in mind is that my life would be quite a bit poorer if these wealthy people didn’t exist. Not everyone is a genius like Musk or Bezos. There is no guarantee that if we didn’t have them, and their fellow entrepreneurs, there would be other people who could readily step in to do everything they have done, and provide the approximately 40 percent contribution to overall annual tax revenue. We could very well end up with zero.

Unlike the rich people in West Africa, most of whom are malicious parasites, the wealthy class in America has a nourishing effect on our society. Their positive contribution is something that I, for one, will continue to be thankful for.