Former governor Jesse Ventura explains why there shouldn't be a single billionaire in America

Former governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, turned many heads when he said billionaires should not exist. In a video shared on Reddit by u/_THE_Oliver, the former wrestling star—who served as the 38th governor of Minnesota between 1999 and 2003—says: "There should not be one billionaire in America. None. And I will tell you why. Because there is nobody that works hard enough to earn 1,000,000,000. And my argument is this, the two jobs that I did in my life that were physically the most demanding and mentally the most difficult that I ever did, paid me the least amount of money."

He continued, "And one was going through BUD/S. And I challenge any billionaire to put up with six weeks of that s**t at $62 per week. And the second was right before I went into the Navy. I had a job with Minnesota Highway Department. A couple of bucks above minimum wage. I worked for the bridge crew and you know, what my job was? I worked a four-day work week, 10 hours a day. So I could have Friday, Saturday and Sunday for the weekend. You are 18, of course, you are going to do that. But I worked 40 hours in four days on the bridge crew."

"And guess what I did? I ran the 80-pound jackhammer. I challenge any billionaire to run the jackhammer for 40 hours for one week and then tell me, he works harder than that. No, he doesn't. That's why I believe there should not be a billionaire in the world," Ventura added.

Reddit users had a few opinions of their own in response to Ventura's statements. u/Timbalabim elaborated, "If America is a capitalist society, there should be no billionaires in America because billionaires have escaped capitalism. $1B will make ~$60M every year by virtue of its existence. Sure, it needs to be invested, but there are plenty of reliable, stable ways to invest money to ensure that kind of return. Even at 3%, you're looking at $30M. A billionaire could fall asleep for a year and make more money than most people will make in a dozen lifetimes. It's not about need. It's about being consistent with our values. Billionaires are capitalists who escaped capitalism into self-sufficient, disgusting wealth that, short of something cosmically catastrophic, will never be exhausted."

u/uriel 18 wrote, "The biggest problem is that those profits are unpaid wages to people actually doing the work." Meanwhile, u/Yeetinator4000Savage commented, "Because he’s talking about meritocracy which is very appealing to most Americans. He’s making the argument that it’s physically impossible for someone to work hard enough to be a billionaire, and he’s also implying that people in low-wage heavy labor jobs deserve more money."

u/greedyracoon made a valid point of their own, writing: "We’ve been trained to believe that if you work with your hands or your heart (social services), you should expect not to get compensated. You don’t deserve a living wage because you didn’t throw your money into the rat race and take risks. It’s complete bulls**t."