"There's a certain part of the contented majority who love anybody who is worth a billion dollars"

Galbraith’s observation highlights a social phenomenon where vast wealth acts as a sort of automatic credential, winning admiration or affection from broad swaths of society. Admiration for billionaires is not simply about envy or aspiration. Among the “contented majority”, those who are relatively comfortable within the prevailing economic system, immense riches can seem to serve as validation of the system itself. To see someone achieve so much financial success might affirm, for these contented individuals, the fairness or desirability of their society. The billionaire becomes an object of affection not for personal qualities, but for what their wealth symbolizes: that immense reward is possible, that ambition can lead to astonishing outcomes, that perhaps one day anyone might join those ranks.

The use of the word “love” reflects the curious reverence that extreme affluence can attract, a quasi-religious devotion untethered from personal knowledge or direct benefit. Billionaires are rarely judged rigorously by the “contented majority”; their virtues, wisdom, judgment, and even personalities are often assumed rather than proven. Money becomes a proxy for all other forms of worthiness. The “billion dollars” is shorthand for accomplishment, intelligence, vision, or moral superiority, whether or not the individual in question actually possesses those traits.

Galbraith’s insight hints at the resilience of economic hierarchies. When the majority, especially those who are comfortable, admire extreme wealth, serious structural critiques of economic inequality become harder to sustain. Reverence for billionaires helps entrench the social and economic status quo. The “contented majority” may see their own situation reflected in the billionaire’s story at a vastly different scale; admiration becomes aspirational self-justification and a defense of the world as it is. Such dynamics shape broad patterns of deference, affect how societies talk about success, and influence the policies chosen, or avoided, in the collective effort to pursue a good society.