Lewis Hamilton doesn’t think billionaires should exist? That’s rich.
Over the past few days, comments the F1 driver made in a 2023 interview with Jay Shetty have resurfaced and stirred up controversy on social media.
“You shouldn’t be able to have billions,” Hamilton said on Shetty’s “On Purpose” podcast. “I think there should be a limit to how much you can have because there’s enough to go around for everyone.”
Tell that to his girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, who is worth nearly $2 billion, according to Forbes.
Or to the billionaires who fund his career. Formula 1 is one of the most expensive sports in the world and overwhelmingly funded by billionaire owners. Self-made chemical tycoon Jim Ratcliffe bankrolled Hamilton for over a decade at Mercedes before the driver switched to Ferrari, which is controlled by the Agnelli-Elkann family — who have an estimated $18 billion fortune.
Or to Hamilton himself.
While not a billionaire, the driver is worth an estimated $550 million, according to Forbes. He pulls in an annual salary of $60 million from Ferrari (not to mention brand deals with Lululemon, Dior, Puma, Tommy Hilfiger, IWC Schaffhausen and Perplexity), maintains six homes across the world (including a $44 million condo in Manhattan), and keeps a 90-foot yacht.
Several years ago, Hamilton moved from England — where he was born and where income over £125K is taxed at 45% — to Monaco, where, conveniently, his hundreds of millions of dollars are shielded from taxation.
So an anti-billionaire sermon is pretty ironic coming from a man whose fortune and, indeed, entire career wouldn’t exist without them.
But Hamilton is just the latest celebrity to trash a system that made him one of the richest people in the history of the world. It’s a tired shtick meant to make the privileged seem relatable and empathetic. It’s lip service with no action.
See also: Al Gore, who collected an Oscar and a Nobel Prize for climate activism while his Nashville mansion consumed 20 times the energy of the average American home. Warren Buffett spent years lamenting that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary — then structured his affairs so that’s exactly what kept happening.
Bono lobbied governments to spend more on poverty while quietly moving U2’s music publishing to the Netherlands and away from Irish taxes. John Kerry pushed tax increases in the Senate, then docked his $7 million yacht from Massachusetts in Rhode Island — effectively giving himself a $500,000 tax rebate. California gubernatorial wannabe Tom Steyer made his first billion funding coal mines and oil sands, then spent $100 million crusading for climate legislation.
All that virtue-signaling isn’t just hypocritical. It also, obnoxiously, plays into the hands of far-left progressives who continue their rallying cry to raise taxes on the rich (which, inevitably, hits the middle class).
Instead of complaining to seem virtuous or relatable, it would mean a lot more if wealthy athletes and musicians and political figures extolled the virtues of the system they’re benefiting from.
Imagine if someone with Hamilton’s platform used it to explain Monaco’s appeal — why everyone wants to flock to a tax haven and why eliminating punitive taxes creates the kind of prosperity that lets a working-class kid from London’s suburbs become one of the richest athletes in history? Why not be honest about your decision-making and, in doing so, teach people about basic economics instead of contributing to more class resentment?
One of my favorite lines is that Republicans aren’t the party of the rich — they’re the party of people who want to get rich. It’s a message Hamilton should be sending, instead of just regurgitating leftist talking points from a tax haven.
After all, if he really wants to redistribute wealth, nothing is stopping him from moving back to England and paying 45%.
But we all know Hamilton will never do that. He will continue to act in his own self-interest — which is what capitalism predicts and why it works, and why the policies he’s flirting with always fail.
Tax the wealthy enough and they always find a way to leave … exactly what Hamilton already did.
