In America, and to its inestimable great shame, as reported by forbes.com, there are three individuals that: "…. collectively hold more wealth than the bottom 50% of the domestic population." In a land that claims it believes in representative government, and is supposed to be a country of the people, by the people, and for the people; as well as propagating the belief that this country is just in its laws and egalitarian in format, it has instead morphed into becoming a country of dynastic wealth, of the privileged and well positioned few, of which those people pay little or nothing in taxes, and essentially have everything of value.
While those that have an incredible and unfathomable amount of wealth, go to great lengths to explain that they aren't really about the money and have tried to or believe that they have been of great service and benefit to their fellow compatriots, as well as indicating that they intend to or are in the process of setting up charitable foundations to gift their money to good causes; all of this in the big scheme of things while perhaps even noble, doesn't not negate the fact that three individuals should not have now, nor should they have had as much wealth as 50% of the population of this great nation.
Further to the point, wealth is power, and more times than not, money makes money, primarily because of the position and power of the person or persons or corporation that are well placed to make that money, again and again, without end. In addition, the art of business necessitates for certain people, the art of exploiting others and taking advantage of situations, fairly or unfairly, over and over again, to the highly meaningful extent that it benefits the well positioned few at the expense of the poorly positioned many. So too, wealthy people are masters of public relations, along with that corresponding spin, that presents them as being something that they aren't really, but they look well the part of someone that seems human, and often come across as if they are humanitarians.
The most important thing, though, is regardless of whether the very, very rich are good people or not; though a very strong argument could be made that they are not good people, they have, without a doubt, an iron grip upon the economy and even the stability of a nation, because of their wealth. That is to say, concentrated money is most definitely concentrated power, and that power can be used as a weapon for the continual benefit of the superrich; for economic engines of any country, run upon the wealth so accumulated and properly invested within that nation's borders. So that, if the superrich, for whatever reason, decide that they want to take all of their wealth and place it somewhere outside the borders of America, to invest and to be secured within the borders of other nations, than that would be even worse than having that wealth just vanished, because that wealth created by this country but utilized outside this country could be used in a deliberate destructive targeted manner that could readily bring financial and structural instability to the very foundations of this nation, in order to ultimately extract from that nation, even more benefits for those that have virtually it all, already.
It is not possible to have a republic or a democracy, or a country by and for the people, if that wealth of that nation is in the hands of the very, very few, because, ultimately, those with the money make the rules, whether written or not, and the people, must accept them, or these superrich with the expressed backing of the military-industrial complex will put their boots upon the necks of the people.