Justin Wolfers
Professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and author of a widely used i...
“The only thing you can buy with $101 million that you couldn't buy with $99 million is power.”
Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers · Money & Markets · October 2026
Wolfers was walking Stacey Vanek Smith through what extra money buys as you get richer: for the first $100 million, he says, you can keep making your life a little better. She asked what the problem is with having more money than you need. This was his answer.
Transcript
Okay. So the first $100 million, maybe I can keep making my life a little bit better. I could afford a bedazzler and wear bedazzled clothes everywhere. After $100 million, what is money buying you?
Well, I mean, I don't know, more bedazzled clothes, but like, what's the problem with having more money than you
need? Right. So I think it is buying you something. The only thing you can buy with $101 million that you couldn't buy with $99 million is power.
Okay.
And that makes me really uncomfortable. And there's sort of a deep question here. And I'm going to state it a little bit too provocatively, but if I'm right that above $100 million is nothing else to buy, why should we let anyone be above that? Do we think
this gets really dangerous?
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