The non-normative case for Jeff Bezos to buy 460 yachts per year

U.S. household wealth is $112 trillion, and Americans spend $14 trillion per year -- one eighth of our wealth -- on goods and services. One person's spending is another's income, so people who spend more than one eighth of their wealth per year on goods and services are boosting economic growth and the vitality of American capitalism.*

As a serious economist, I will not offer a normative assessment of whether I believe more growth is better than less growth, or whether buying useful things is better than buying wasteful things.** I just look at the numbers. If you're spending more than 1/8 of your wealth per year on goods and services, you're pulling economic growth up. If you're spending less, you're pulling growth, business investment, and interest rates down.

Here's a little arithmetic.

If your net worth is $18,500 and you're spending more than $2,300 per year, you're boosting economic growth.

If your net worth is $1.85 million and you're spending more than $230,000 per year, you're boosting economic growth.

If your net worth is $185 billion and you're spending more than $23 billion per year, you're boosting economic growth. It makes no difference to me as an economist whether you get to this number by buying 460 $50 million yachts per year or only 80 yachts plus school lunches for every American kid who needs help.

Capitalism is all about buyers and sellers. Sellers won't invest if buyers won't buy. When aggregate demand is scarce, buyers boost growth.

* Assuming that the economy faces a shortfall in demand rather than supply. A lot of evidence points to this being the case today, from levels of inequality, asset price increases, interest rate decreases, SPACs, etc.

** To be clear, I am using "wasteful" in the Veblenian sense. He explains "It is here called "waste" because this expenditure does not serve human life or human well-being on the whole, not because it is waste of misdirection of effort or expenditure as viewed from the standpoint of the individual consumer who chooses it."