Bernie Sanders says that the American economy is designed to work for the billionaires. My reaction is thank goodness. In today’s American economy, anyone who has a good idea, dedication and a willingness for hard work can become a billionaire.

The first nine people on the most recent Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans made their money themselves. The richest, Jeff Bezos, started by selling books online, and now he runs an online shopping service that provides each of us virtually unlimited buying options that can be delivered to our front doorsteps within 48 hours.

Bill Gates is second on the list. His rivalry with Steve Jobs gave us both the PC and the Mac. Each is better and cheaper than either would have been alone, and that rivalry made each of them billionaires. By the way, Gates and Jobs were both college dropouts, as was Michael Dell, another self-made billionaire.

Mark Zuckerberg, fourth on the list, invented Facebook, the most ubiquitous of the social media with over 2 billion users worldwide. Sixth and seventh are Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who brought us Google, everyone’s indispensable search engine.

Some of the wealthiest Americans began with a leg up. Charles Koch and his brothers started with an inherited company worth a few million dollars. In just one generation, Charles Koch built an empire estimated to be worth well more than $100 billion, employing 60,000 working-class Americans. How did he do it? He went to work every day and was willing to take risks. Speaking of Charles Koch and his late brother, David, they have been vocal supporters of criminal justice reform and a major reduction in prison populations, something also supported by Bernie Sanders, although he never gives them credit.

Numbers 10, 11 and 12 are all named Walton. They inherited a fortune begun by their father, Sam, who opened his first Walmart in 1962. In case Sanders has missed the obvious, Walmart provides affordable groceries, clothing and thousands of other products for the working-class Americans he says he wants to help.

The Forbes 400 list is dynamic; it’s not just the same 400 people year in and year out. Among those joining the most recent list are Tim Sweeney, the inventor of the internet game Fortnite. Jay Chaudhry is an Indian immigrant who founded Zscaler, an information security company. Ernest Garcia created Carvana, the on-line used car exchange. Chad Richison founded Paycom, which allows small business people to manage their payrolls efficiently. A high-priced education is not a prerequisite either. While Garcia went to Stanford, the other three went to University of Maryland, University of Cincinnati and University of Central Oklahoma, respectively.

When George Mitchell died, he had an estimated net worth of $2 billion. Mitchell was the son of Greek immigrants. He is credited with making the technique of hydraulic fracturing profitable. Fracking, when coupled with the twin miracle of horizontal drilling, has succeeded in making the United States energy independent and has allowed Sanders’ working-class Americans to have affordable gasoline. Abundant, cheap natural gas has largely replaced coal as a cleaner burning source of electric power.

What do working-class people do for entertainment? Many go to movies made by self-made billionaires like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire. So is Jay-Z. No inherited wealth there. If the working-class eat pizza, credit the late self-made billionaire Mike Ilitch, who sold Little Caesars’ pizzas two for the price of one.

The combined net worth of the Forbes 400 is less than $3 trillion. If that entire amount were confiscated, it would fund the current federal budget for about seven months. Once the richest 400 Americans have been taxed out of existence, where will Sanders get the next $3 trillion for seven more months of government spending, not to mention the many months thereafter?

I fear that Sanders actually believes his Utopian fantasies. He certainly makes impassioned claims in support of his views. When pressed, however, he never quite comes up with a cost estimate. Moreover, he doesn’t have a long-term proposal to pay for them. Maybe fairy dust.

Cullen M. Godfrey is an attorney and essayist in College Station. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.