this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2025
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Why do so many people think he doesn't spend money on things like that? Is it because the movies don't really show it, and that's a lot of people's only impression of him? He does plenty to try and improve Gotham's situation as Bruce Wayne, but the place is literally cursed, so no amount of money can fix it.
Because he's still a billionaire
Of course he is, because both his playboy persona and activities as Batman require him to have someone else manage his wealth for him. Publicly he's Wayne Enterprises' pretty boy and the board is making the actual decisions. Privately, all he has the time for is to see that they don't go all evil behind his back.
Money gets made with or without you. And when you're in that kind of position, you either stay around and make sure a larger part of it gets used for doing good or you walk away and be sure others will hoard and use it for doing bad.
Gotham is canonically cursed though. The place turns people evil and crazy.
Because the story lines and ideas reinforce in everyone the idea that bad guys just exist out of thin air ... or they are demonic maniacal mentally maladjusted people who were just born bad and do only bad things in the most extraordinary ways ... that we need super heros in order to protect us from the monsters that lurk around us.
It reinforces this childlike mentality that the world is full of complicated questions that can be easily dealt with by employing simple answers
Tons of batman storylines have villains who were created from circumstance that forced them into crime. They're not typically the big bad ones but it happens a lot.
...and then are dealt with by punching them in the face. It doesn't help.
I think the most striking theme for me from the comics is the idea that one man with billions of dollars is responsible for the safety and well being of many others. And that bad people collectively come together in armies and groups to fight against the single wealthy rich person who is fighting for good.
It reinforces that idea that rich people are altruistic individuals who are using their wealth for the betterment of others ... and that collective groups of small minded people want to come together to try to destroy that one altruistic billionaire.
It's a constant reinforcement that being ultra wealthy is good and that there will always be those will try to take down that person with the massive wealth.
It sounds to me like you're deliberately misinterpreting what goes on in these comics to suit your narrative.
There's 1 altruistic billionaire and he often is at odds with other rich people, Lex Luthor being the most obvious example. I'd wager that more often than not the wealthy people in Batman stories are portrayed negatively or "above it all" while Batman is going down to the street level to address issues. He's an oddity, not the norm. The criminals are not banding together to take down Bruce Wayne (usually), they're banding together to take down Batman, because he opposes their criminal schemes. It's not about his wealth.
These critiques also always feel like massive misunderstandings of why we tell stories (and the necessary metaphor/allegory comics almost certainly have to take in order to tell meaningful stories that we can relate to).
Can I guarantee that the creator of Batman had class-consciousness in mind when creating the character (Hell, I can't even guarantee that it wasn't any deeper than finding old money such as still having a butler just quirky because the creator was so far removed from it)? No. If we're making new characters, should we continue to make benevolent billionaires? Probably not.
But stories are something we shape and (as many people keep pointing out) the narrative and world of Batman keeps getting complicated so that we can tell interesting stories and not have it function as a glorification of capital and put forward the idea that we just need rich men to save us.
It also feels like people who fundamental don't under stand how comics (or any long-form media) works; if we found out the creator was actually a capitalist fascist, that doesn't suddenly expose a rot at the root. Long-form media is continuously building on what came before it and sometimes we don't like it so we retcon or restructure things (there's no way we can guarantee that every contributor to the decades-long canon was swell and great, after all); or create alternative universes as one-shots to try thought experiments about the characters and universe. I don't particularly like Frank Miller's politics but that doesn't mean that I'm bound, now, to take his takes on Batman as foundation to how I view Batman; we create an alternative universe and chuck out the trash. Like, are we so alienated from art that we don't understand how it works, anymore?
Anyway, doesn't directly touch the Batman-is-a-billionaire debate but my favorite encapsulation of my headcanon of the character: https://youtu.be/CUy5rsO5cwo
Comic book ~~hacks~~ writers literally invent a curse/demon gate haunting a city in their semi-realistic noir comic books before criticizing capitalism. /s
The point is not that Bruce Wayne doesn't spend money on charity. The point is it doesn't matter that he does; his commercial interests cause more damage than all his Batmanning around and charity can compensate for, and his Batman shenanigans cause more harm (or would IRL, when you don't have a dozen legal teams making all the adverse effects disappear).
Batman really is a story of rich dudes doing whatever they want, whether it's punching poor people or taking rocket joyrides or fucking little girls, and then their fanboys trying to justify how their exploits are right and proper.
Just stop.