I agree with you 120%. These millionaires/billionaires could just commission gold statues of themselves with the money.
Instead, they fund massive high-paid employment programs. A megayacht costs 15% of its initial construction/delivery cost PER YEAR to keep at “like new” condition. A ten million dollar yacht paid the salaries of 50+ skilled craftsmen for three years to build, then puts 1.5 million dollars into the local economy PER YEAR to crew and maintain.
The guys who buy and pay for the maint. of these yachts (and private jets, same deal) are heroes. Each one of them is paying the salaries of dozens of well-paid men who feed their families off those salaries.
Remember, they could just build a mansion with a gold statue, once, with the same money. Yachts (and jets) are “gifts that keep on giving” (to the local skilled trade community.)
In a fit of virtue signaling the socialists who run California dumped a huge tax on yachts.
This didn’t deprive their rich friends of their yachts, it just got them to relocate the yachts down to Baja, along with all the support jobs that used to provide a good living to a lot of Americans.
Of course considering who now runs California that may have been the idea right from the start- their close relatives in Ensenada could be in the yacht maintenance business.