Elon Musk is now the world’s first trillionaire thanks to SpaceX’s record-breaking debut on the stock market. That milestone has produced a backlash with some Democratic officials reviving talk of a wealth tax.
The SpaceX initial public offering “thrust the richest man in the universe into an unexplored frontier of wealth,” said Wired. (Much of that fortune is “tied up in shares” in SpaceX and Tesla.) It also sparked a “tax-the-rich push” from Democrats, said Bloomberg. Musk’s vast holdings are a “sign the system is rigged,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said in an email to supporters, per the outlet. A “typical” American family would “have to work more than 11 MILLION years to make Elon Musk’s level of wealth,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said on X.
The trillionaire backlash will likely be a “prominent theme” in the Democrats’ 2028 presidential primary, said Bloomberg, but it comes with a danger. Musk spent $291 million to help elect President Donald Trump in 2024, and “he shows every sign of staying in the game.”
‘World’s stingiest billionaire’
Musk’s “trillion-dollar payday” came from “generous government subsidies, years of government-funded research and government contracts,” Elizabeth Spiers said at The Nation. Yet society has decided to “treat Musk’s wealth as if it is fully earned,” even as he remains “one of the world’s stingiest billionaires in terms of philanthropic giving.” It is a broken system that allows him to “keep accumulating money while giving little back.”
SpaceX is a “testament to human ingenuity, immigrant success and American greatness,” Jonah Goldberg said at the Los Angeles Times. If the trillionaire is successful in his goals, “he will be more responsible than any other human for making ours an interplanetary species.” The outrage over his riches can be attributed to “our obsession with income inequality” but that is “aesthetic complaint masquerading as a policy position.” The truth is that “no one was made poorer by Musk getting richer.” Instead, the wealth created by his companies help “grow the pie,” which in turn “means more pie for more people.”
‘Making everyone’s life better’
Democratic anger over Musk’s wealth “shows they don’t know how prosperity is created,” the Washington Examiner said in an editorial. The world’s richest man “hasn’t broken any rules,” but he does “provide immensely valuable services to millions of people, making everyone’s life better.”
Musk is a “poster child” for a billionaire class that has “more dollars than we have the ability to count,” Will Bunch said at The Philadelphia Inquirer. America’s ultra-rich continue to build unfathomable sums of wealth “even as thousands starve and his fellow Americans can’t pay the rent.” Musk has also used his wealth to buy the White House and stoke right-wing fury around the world via his social platform X. It is time to “undo the massive policy failure of the world’s first trillionaire.”
The SpaceX IPO backlash could be an issue in the midterms
