Elon Musk and what’s wrong in America
Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, is now worth $726 billion!
Musk is the poster child for what is wrong in America. By the summer of 2024, he had amassed an estimated $220 billion in wealth, largely due to the regressive tax policies and labor laws that have transferred $79 trillion from the lower 90% to the upper 1% income group between 1975 and 2023. And because of the egregious Supreme Court decision on Citizens United in 2010, Musk was permitted to spend $280 million on Trump’s presidential campaign. Given that Trump won the popular vote by only 1.5%, it is likely that Musk was the deciding factor in the election, as he has claimed.
Why did Musk support Trump? Musk did not share most Americans’ affordability concerns about food, housing and medical care. Rather, Musk wanted to lower his taxes and reduce the government regulations on his companies, SpaceX and Tesla. Trump promised not only to extend his 2017 tax cuts for the rich but also to put Musk in charge of eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse”. This gave Musk the opportunity to dismantle USAID and several regulatory agencies. Although he caused an estimated 600,000 deaths worldwide, 300,000 federal employee layoffs, and widespread disruptions of government services, he did not reduce government spending. However, Musk did increase his personal wealth more than three-fold.
On New Year’s Day 2026, Musk vowed to go “all-in” funding Republicans in the November midterms. The Musk story was perfectly predicted by Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman (and many others) when he said that the Citizen United decision would create a “vicious cycle of oligarchy”.
Our country has many problems, but extreme wealth inequality and the erosion of democracy are arguably its most fundamental. Fortunately, there is broad agreement among economists, political scientists, and policy makers about how to solve these problems and most of the solutions are supported by a majority of Americans. Only Trump, his corrupt administration, an illegitimate Supreme Court majority and a few dozen greedy billionaires are standing in the way.
We the people can overcome them!