Musk: One Trillionaire Too Many

Elon Musk has become the world’s first trillionaire after SpaceX’s public offering last week, the largest in history. As of recording, he’s worth $1.4 trillion - an unimaginably large amount of money and more than a trillion dollars over the net worth of the next wealthiest person on the planet, Google co-founder Larry Page. Page is worth just over $300 billion. In fact, combining the wealth of the people ranking numbers two through 5 on the Forbes real-time billionaires list (Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Larry Ellison of Oracle), their combined net worth is still less than Musk’s.While cautiously avoiding Musk’s far-right political leanings and his recent incitement of racist riots in Belfast, much of the capitalist media is heralding his obscene wealth. An opinion piece published by The Washington Post considers and dismisses the idea that someone should not have such “inordinate wealth,” but suggests that “SpaceX is one of the real success stories of the past several decades” and “has created something of great value for society” that will somehow democratize wealth by flowing money through the stock market.For those of us in the real world who don’t have hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, the cold truth is that prices continue to rise while wages stay stagnant. Inflation was up 0.5% in May compared to April, and up 4.2% over the last 12 months. Prices are up at the gas pump, at the grocery store, and as summer starts around the United States, areas impacted by significant heat will also be hit by massive increases in energy prices. Tens of thousands of people die every year due to homelessness. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, over 771,000 people in the United States experienced homelessness. The real number may be significantly higher, but still nothing compared to the fact that Elon Musk’s trillions could buy 2.5 million homes at market price and solve the housing crisis immediately.Support the show