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Dear John,
Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world, has a net worth currently estimated at $253 billion. But if he sustains his current annual growth rate of 110% per year, according to a new report from the wealth-tracking organization Informa Connect, Musk could become the world’s first trillionaire by 2027.
That will be the middle of the next administration, as you may have noticed. If Trump wins, Musk might have a top advisory role in the government at that point, heading up a “government efficiency commission” responsible for reducing “waste and needless government regulation.” Musk seems to be eager for the role.
And why wouldn’t he be? As the Wall Street Journal notes, such a role would “give Musk influence over the federal agencies that regulate his empire, including SpaceX and Tesla.”
The grotesquely rich Musk and the smoke-and-mirrors rich Trump have not always been on such friendly terms. As recently as 2022, Trump called Musk a “bulls**t artist” and Musk said it was “time for Trump to hang up his hat & sail into the sunset.” Ah, but the winds have changed, and now the two see mutual benefit in teaming up.
Both men have achieved these inordinate accumulations of wealth and power through managing businesses that have never paid their share of taxes; nor have their own private taxes been anywhere near commensurate with their wealth. It’s time to tax the billionaires!
Tell Congress: The time has come to break up the oligarchy and raise taxes significantly on billionaires, before they become trillionaires.
What’s good for Trump and Musk is not what’s good for the country. To the billionaire / trillionaire class, “waste and needless government regulation” means Social Security, Medicare, and all the federal safeguards and gatekeepers who protect our food, drugs, air, water, climate, and natural resources. Not to mention our rights to organize, and to live free of discrimination and fraudulent business practices.
For comparison, as of 2024, only ten countries in the world have a GDP above $2 trillion.
If, like me, you have serious concerns about the conflicts of interest Musk would face as the chief auditor of the U.S. government, then we need to speak up and press Congress to take action now. We need to establish a tax policy that brings more of the economic engine back into the lives of over 300 million ordinary Americans. There’s more of us than there are of them.
We must demand that Congress raises taxes on billionaires like Elon Musk!
Thank you for helping build an economy that works for all of us, not just the ultra-rich.
Robert Reich
Inequality Media Civic Action
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