Elon Musk just hit a milestone no one has ever achieved before. SpaceX – his rocket, satellite, and artificial intelligence (AI) company – reached a value of $2 trillion in its long-awaited initial public offering (IPO) on June 12. It’s the largest in history, and it just made Musk the first trillionaire on the planet. Cue the tears, outrage, and pearl-clutching among those who think it is too immoral to have a trillion-dollar net worth.
Elon Musk, Trillionaire
The Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s major left-leaning newspapers, published this headline prior to the SpaceX IPO: “SpaceX is set to make Elon Musk the first trillionaire. Here’s how to properly hate him.” Wait a minute. Isn’t “hate has no place here” a tagline of progressivism? Perhaps this realization, or the backlash, prompted the newspaper to change the headline a day later to “SpaceX is set to make Elon Musk the first trillionaire. Is that a bad look for capitalism?”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) demanded a wealth tax after the news broke. Melanie D’Arrigo, an MMIW2SLGTBQQIA+ activist, called it a “moral failure.” Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate for the Democratic Party, said on X: “Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire. Let’s make sure he’s also the last.”
Instead of celebrating this milestone, scores of leftists took to social media and slammed Musk for his trillionaire status. The complainers are the heroes, not the man who made millions of Americans wealthier through his products, services, and stock performance.
“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain,” economist Thomas Sowell wrote.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Socialists argue that society would be better off without millionaires, billionaires, and trillionaires. Well, unless you’re Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), then you likely believe there should be no billionaires and trillionaires (another discussion for a different day). Still, the Zohran Mamdani bobby-soxxers and those who still wear Che Guevara shirts should tell that to the cafeteria workers at SpaceX.
The New York Times reported that 4,400 current and former SpaceX employees could become millionaires overnight due to the IPO. This is especially true for individuals who joined the company early on. But while founders and senior executives are typically beneficiaries of these lavish IPOs, ordinary staff members, including cafeteria workers, will have a seven-figure net worth.
This supports the broader argument that people become billionaires by making everyone else better off. In other words, companies generated massive profits and entrepreneurs turned wealthy by satisfying public demand and growing the pie. It is in direct contradiction to the economic egalitarians who believe it is a zero-sum game: Musk attained trillionaire status by taking from you.
The more millionaires, billionaires, and trillionaires there are, the greater the sign of a prosperous country. The United States has more millionaires than any other nation on Earth and more than all of Western Europe and China combined. The rich get richer, but the poor and middle class also get richer.
Plus, what better way to own the means of production than by purchasing shares of a company on the New York Stock Exchange?
One Small Step for Wall Street
Was the SpaceX IPO overvalued? Is the share price justified? History suggests that stocks typically fall for weeks after their debuts, only to come back with a vengeance once markets determine their value. Musk will have his work cut out for him to earn the lavish compensation packages. For SpaceX alone, milestones include a $7.5 trillion market cap, a permanent human colony on Mars, and data centers in space. If he can achieve these ambitions, why would he not be a trillionaire?
It took Elon Musk two hours to make thousands of people millionaires. Bernie Sanders has been in public office for decades, and the only person he has enriched is himself. There is no better example of capitalism versus socialism than this fact.
