The red emergency light is flashing on America\u2019s democracy dashboard, like a damaged aircraft teetering toward a mountain. Elon Musk becoming the planet\u2019s first trillionaire should make us tremble for the future of self-governing republics. It\u2019s as if we\u2019re bringing back modern pharaohs to dominate our societies.<\/p>\n
Musk\u2019s\u00a0SpaceX company recently went public with a<\/a>\u00a0(probably inflated<\/a>) market capitalization of $2 trillion. SpaceX\u2019s IPO increased Musk\u2019s net worth by an estimated $188 billion, and the stock\u2019s first-day surge subsequently pushed his fortune to roughly $1.1 trillion,\u00a0according to\u00a0Forbes<\/a>.<\/p>\n The concern here isn\u2019t with wealth\u00a0per se. It\u2019s the tremendous power of\u00a0concentrated\u00a0wealth to distort markets, politics, and society.\u00a0When you have Musk\u2019s level of wealth, you\u2019re no longer just buying another mansion or private jet (of which he\u00a0already has several<\/a>). You\u2019re buying a media outlet, a senator, and maybe, in the case of Musk, elevating a president.<\/p>\n Musk has no inhibitions about deploying the power of his considerable wealth. He bought Twitter, one of the public squares of our time, and transformed it into X, a partisan and disinformation platform rife with hate speech and extremism.<\/p>\n In the 2024 election cycle, he donated $291 million to President Trump and Republican candidates, according to\u00a0Open Secrets<\/a>. As Michael Mechanic\u00a0wrote in\u00a0Mother Jones<\/a>, \u201cMusk expended 0.1 percent of his wealth in the process and got far more in return.\u201d Mechanic notes, \u201cThe Trump administration promptly shelved dozens of investigations into Musk\u2019s companies.\u201d<\/p>\n Musk was rewarded with a rogue government agency \u2014 the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE),\u00a0named for a crypto meme coin Musk invested in<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 to advance a self-interested data grab and chainsawing away at government capacity. Public Citizen found that\u00a070 percent of the agencies t<\/a>argeted by DOGE had conflicts of interest involving\u00a0Musk\u2019s businesses. For example, Musk directed DOGE to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which would have overseen X\u2019s move to become a payment processor.<\/p>\n More dire still, DOGE cuts to USAID and other humanitarian aid programs have contributed to an\u00a0estimated 750,000 lost lives<\/a>. The projected deaths from these cuts\u00a0run into the millions<\/a>.<\/p>\n Musk was further rewarded with lucrative government contracts for SpaceX, Starlink, and other Musk-companies. In early 2025,\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0on a boost in multi-billion-dollar contracts for Musk\u2019s companies as the Trump administration took power.<\/p>\n That was Musk as a \u201cmere\u201d centi-billionaire. What other power might Musk be able to wield as the world\u2019s first trillionaire?<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just Musk. America\u2019s 16 centi-billionaires (including Musk) have a combined wealth of $4 trillion. And the 977 billionaires on the\u00a0Forbes\u00a0U.S. wealth list<\/a>\u00a0now own a combined $9.24 trillion, according to\u00a0analysis<\/a>\u00a0by Americans for Tax Fairness.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t a partisan concern. Whether it\u2019s liberals like George Soros and Tom Steyer or right-wingers like Musk and Peter Thiel, this concentration of power and influence should trigger the flashing red light. It\u2019s never a good thing for anyone to have the power of modern-day pharaohs. Musk was the top political donor in 2024, but\u00a0five other billionaire households gave over $100 million to candidates<\/a>.<\/p>\n Billionaires \u2014 and soon trillionaires as well \u2014 are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence our elections while working Americans struggle to afford food, housing, and health care. It\u2019s clearer than ever that those two facts are connected. We need to get serious about curbing this billionaire influence and supporting regular people \u2014 starting with a wealth tax.<\/p>\n