OPINION:
Sens. Bernard Sanders, Vermont independent, Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, and the rest of the tax-the-rich crowd are on the warpath because SpaceX owner Elon Musk is apparently the world’s first trillionaire, after the $75 billion initial public offering of his company’s stock last week.
“How dare he?” they whine. Think of all the public good that money could do. It would allow us to provide more funding for high-quality “learing” centers in Minneapolis and bird-killing wind farms in Maine.
Yet the Tesla founder does not have piles of cash lying around his house. His wealth is mostly in unrealized profits.
Mr. Musk got rich making many people wealthy, including 4,400 current and former SpaceX employees, among them welders and cafeteria workers, who are now millionaires thanks to the company’s profit-sharing.
He also created thousands of jobs in communities where SpaceX operates: Hawthorne, California; Memphis, Tennessee; Bastrop and McGregor, Texas; and Southaven, Mississippi. They include blue-collar and managerial positions, which will also come with stock options that could make them future millionaires.
With the money he raises from this and future SpaceX stock offerings, Mr. Musk wants to colonize Mars and begin mining asteroids. The only thing his political critics mine is our income and the public’s gullibility.
Mr. Musk and his fellow entrepreneurs create wealth. The political class confiscates it.
The political class never understood the genius of the free market: that people get rich satisfying the needs of others, say, for electric cars. For the left, wealth is a zero-sum game.
Unfortunately, far too many share this mindset. According to a recent survey, 62% of Americans ages 18 to 29 have a favorable view of socialism.
Mr. Musk’s life is a public validation of capitalism. The South African immigrant launched SpaceX with his earnings from PayPal. His success with SpaceX was recognized by NASA, which awarded the company a contract to supply the International Space Station.
To think SpaceX started in a warehouse in El Segundo, California.
In 2019, SpaceX launched Starlink, a satellite company that provides internet service in war zones and to dissidents. Mr. Musk has built on his success. The political class builds on failure.
That is why Ms. Warren, Mr. Sanders and other Washington robber barons want to plunder his wealth. They think it is there for the taking — and he makes them look bad.
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