You Can Be Too Rich

But you still can’t take it with you

Credit: Getty Images

One trillion dollars is an almost unfathomable amount of money. It is one million millions, a thousand billions. It would take someone spending $1 million a day for 2,700 years to unload a trillion dollars. It is also what Elon Musk is now worth, thanks to the initial public offering (IPO) of his space exploration company, SpaceX.

Musk is the first person ever to amass this level of wealth. Even by multi-billionaire standards, it is extraordinary. He is worth more than the next four richest people in the world combined. The average American is closer to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s net worth than Bezos is to Musk’s by three-quarters of a trillion dollars.

Musk didn’t get rich in a vacuum. He had a lot of help along the way, including assistance from the United States government and Donald Trump himself, whom Musk backed in his run for president to the tune of $270 million.

Prior to Inauguration Day 2025, there were 32 open federal investigations of Musk’s companies — for unfair labor practices, worker and vehicle safety issues, environmental damage, and conflicts of interest. Then, Trump tapped Musk to helm his newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk was now overseeing the very agencies investigating his companies. This may come as a shock, but none of those investigations led to any charges or fines.

He has also benefited directly from the largess of the federal government. SpaceX received a $500 million bailout in the form of NASA grants when the fledgling company was nearly broke. Tesla received a $465 million federal loan and profited from increased sales because of clean energy subsidies and tax credits.

It should come as no surprise that the SpaceX IPO broke a lot of rules, and not just on the record-shattering $75 billion it raised in the first day.

Before adding a new stock, market indices require a seasoning period for new companies, usually a year, to make sure they are profitable. The Dow Jones refused to lift this rule for SpaceX, but the Nasdaq agreed to Musk’s demand. Just 15 days after the IPO, SpaceX will join the Nasdaq.

This is why, even if you don’t want to spend $178 to buy a share of SpaceX, you may well become an investor. Your 401(k), pension fund, or mutual fund invests in index stocks, which hold all or a representative sample of stocks in an exchange. The Nasdaq is the second-largest stock exchange in the world. The New York Stock Exchange is the largest.

Employees and pre-IPO investors are typically barred from selling shares for 180 days, but Musk didn’t like the rule, so SpaceX wrote a new policy bypassing it, making the stock even more appealing.

Once a company goes public it almost always has increased oversight, transparency, and an independent board of directors. Not so with SpaceX. Musk has retained near total control with 85.1% voting power. And he can’t be fired.

The frenzy around this IPO was unprecedented, especially for a company that posted a net loss of $4.94 billion in 2025. And its stated mission, to colonize Mars, is years, likely decades in the future.

Musk’s greed that spurred the SpaceX IPO is a by-product of the exponentially increasing wealth gap in America. The rich get richer because they want to get richer and they have the means to compound their wealth.

The president is a member of that club. Since taking office a second time, Trump’s net worth has nearly tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.2 billion, according to Forbes. His children have also seen their bank accounts bulge.

At a time when a majority of Americans are struggling financially, when a tomato costs almost twice what it did a year ago, when half of the country isn’t able to save for retirement, the richest man in the world wasn’t satisfied with his billions. He needed a trillion and hasn’t ruled out the possibility of becoming a quadrillionaire.

The wealth gap has existed since our country’s founding, but it has exploded in the last half century. In 1965, CEO to worker compensation was 20 to 1. In 2025 it ballooned to 285 to 1. For the top 20 companies with low-wage workers, like Walmart and Chipotle, the average is 900 to 1. The CEO of Starbucks makes 6,600 times more than the average barista.

Many of Trump’s policies and decisions have widened the financial chasm. The war with Iran has cost Americans more than $59 billion in extra fuel costs, according to Brown University’s Iran War Energy Cost Tracker. Trump’s tax and spending bill of last summer hurt the most vulnerable by cutting Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), while giving tax cuts to Musk and his billionaire friends.

And then there is Social Security. On Monday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson called for cuts to the social safety net program that benefits 68 million Americans. Last week, a Social Security trustees’ report said that without congressional action, benefits would automatically be cut in 2032 by 22%, sooner than expected.

We have been told for decades that Social Security needs reform if it is to remain solvent. The president’s policies have moved that timeline up. According to the Social Security Administration, Trump’s tax cuts, expelling immigrants who pay into the system but receive no benefits, and other actions have significantly reduced revenues.

The biggest irony is that the president founded his MAGA movement on the promise to make America great again, whatever that meant. Seventy-seven million voters bought into his hokum. Many believed it would be a return to a simpler time. Trump’s billionaire oligarchy is not that.

Trump, Musk, and their billionaires brethren are getting richer by the hour, and left unchecked, their crypto, AI, and data center investment schemes could cripple this country’s workforce.

Meanwhile, it is the working class that is struggling. A quarter of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. A recent study by the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, found “From health care to groceries, Americans can’t afford the basics of a healthy, stable life in Trump’s economy — leading many to take drastic measures to stay afloat.” Those measures include skipping meals and medicines.

Thinking back on all those rallies where Trump made all of those promises, to see where we are today, is tragic. MAGA is a big con — one of the biggest of all time — brought to you by a pretend populist who has demonstrated that he cares little or nothing for average Americans. He worships money, power, and the likes of Musk, but his loyalty is only to himself.

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Stay Steady,
Dan