The red emergency light is flashing on America’s democracy dashboard, like a damaged aircraft teetering toward a mountain. Elon Musk becoming the planet’s first trillionaire should make us tremble for the future of self-governing republics. It’s as if we’re bringing back modern pharaohs to dominate our societies.
Musk’s SpaceX company recently went public with a (probably inflated) market capitalization of $2 trillion. SpaceX’s IPO increased Musk’s net worth by an estimated $188 billion, and the stock’s first-day surge subsequently pushed his fortune to roughly $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes.
The concern here isn’t with wealth per se. It’s the tremendous power of concentrated wealth to distort markets, politics, and society. When you have Musk’s level of wealth, you’re no longer just buying another mansion or private jet (of which he already has several). You’re buying a media outlet, a senator, and maybe, in the case of Musk, elevating a president.
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.
In the 2024 election cycle, he donated $291 million to President Trump and Republican candidates, according to Open Secrets. As Michael Mechanic wrote in Mother Jones, “Musk expended 0.1 percent of his wealth in the process and got far more in return.” Mechanic notes “The Trump administration promptly shelved dozens of investigations into Musk’s companies.”
Musk was rewarded with a rogue government agency — the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), named for a crypto meme coin Musk invested in — to advance a self-interested data grab and chainsawing away at government capacity. Public Citizen found that 70 percent of the agencies that were targeted by DOGE had conflicts of interest for Musk’s businesses. For example, Musk directed DOGE to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which would have overseen X’s move to become a payment processor.
More dire still, DOGE cuts to USAID and other humanitarian aid programs have contributed to an estimated 750,000 lost lives. The projected deaths from these cuts run into the millions.
Musk was further rewarded with lucrative government contracts for SpaceX, Starlink, and other Musk-companies. In early 2025, The New York Times reported on a boost in multi-billion-dollar contracts for Musk’s companies as the Trump administration took power.
That was Musk as a “mere” centi-billionaire. What other power might Musk be able to wield as the world’s first trillionaire?
But it’s not just Musk. America’s 16 centi-billionaires (including Musk) have a combined wealth of $4 trillion. And the 977 billionaires on the Forbes U.S. wealth list now own a combined $9.24 trillion, according to analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness.
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This isn’t a partisan concern. Whether it’s 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’s never a good thing for anyone to have the power of modern-day pharaohs. Musk was the top political donor in 2024, but five other billionaire households gave over $100 million to candidates.
Billionaires — and soon trillionaires as well — are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence our elections while working Americans struggle to afford food, housing, and health care. It’s clearer than ever that those two facts are connected. We need to get serious about curbing this billionaire influence and supporting regular people — starting with a wealth tax.
Oxfam observes Musk could give $100 to every person on earth and remain one of the 10 richest people on earth. A 10 percent wealth tax on Musk’s fortune alone, they estimate, could end global extreme poverty and lift 800 million people above the extreme poverty line. Imagine the revenue and investment possibilities of a global wealth tax on all billionaires.
The planet’s first trillionaire is not a sign of economic health. It’s an indicator of extreme inequality and the dangers of concentrated power.
This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.
