LIZ PEEK: Elon Musk’s well-deserved win causes the zero-sum left to freak out
Americans are cheering the extraordinary achievements of Elon Musk, who through sheer grit and brilliance has powered the United States to the forefront of the space race. Musk’s revolutionary vision of reusable rockets has created a company that dominates global satellite communications and leads space exploration, putting within reach the ability to put data centers into orbit and create a human colony on the moon or perhaps eventually on Mars. In the process, Musk has become the world’s first trillionaire.
As Musk said the day he sold a stake in SpaceX to the public: "That’s what SpaceX is all about – it’s to take the fiction out of science fiction and create an exciting, inspiring future for everyone."
Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are not excited or inspired. The multi-millionaire senators and their leftist collaborators are seething, offended beyond comprehension that a single individual has become so rich. They view Musk’s record-setting sale of equity in SpaceX and accumulation of wealth as an indictment of our capitalist society, though they have yet to explain how anyone has been injured by the entrepreneur’s success.
Indeed, they ignore the fabulous wealth that Musk has created for SpaceX employees: with the company’s initial public offering last week, some 4,400 workers at the company reportedly became millionaires overnight, and some 400 are now each worth more than $100 million. Those institutions that invested early on, including the University of North Carolina system, the University of Virginia and Washington University in St. Louis, have also benefited from early investments in SpaceX. While the investment committees at universities like Harvard and Columbia were focused on divesting companies producing fossil fuels or businesses with ties to Israel, some schools made a ton of money betting on Musk.
The Warren-Sanders crowd also ignores the gigantic benefit of providing cheap internet access to hundreds of millions of people around the world, which Musk’s Starlink has done. As Bill Ackman posted on X: "Access to low-cost, high speed communications everywhere will allow children around the world to be educated, families to build businesses, and life-saving medical knowledge and care to be available everywhere."
Ackman’s post was in response to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the perpetually angry scold of U.S. exceptionalism, who claimed on X (ironically, another Musk-owned firm) that Musk’s wealth is a "call to action to take on the unprecedented income and wealth inequality that now exists and the greed and power of a ruling class that is destroying the social fabric of America." That’s the same Bernie Sanders who has accumulated millions of dollars while in public service and travels around the country via private jet spouting socialism.
If anyone is rending our social fabric, it is those destroying accountability through dumbing down law enforcement and border protections, encouraging antisemitism with bogus campaigns against Israel and undermining our public schools, denying (especially) minority kids of sharing in the American Dream. The Left has much to account for.
Democrats live in a zero-sum world. If someone becomes wealthy, they imagine it comes at the expense of someone else. California Governor Gavin Newsom posted on X: "Americans are struggling to pay for groceries and gas while Elon Musk becomes a TRILLIONAIRE." Did Musk drive up the cost of bread? Was he behind the massive welfare fraud and out-of-control spending that threatens California’s economy and helps make it one of the most expensive places on earth to live?
The fact that Elon Musk has created tens of thousands of jobs, put electric cars on the map, and developed Neuralink, which uses advanced technology to allow people to control computers and robotic arms with their thoughts, allowing hope for those with spinal injuries, for instance, is irrelevant.
Socialists don’t celebrate success and innovation, they celebrate mediocrity. Their policies do not aim to build wealth, but to redistribute it from producers to non-producers. Giving the government more control over the economy breeds inefficiency and corruption, and removed the incentives for individuals to innovate and create.
In all of world history, there is not a single socialist country that has succeeded. Venezuela and Mexico are excellent examples of once-prosperous countries that have been plundered by leftists taking over the economy, countries where poverty is rampant and innovation nowhere to be seen. European countries that adopted socialist taxation and embraced big government solutions to healthcare and climate change have changed direction as voters tired of their stagnant economies and limited opportunities.
Sweden, long championed by the Bernie Sanders crowd for its collectivist approach, ditched socialism in 1976 when Astrid Lindgren, beloved author of the Pippi Longstocking books, discovered that her country's tax code was forcing her to pay a marginal tax of more than 100 percent on her income. For every extra hundred dollars she earned, she had to pay the state $102. In response, Lindgren wrote a scorching satirical fairytale, "Pomperipossa in Monismania," about an author forced to pay exorbitant taxes. It ignited a furious debate over Sweden's tax policies and resulted in the ouster of the Social Democratic party for the first time in more than 40 years. Last year, in Bolivia, the ruling leftwing party Movimiento al Socialismo was voted out of office for the first time in 20 years, with voters rebelling against inflation at 40-year-highs of 25%, depleted foreign currency reserves and shortages of fuel and medicine.
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Note to Bernie: socialism doesn’t work. Capitalism does. It’s that simple. As reported in the New York Sun, "At a 2019 CBS town hall, Mr. Sanders was pressed about joining the "millionaire class" that he long railed against. "I wrote a best-selling book," he said of his newfound wealth. "If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too." Wasn’t this "the definition of capitalism" and "the American Dream," he was asked in a subsequent town hall on Fox News.
"What we want," Mr. Sanders said, "is a country where everybody has opportunity."
That "everybody" includes Elon Musk. Thank God he chose America for that very reason.