It shouldn’t be surprising that so many people are doing what they can to raise resentment against the very rich in general, and Elon Musk in particular. Stoking resentment of the better off has always been a viable short-term political play, and it’s not every day we see wealth of this scale:
Reddit meme
For all these dumbasses claiming if they had Elon’s money they’d end world hunger, cause world peace, educate everyone, or whatever, blah blah blah … No you wouldn’t. You’re full of shit and everyone knows it, because that’s not how the world works.
Throwing money at a problem doesn’t fix it. The entire history of government demonstrates that. Saying vapid nonsense just makes weak, unimaginative people with a childlike grasp on reality feel better about themselves for caring harder, while accomplishing nothing.
Meanwhile, the guy you hate revolutionized EVs and self driving cars, brought affordable reliable internet to every corner of the Earth, and is making the dream of colonizing space real. And the process of doing all that has given hundreds of thousands of people jobs.
While you posture about how you’d give everybody an imaginary unicorn, he’s done stuff that’s actually changed the world for the better.
And you don’t get it. You can’t get it. Because you’re just too fucking small.
And even the Globe and Mail, which used to consider itself the most respectable and influential newspaper in Canada goes for the “hate the rich” market:
But some people just can’t help themselves and ginning up the hate and envy is all they can do:
For the left, it’s important that you do more than view billionaires with skepticism. You have to actually hate them. You have to blame them for every ill that befalls you, and you must actively resent their wealth.
One way that the left accomplishes this is by framing their gains as somehow your losses.
Congressman Greg Cesar (D-TX) decided to try that on X Tuesday with this banger.
Now, it’s interesting that he talks about their wealth being three times what it was 15 years ago, but doesn’t account for what the rest of us are dealing with. Instead, he engages in an apples-and-oranges comparison.
For starters, the increase in net worth for billionaires has nothing at all to do with whether your life is three times better than it was back then. There are too many variables. Someone who was unemployed and homeless and got a job, built a life back up, and then started a successful business is a lot more than three times better off, right?
Plus, it doesn’t account for differences in the cost of living or anything else.
Instead, a better metric is whether the median household net worth in America has increased a similar amount. So, I went to Google, then got its AI to generate a graph for me showing what’s happened over that timeframe.
While that’s not three times, it is 2.5 times the median net worth 15 years ago, and since this caps at 2022, it may well have increased even more.
In other words, the net worth of ordinary Americans seems to be mostly keeping up with that of the billionaires.
Cesar’s question, though, is disengenuous because the cost of living has gone up about 53 percent over that timeframe. So while net worth has increased, so has the cost of living. Not enough to completely drain away the gains in net worth, but enough that people aren’t living three times better than they were.
But that’s the point, isn’t it?
It’s not enough that, on average, Americans are much richer than they were 15 years ago, and by about the same amount as the billionaires, because that won’t foster the necessary resentment the left needs to push through their policies. You have to resent their wealth, and that’s less likely if you realize you’ve gained as much as they have by percentages. You have to feel like their wealth has been taken from yours, otherwise you’re less likely to look at wealth redistribution as a good thing.
And wealth redistribution is what it’s always about.
Wow, billionaires have tripled their net worth 300% over 15 years.
So, how much is that 3 billion dollars in terms of purchasing power, adjusting for inflation?
Oh,”only” 2 billion.
The same goes for my net worth as well. Except my retirement has shrunk by a 3/2s as well.
Fnord. I remember when 2 brdm apts were $175 a month, gas was $0.45, etc. Of course my income averaged $2 an hour, but at least I didn’t have to worry about a cellphone bill, internet, cable, …
Comment by pyotr — June 13, 2026 @ 13:13