In the 1950's the CIA popularized the Gini Index (named after an Italian economist to describe the distribution of something among a population, where "0" means everyone has an equal amount and "1" indicates it it all concentrated in one person/unit's/country's hands) as a measure of a country's stability. They determined an index over 40 portended civic unrest. For years the USA hovered over 35 (close to Mexico) and far above the Scandinavian countries (e.g. Sweden is at 30 in 2024). Obama with his tax on stock transactions and the ACA was the first President since the 1960's to lower our Gini. Since then especially with the Republican minimization of estate taxes, caping income tax rates, and the Trump tax cutout, the USA Gini Index is now an estimated, unadjusted 48. One American is the richest man in the world - and you well described his opportunities. Three Americans have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population. Beyond Musk's political power, both American families and American government are being starved. For the last 10 years, and on an accelerating basis, we are watching, playing out in real time, cvic dysfunction and disorder whose main engine is wealth inequality. OUCH! More than anything else this explains the panoramic dynamics of the MAGA movement. In the end the CIA was right, wealth inequality destabilizes a society. In the real world, each scenario will unravel in a unique way. Now, in real time, we are watching this great civic defect create its havoc.
Uuughhh I Hate (tm) this man. I've hated him since his ex wife's exposé in Vanity Fair all those years ago. I throughly enjoy telling fiscally conservative folks how many tax dollars he's taken, that he's the real welfare queen. Oh and the infrastructure bill also helps keep tesla afloat while maintaining poor labor practices and shady business dealings
"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
While I agree in general with your comments, it’s worth pointing out that Musk does not have as much money as we think, since almost all his wealth consists in Tesla stock and ownership stakes in other companies that have not yet gone public. A move to sell a significant portion of his Tesla shares would flood the market and also signify a loss of confidence in the company, bringing about a crash in their value. Yes, he is way too rich, but a lot of that wealth is a bubble.
It is not true that he "does not have as much money as we think." In practice when billionaires need cash they can just get loans against their assets so they don't need to sell stock. If they do need to sell stock they can sell it slowly. The reason that Elon Musk and co don't sell their stocks for cash is not that there are transaction costs-- it's because they get constantly richer by not doing so.
This is a technicality that is brought up every time anyone writes about this topic and is not only completely beside the point, but actually makes it harder for people to have clarity on the issue by insinuating that transaction costs are a truly material factor.
i dont think that the fact so much of his "money" is tied to absurdly inflated valuations by his vc friends and the whims of wall st should be overlooked. if the tech bubble bursts or a recession swings in, and i believe that's coming, he will be knocked down like 100-200 billion. just as his net worth shot up like 1/6 when trump won. like... it's not real! poof it's there-- and then it isn't! i guess when youre in hundreds of billions territory the losses aren't really meaningful in a way that makes too much of a difference, but i still think it's wrong to characterize his hodling only as a way to "make more money" and not also the thing that is keeping the idea his money is worth that in place.
Yes I thought this too. Its not like he has oodles of cash on hand. But Nolan writes rhetorically here. He's trying to impress upon us what $384 billion actually means. And now, this awful man has the power to maintain his wealth bubble. This IS concerning and I think this article is meant to make us concerned, not educate us on "how the market works" (its all arbitrary anyway).
Yes, he owns the upcoming President and he owns America, and when he pulls the strings of the puppet and cuts Social Security and Medicare, he will destroy the lives of millions of people. Putin now can dust the worry off his napkin because he knows that he, too, is ultimately in charge of this ridiculously stupid country, which has elected a "President" who despises them, but what else is new? The truth is old hat for many people, but it's the hat we're wearing now. Once a great nation; it's now in the hands of crooked salesman who take all your money and hope and crushes both.
I'd like to flood X with Hamilton Nolan's text here, paragraph post by paragraph post. We should all do it, and we should autobot it. With Hamilton's permission, of course.
The top-line rhetoric of the fightback is simple: DEMONIZE and SCAPEGOAT billionaires. Be merciless and cruel. And don't forge to always call them oligarchs.
The focus on why we’re so messed up as a society cannot be solely on money. Not all wealthy people are selfish - maybe most, but not all.
When Reagan lowered taxes my father sent him a letter warning him it would destroy this nation. My father wasn’t a billionaire, but he was in a very high bracket. He knew if money were not somewhat fairly distributed, democracy would fall apart. He wanted to share his money to live in a better world.
There’s too much focus on what billionaires are doing and not enough on the fact that we’re a bell curve of souls with as many self-centered as other-centered people and we let the selfish ones take over.
We must study how that happened.
Thinking in terms of the bell curve, some of us are on the extremes. No amount of money will change an extremely other-centered person into a selfish person and nothing will change an extremely selfish person into caring about others. It’s those in the middle of the bell curve who are more or less both that are changeable.
We must think about what institutions change people in the direction of other-centeredness. Religion is one. Since that declined, people are less afraid of behaving badly. The other is education. Our schools are to create citizens - beings with other-centered thinking. Our problem is they stopped doing their job about four decades ago and people think it’s impossible to fix our schools when the truth is the people in charge make sure reform doesn’t work; schools are treasure chests and power sources for selfish types who could never make it that big in the business world. And why are people so clueless? These crooks force teachers and their unions to behave badly so everyone disrespects teachers.
I wrote three books about this. But I’m a teacher so the odds people will hear me are slim. I have tried to expose this since 1995. I have four other whistleblowing teachers on a podcast since 2019 at WhiteChalkCrime.com. We know how democracy fell apart but are powerless.
Yes money is the root of all evil. But schools were the great equalizers.
If you knew the miracles that happened in my classroom, you’d understand the power of a teacher. You’d understand why I’m still at it despite 29 years of trying to expose this corruption.
We could only afford to trash our great teachers if we were given a better set of people with which to work. It’s easier to fix our schools than to talk to God. I know what we need to do. It’s in A Graver Danger, my latest book. Will you read it?
The other afternoon my 6 year old son was musing out loud about wealth and how Elon got to be the richest man and he said “we should have a contest to decide who is the richest and the winner gets everyone else’s money”. I cannot stop thinking about the fast that it basically works that way already.
I'm going to cross-connect this to my subscribers tomorrow, after they get my Substack where I give a start to the plan I'm developing for what to do.
Now, here, with a knowing nod toward my money offers having a laughable aspect in the face of what you write about, I'm passing along what I just posted on Jared Yates Sexton's excellent post today that's about where we came from that anchors us in where we are: https://jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/what-the-hell-is-going-on-an-explainer. :
"Who is this 'we' that could be changing things? Ah, there's the rub. There is none. All that’s in play is gadflies like you and the other pundits who are clear about the mess we are in.
"Not only isn't there a 'we,' but no one is looking for one. I can attest to that because I’m looking. Don’t think that little old me thinks she has any power, but I do have the only ideas for what to do to create system change. That is, unless my offer of $100 to anyone who can direct me to any just hasn’t been seen by enough people to find anyone who would send me somewhere. So far, though, it hasn’t cost me anything. And, even more dramatically, I've put $50K on the table for any project ideas I’d support or produce that possibly could change our worldview to where we unite, caring about each other as much as we care about ourselves.
"My offers still stand. Thanks for giving them the foundation from which we could rise up, where we-the-people would do an end run around government to create the next popular uprising that changes everything."
Many years ago I read historian Paul Kennedy’s book “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” and always wondered what it was like to live through a decline. Kennedy defined great powers as those with combined military and economic power thet led or influence most of the world) and the last example being the British Empire. All prior GP’s decline happened over decades and centuries. Clearly we are now entered the decline of the United States as a great power ( which I would put from 1945 to 2016) and unfortunately it is happening so quickly that we all can see it (aside from those in denial). Scary part is what comes next (if anything) and can it happen without a terrible conflict.
I enjoyed reading your article. Then you started speculating what could happen and as you wrote you got mad speculating what someone “could” do! You need help controlling the thoughts in your head and with anger issues. You’re probably single and can’t keep a relationship with a woman because you start wondering if she’s being faithful and in your pea sized little idiotic brain you now make yourself “know” she’s unfaithful! Dude you’re a fucking idiot thinking Elon Musk is an idiot. He’s one of the smartest people to ever live. But it’s what everyone would expect from a blind, crooked, dumb ass democrat. Dumb ass!
I feel like it needs to be said that Musk doesn’t actually _have_ that money.
The point about gross inequality stands and the point about money in politics stands, but the problem with this post is really a special case of your point that “billionaires shouldn’t exist”. It’s stupid because it misunderstands what their wealth is.
Musk’s wealth is estimated as if the current share price of business XYZ is applied to every share he owns. But he can’t sell all those shares without tanking the price!
So it is true he’s unimaginably wealthy but he doesn’t actually have that money, and likewise if you use that rule to rule “billionaires” out of existence it’s not really clear what you do when the value of whatever they own drops and they’re no longer billionaires.
The whole “billionaires shouldn’t exist” is a complete red herring and there are smarter ways to discuss inequality (and intergenerational
In the 1950's the CIA popularized the Gini Index (named after an Italian economist to describe the distribution of something among a population, where "0" means everyone has an equal amount and "1" indicates it it all concentrated in one person/unit's/country's hands) as a measure of a country's stability. They determined an index over 40 portended civic unrest. For years the USA hovered over 35 (close to Mexico) and far above the Scandinavian countries (e.g. Sweden is at 30 in 2024). Obama with his tax on stock transactions and the ACA was the first President since the 1960's to lower our Gini. Since then especially with the Republican minimization of estate taxes, caping income tax rates, and the Trump tax cutout, the USA Gini Index is now an estimated, unadjusted 48. One American is the richest man in the world - and you well described his opportunities. Three Americans have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the population. Beyond Musk's political power, both American families and American government are being starved. For the last 10 years, and on an accelerating basis, we are watching, playing out in real time, cvic dysfunction and disorder whose main engine is wealth inequality. OUCH! More than anything else this explains the panoramic dynamics of the MAGA movement. In the end the CIA was right, wealth inequality destabilizes a society. In the real world, each scenario will unravel in a unique way. Now, in real time, we are watching this great civic defect create its havoc.
Uuughhh I Hate (tm) this man. I've hated him since his ex wife's exposé in Vanity Fair all those years ago. I throughly enjoy telling fiscally conservative folks how many tax dollars he's taken, that he's the real welfare queen. Oh and the infrastructure bill also helps keep tesla afloat while maintaining poor labor practices and shady business dealings
"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
While I agree in general with your comments, it’s worth pointing out that Musk does not have as much money as we think, since almost all his wealth consists in Tesla stock and ownership stakes in other companies that have not yet gone public. A move to sell a significant portion of his Tesla shares would flood the market and also signify a loss of confidence in the company, bringing about a crash in their value. Yes, he is way too rich, but a lot of that wealth is a bubble.
It is not true that he "does not have as much money as we think." In practice when billionaires need cash they can just get loans against their assets so they don't need to sell stock. If they do need to sell stock they can sell it slowly. The reason that Elon Musk and co don't sell their stocks for cash is not that there are transaction costs-- it's because they get constantly richer by not doing so.
This is a technicality that is brought up every time anyone writes about this topic and is not only completely beside the point, but actually makes it harder for people to have clarity on the issue by insinuating that transaction costs are a truly material factor.
i dont think that the fact so much of his "money" is tied to absurdly inflated valuations by his vc friends and the whims of wall st should be overlooked. if the tech bubble bursts or a recession swings in, and i believe that's coming, he will be knocked down like 100-200 billion. just as his net worth shot up like 1/6 when trump won. like... it's not real! poof it's there-- and then it isn't! i guess when youre in hundreds of billions territory the losses aren't really meaningful in a way that makes too much of a difference, but i still think it's wrong to characterize his hodling only as a way to "make more money" and not also the thing that is keeping the idea his money is worth that in place.
Yes I thought this too. Its not like he has oodles of cash on hand. But Nolan writes rhetorically here. He's trying to impress upon us what $384 billion actually means. And now, this awful man has the power to maintain his wealth bubble. This IS concerning and I think this article is meant to make us concerned, not educate us on "how the market works" (its all arbitrary anyway).
Yes, he owns the upcoming President and he owns America, and when he pulls the strings of the puppet and cuts Social Security and Medicare, he will destroy the lives of millions of people. Putin now can dust the worry off his napkin because he knows that he, too, is ultimately in charge of this ridiculously stupid country, which has elected a "President" who despises them, but what else is new? The truth is old hat for many people, but it's the hat we're wearing now. Once a great nation; it's now in the hands of crooked salesman who take all your money and hope and crushes both.
Our only hope is that the bromance ends soon as two egos clash -- but that doesn't end the cancer in the body politic.
But when Democrats regain control of the government, they need to take this seriously"
And if you think that is going to happen
I'd like to flood X with Hamilton Nolan's text here, paragraph post by paragraph post. We should all do it, and we should autobot it. With Hamilton's permission, of course.
The top-line rhetoric of the fightback is simple: DEMONIZE and SCAPEGOAT billionaires. Be merciless and cruel. And don't forge to always call them oligarchs.
The focus on why we’re so messed up as a society cannot be solely on money. Not all wealthy people are selfish - maybe most, but not all.
When Reagan lowered taxes my father sent him a letter warning him it would destroy this nation. My father wasn’t a billionaire, but he was in a very high bracket. He knew if money were not somewhat fairly distributed, democracy would fall apart. He wanted to share his money to live in a better world.
There’s too much focus on what billionaires are doing and not enough on the fact that we’re a bell curve of souls with as many self-centered as other-centered people and we let the selfish ones take over.
We must study how that happened.
Thinking in terms of the bell curve, some of us are on the extremes. No amount of money will change an extremely other-centered person into a selfish person and nothing will change an extremely selfish person into caring about others. It’s those in the middle of the bell curve who are more or less both that are changeable.
We must think about what institutions change people in the direction of other-centeredness. Religion is one. Since that declined, people are less afraid of behaving badly. The other is education. Our schools are to create citizens - beings with other-centered thinking. Our problem is they stopped doing their job about four decades ago and people think it’s impossible to fix our schools when the truth is the people in charge make sure reform doesn’t work; schools are treasure chests and power sources for selfish types who could never make it that big in the business world. And why are people so clueless? These crooks force teachers and their unions to behave badly so everyone disrespects teachers.
I wrote three books about this. But I’m a teacher so the odds people will hear me are slim. I have tried to expose this since 1995. I have four other whistleblowing teachers on a podcast since 2019 at WhiteChalkCrime.com. We know how democracy fell apart but are powerless.
Yes money is the root of all evil. But schools were the great equalizers.
If you knew the miracles that happened in my classroom, you’d understand the power of a teacher. You’d understand why I’m still at it despite 29 years of trying to expose this corruption.
We could only afford to trash our great teachers if we were given a better set of people with which to work. It’s easier to fix our schools than to talk to God. I know what we need to do. It’s in A Graver Danger, my latest book. Will you read it?
I found Elon more endearing when he goofed up Ron DeSantis's presidential launch. I hope he will do as much for Trump...
The other afternoon my 6 year old son was musing out loud about wealth and how Elon got to be the richest man and he said “we should have a contest to decide who is the richest and the winner gets everyone else’s money”. I cannot stop thinking about the fast that it basically works that way already.
I'm going to cross-connect this to my subscribers tomorrow, after they get my Substack where I give a start to the plan I'm developing for what to do.
Now, here, with a knowing nod toward my money offers having a laughable aspect in the face of what you write about, I'm passing along what I just posted on Jared Yates Sexton's excellent post today that's about where we came from that anchors us in where we are: https://jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/what-the-hell-is-going-on-an-explainer. :
"Who is this 'we' that could be changing things? Ah, there's the rub. There is none. All that’s in play is gadflies like you and the other pundits who are clear about the mess we are in.
"Not only isn't there a 'we,' but no one is looking for one. I can attest to that because I’m looking. Don’t think that little old me thinks she has any power, but I do have the only ideas for what to do to create system change. That is, unless my offer of $100 to anyone who can direct me to any just hasn’t been seen by enough people to find anyone who would send me somewhere. So far, though, it hasn’t cost me anything. And, even more dramatically, I've put $50K on the table for any project ideas I’d support or produce that possibly could change our worldview to where we unite, caring about each other as much as we care about ourselves.
"My offers still stand. Thanks for giving them the foundation from which we could rise up, where we-the-people would do an end run around government to create the next popular uprising that changes everything."
Many years ago I read historian Paul Kennedy’s book “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” and always wondered what it was like to live through a decline. Kennedy defined great powers as those with combined military and economic power thet led or influence most of the world) and the last example being the British Empire. All prior GP’s decline happened over decades and centuries. Clearly we are now entered the decline of the United States as a great power ( which I would put from 1945 to 2016) and unfortunately it is happening so quickly that we all can see it (aside from those in denial). Scary part is what comes next (if anything) and can it happen without a terrible conflict.
I enjoyed reading your article. Then you started speculating what could happen and as you wrote you got mad speculating what someone “could” do! You need help controlling the thoughts in your head and with anger issues. You’re probably single and can’t keep a relationship with a woman because you start wondering if she’s being faithful and in your pea sized little idiotic brain you now make yourself “know” she’s unfaithful! Dude you’re a fucking idiot thinking Elon Musk is an idiot. He’s one of the smartest people to ever live. But it’s what everyone would expect from a blind, crooked, dumb ass democrat. Dumb ass!
I feel like it needs to be said that Musk doesn’t actually _have_ that money.
The point about gross inequality stands and the point about money in politics stands, but the problem with this post is really a special case of your point that “billionaires shouldn’t exist”. It’s stupid because it misunderstands what their wealth is.
Musk’s wealth is estimated as if the current share price of business XYZ is applied to every share he owns. But he can’t sell all those shares without tanking the price!
So it is true he’s unimaginably wealthy but he doesn’t actually have that money, and likewise if you use that rule to rule “billionaires” out of existence it’s not really clear what you do when the value of whatever they own drops and they’re no longer billionaires.
The whole “billionaires shouldn’t exist” is a complete red herring and there are smarter ways to discuss inequality (and intergenerational
social mobility).
Amen.