Trillionaires Like Elon Musk Aren’t A Problem, Envious Leftists Are
The article argues that billionaires and trillionaires themselves are not inherently the problem; rather, the focus is on the moral and societal attitudes surrounding wealth. It highlights that Democratic criticisms of the wealthy, especially figures like Elon musk, are often rooted in envy and resentment, fueled by the perception that wealth is zero-sum and that the rich exploit others. Many critics are themselves wealthy, yet they blame the rich for societal problems, suggesting wealth should be redistributed to help the poor, but the article contends this approach is ineffective due to government inefficiency and the non-zero-sum nature of wealth creation. Wealth is created through tools,association,legal frameworks,and cultural stability,not just labor.
The piece emphasizes that true issues lie in human nature-particularly envy and resentment-wich are often expressed in political movements and cultural conflicts. Thes feelings are especially prominent among the well-off who feel entitled or underachieving, rather than the impoverished. Factors like higher education costs, lack of fulfilling social relationships, and social media comparisons exacerbate feelings of unfairness and envy, leading to a rise in socialist and anti-wealth sentiments.The author asserts that these emotions are spiritual in origin and harmful to individuals and society, promoting small-minded resentment, cruelty, and political manipulation by leaders who exploit these feelings for power and profit.
The billionaires are not the problem, and neither is the trillionaire — but Democrats disagree.
There are incessant denunciations of billionaires from the Democrats’ Bernie Sanders wing, which has seized control of the party. Their fulminations against wealth became louder still when SpaceX going public pushed Elon Musk’s estimated net worth over $1 trillion. One congressman whined, “Trillionaires shouldn’t exist in a moral society.”
Of course, many of those making these arguments are themselves fabulously wealthy, with no intention of giving up their own millions. Nonetheless, they persist in blaming the problems of the world, the nation, and their lives on the ultra-rich. They’ve also been calculating (often erroneously) the various ways Musk’s wealth could be spent if it were just taken from him. They say we could fix society by taking from the rich to spend on the poor.
It won’t work. Democrats are incredibly wasteful with government funds. Trillions of government dollars are already spent on health care, education, and so on; a bit more is not going to make much difference. Furthermore, though Democrats tend to believe wealth comes from exploitation, that the haves are taking advantage of the have-nots, the reality is that wealth is not zero-sum. The truth is that we are naturally poor — life in the state of nature (whatever that precisely means) is nasty, brutish, and short — but wealth may be created.
And generating wealth is about more than labor. Hard work is not always very productive, which is why the subsistence farming that most of humanity engaged in for most of history didn’t make its practitioners rich. Wealth is produced by tools, techniques, and organization as much as the sweat of one’s brow. There are also legal and cultural prerequisites for wealth creation and preservation: rule of law, property rights, a high-trust society, and so on. These conditions gave us the abundance of modern life, in which, even as the rich get richer, the poor get iPhones and more calories than they need.
Ours is not the best of all possible worlds, but we are materially better than all humanity before us, and conditions are much better than anything that would result from letting bitter socialists run things. But this is not really about economics. It is about envy and resentment.
And it is not the poor who are most resentful toward the very wealthy. Most bitterness comes not from the destitute or the working masses, but from the well-off, and especially the formerly well-off — the overeducated but underachieving children of privilege. These are the people powering the rise of socialism, as exemplified by Graham Platner, the scandal-plagued Democrat Senate candidate in Maine with a fake blue-collar persona that is an insult to real working-class men. Cities from Seattle to New York City are run by trust-fund socialists who never amounted to much until they found a niche in far-left politics, and their power is increasing.
A variety of factors may be blamed for this. College is increasingly luxurious, and it is a shock when graduates enter the real world on entry-level salaries. Student loans are a long-term drag, housing is too expensive, and many struggle to climb the career ladder. Relationally, in-person friendships are declining, and the romantic landscape is often grim.
And this is also an age in which the (apparent) happiness, fortune, and status of others is always before us for comparison online, making the unfairness of life (real and imagined) into a constant companion. The sting of inequalities may also be especially acute in urban living, where disparities of wealth are greater, more apparent, and have more effect on daily life.
Thus, though the right mocks the gender studies majors who end up as indebted, underemployed baristas or perpetual NGO interns, those folks can still organize and vote, and they do. They are angry and eager to burn down a system that has not given them what they want. Their bitterness is encouraged by historical ignorance; whiny DSA types have no idea how good they have it compared to nearly every other person who has ever lived. They are not so much oppressed as ungrateful for the blessings they have and envious of those who have more.
The heart of the problem is spiritual. Envy and the resentment that accompany it are poison to souls and societies. And though Democrats have been making a spectacle of them lately, they are intrinsic to fallen human nature, so they also find expression on the right. Just look at the young men who start off complaining about wokeness, the difficulty of the dating market, and the cost of housing, only to get sucked into an online world of bitterness and conspiracy theories about Jews, women’s suffrage, or whatever else. Of course, this bitterness is self-reinforcing because it makes them less likely to land and keep a good job, let alone a good woman. Envy and resentment are not attractive.
Envy also enervates, tending to make those in its thrall weaker — the sort who are loud online but inconsequential in life. Envy is rarely a spur to greatness or self-improvement; rather, it promotes small-minded resentment and the pleasures of cruelty. Envy often isn’t so much seeing something good someone else has and wanting it for oneself as it is seeing something good someone else has and wanting it taken away. Envy is not about seeking success or experiencing the real goods and loves of life, but the spiteful malice of inflicting pain.
Thus, envy finds political expression in mass movements, where ideologues and hucksters harness it for political power and personal profit. And so multimillionaire politicians denounce billionaires as the source of all evil, to the applause of college graduates pretending to be working class. It’s a farce but with real power at stake, and some of the fools are deadly serious.
Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a fellow in the Life and Family Initiative at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of “Victims of the Revolution: How Sexual Liberation Hurts Us All” (Ignatius, 2025).
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