Trillionaire. I am not even sure how to spell that, but Elon Musk has achieved that moniker (I envision him in a velvet track suit with diamonds spelling out Trillionaire on the back). I guess that was a goal of his or something. Not sure if he gets a special stamp in his passport or a special identification card that entitles him to be first in line everywhere.
I am not sure how I feel about it. Part of me sees this massive wealth of Bezos, Musk and Zuckerberg and thinks wow that must come with a whole set of different problems. We are essentially in a new gilded age. The other part of me thinks that massive wealth duds could have a meeting and provide enough money for real problems like universal healthcare or free internet. How much can that really cost? If you have a 150 billion are you going to miss 1 billion? If you have 100 million then voluntarily parting with say a million is not the end of the world. That amount of money might not easily parted with to alleviate the suffering of millions of people but maybe it is.
My libertarian leanings get uncomfortable when I think of the government “taking” money from a successful person to give to anyone. But there was some good that came out of Musk becoming a trillionaire. The SpaceX IPO created 4,400 millionaires in a single day. 400 employees immediately had a net worth of $100 million. So, in way 4,400 people had their suffering alleviated. That is a lot of millionaires created by a single activity. All of these facts and figures are like a foreign language to me. I get hung up on the how and what of it all. Maybe I focus too narrowly on the tasks I have in front of me lacking a broader vision for my financial horizon. I get excited if I can cover all of my responsibilities and obligations in a month. Forget about it if I have a couple hundred in cash in my wallet.
So, 100 million seems completely out of reach and being a trillionaire is a ridiculous goal. Maybe the genius of America is that we live in a place that can maintain the extremes of great wealth and great poverty. Maybe in order to create the environment for a trillionaire we have to tolerate that a small few will have a lot while a great many will have just hope.
Albert R. Hartley
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