A righteous neighbor here in Abacoa (not everyone in Florida is Deplorable, especially here in Palm Beach County, though it is rare even for the Righteous to have a political/social justice bumper sticker), this afternoon:
I asked Grok to redo it to read “I bought this before Elon had four commas” rather than “I bought this before Elon went crazy”:
The updated sticker is perfect for adorning any Tesla, of course, but it also makes sense for those of us with non-Tesla cars. We can proudly proclaim that we didn’t help Elon get to his envy-stoking level of wealth.
How are others dealing with their grief? New York Times front page:
The Native American community:
Not sure who this guy is:
Some folks who probably didn’t work too hard to get IPO shares:
An old lady from Maskachusetts:
(What evidence does Ms. Markey have that Elon ever “traded stocks”?
Bernie:
A reasonable suggestion regarding Bernie:
Another candidate for a wellness check:
An envious California progressive at the peasant level of wealth for Palm Beach County (at least $30 million for Mx. Newsom and the female companion he/she/ze/they plucked from Harvey Weinstein’s hotel rooms):
(If California could confiscate 100% of Elon’s $1 trillion would that be sufficient to realize at least part of their high-speed rail dream?)
The grandson of Muhammad Kenyatta:
The pro-Hamas next U.S. Senator from the Islamic Republic of Michigan:
I find it fascinating that Elon is routinely called a freeloader, tax dodger, incompetent, thief, liar, criminal, and the list goes on.
Yet somehow, the anger is directed at one person who built multiple companies, while millions of able-bodied adults [1] have been freeloading on government assistance for decades, contributing nothing to society, and yet are not criticized.
Elon being a trillion, doesn’t come close to how much US spends on welfare, year over year [2].
[1] From AI: Approximately 52 million people (or 21% of the U.S. population) participate in major means-tested government assistance programs each month. Across all social safety net programs, including universal ones, nearly 100 million Americans (about one in three) rely on at least one government assistance program.
[2] From AI: The U.S. government spends approximately $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion annually on federal means-tested welfare programs. If state and local government contributions are included, total government anti-poverty spending reaches roughly $1.8 trillion per year.
Scary power – hungry Democrats want to kill engines of wealth creation, successful entrepreneurs. Someone can argue that people like Elon are the most selfless individuals, they work to benefit the world which does not like them instead spending time in seeking personal pleasure. Compare Elon to a former great painter Hunter Biden.
Most selfless? That’s absurd
Elon makes staff for other people, many of whom do not like him. He could instead settle for first billion $ and blog for fun. Ok, maybe he does it with twitter. He definitely cares about future, ie others since he will not be living in it, about Earth underpopulation, about having enough children, etc… NASA was in long slide since its hey days until Elon managed to organize building cheapest space rockets in the world, a feat though no longer possible in the US.
I do not argue that he or other successful entrepreneurs are perfect but the fact is that most people with a fraction of his success would long retire. Who knows what would happen if those who succeed did not but most likely it would bring overall economy down. US is the only large old economy that manages to grow. All self-declared selfless aka socialist societies struggled economically and hurt people living in them and had to restructure to introduce economic incentives.
Elon is never going to use his trillions $ valuation, it is mostly to be used by other people and to achieve things that advance human enterprise. This is one of properties of selflessness, to work for benefit of others.
Well said, perplexed.
Pretty much the official bumper sticker of the democratic party. Regardless of how amerikans deal with it, eventually a system beyond a certain level of wealth concentration is doomed to fail. Elon & The Greenspun only made it because the dot com boom was so widely distributed by today’s standards. Ars digita & Zip2 wouldn’t have a chance in hell today.
Thanks for sharing all those great tweets. Elizabeth, Ed, Bernie and Gavin are all right. Elon has way too much money and power, especially given the recent cutbacks to aid programs. You can argue about the validity and efficient of those programs, but how a society treats its least fortunate is a good indication of how healthy it is. “Greed is good” is not a good credo.
MBD: What does “society” mean when 30% of the people in a country are recent immigrants or children of immigrants? If a group of people don’t have a language, culture, or religion in common, in what sense are they a “society”? Isn’t that more like the group of people who are changing planes in Dubai or Frankfurt?
To make it concrete, why should a successful Haitian immigrant want to pay taxes to help a “least fortunate” Somali immigrant?
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/world/americas/05iht-diversity.1.6986248.html
“the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.”
@MBD, See my post from a few hours ago [1]. When we spend more than $1.2 trillion a year supporting over 21% of the society in the country, year after year, how can you argue that we are not taking care of the least fortunate?
[1] https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2026/06/12/new-bumper-sticker-for-my-tesla-and-or-honda-odyssey/#comment-419671
Master Bob, you a great bro. Keep the gravy train coming my way. This blog be full of haters. If you want to connect, please DM me on my free Obama phone. I’m available all day every day.
Also, let us not forget that much of Elon Musk’s trillion dolor wealth exists on paper in the form of stock ownership. It is not the same as having that amount sitting in a bank account.
On the other hand, the more than $1 trillion spent annually on welfare and related assistance programs is real money being spent every year. This spending has a direct impact on government budgets, deficits, and taxpayers.
The only greed I see here is from folks who treat welfare as a permanent way of life rather than the temporary assistance program it was intended to be. In many cases, individuals remain on these programs for years, and sometimes extends across multiple generations.
Master George A., why you need to join with the haters too?
“The only greed I see here is from folks who treat welfare as a permanent way of life rather than the temporary assistance program it was intended to be. In many cases, individuals remain on these programs for years, and sometimes extends across multiple generations.”
Master GA, there are different strokes fo different fokes. That what Diversity is all about. Didn’t you listen to the inimitable Barack Hussein Obama? He said youts didn’t earn your money, remember…so better me than you, got it?
What’s the mathematical difference between 1T -1, and 1T, 1$. It’s the 1 dollar that caused the sudden outrage, not 1T.
#NewEnvyLevelUnlocked !
Elon’s trillion would cover about half the annual deficit.
And increase deficit next year, since there will be neither Space X not Tesla after that.