In February, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, wielded a chainsaw at a conservative gathering as he gleefully spoke of his new function as head of the Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE), the place he’ll quickly attain his authorized time period restrict. The chainsaw metaphor is brutally apt as he slashes authorities spending, jeopardising the future of well being look after low-income residents, client safety, education schemes and humanitarian assist, amongst different issues.
Musk’s DOGE has instigated what has been referred to as a lawless assault on United States public providers, threatening the roles of lots of of hundreds of individuals whereas undermining the establishments of American democracy. Whereas different tech billionaires like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg have ingratiated themselves with Trump, Musk has develop into his chief henchman, searching for to axe up to US$2 trillion from the US federal budget.
However as a particular authorities worker, there’s a strict 130-day restrict on his place, expected to expire in late Might or early June. “He’s received an enormous firm to run … sooner or later he’s going to be going again,” Donald Trump told reporters on Monday. “I’d preserve him so long as I may preserve him.” A senior administration official told Politico on Wednesday that Musk will possible retain a casual function as an adviser.
Musk, an unelected official with a number of enterprise pursuits, together with his corporations Tesla, X and SpaceX, presents himself as a billionaire model of the vigilante hero – a cultural icon that looms giant within the American creativeness.
A vigilante takes the regulation into his (it’s normally his) personal fingers, professing a private morality superior to the one inscribed in society’s legal guidelines and enacted by its officers and establishments. Vigilantes consider particular person motion taken outdoors the functioning of presidency is the one approach justice may be achieved. The basic vigilante normally achieves this via brute pressure.
In popular culture, vigilantes are available in many kinds, from superheroes like Batman and Superman to Zorro, The Lone Ranger, Mad Max and the celebrities of vigilante movies, maybe most famously Death Wish (1974), starring tough-guy character actor Charles Bronson. Loss of life Want, like many different vigilante films, is predicated on the premise society is below an ethical menace and the authorities who are supposed to defend residents – the federal government, the regulation, the police – have failed of their obligation. On this style, within the wake of this type of disaster, one individual (usually a white man) emerges as a saviour who can obtain justice.
In Musk’s case, whereas he isn’t utilizing bodily violence, he positions himself as an distinctive hero main a combat in opposition to authorities inefficiency, fraud and waste.
Touting his personal achievements, he said recently: “This can be a revolution. And I feel it is perhaps the largest revolution in authorities because the authentic revolution.” (Presumably he meant the American Revolution, of 1775–83.)
Trump, after all, is a billionaire too. (His internet value was valued at around US$6 billion at first of this yr.) Alongside Musk, his “first buddy”, Trump has recruited a whole lot more billionaires to assist run his administration.
Musk often is the most conspicuous of the brand new MAGA plutocrats however different billionaires with key roles within the Trump administration are:
Our cultural second has been described as a “golden age for billionaires”. Epitomised by Musk and Zuckerberg, specifically, the brand new class of elite international billionaires are considered by many as uniquely particular visionaries.
However as billionaire political energy and international financial inequality attain new heights, it’s time to debunk the myths portraying billionaires as heroic forces for good.
John Raoux/AP
Outrageous fortunes
Right now’s world is one the place the outrageous fortunes of billionaires are rising each day. Oxfam reports that between 2020 and 2023, the richest 1% of the world’s inhabitants sequestered virtually two thirds of recent wealth created in that point. That’s US$42 trillion.
Between 2020 and 2024 the world’s 5 richest males greater than doubled their wealth. In that very same time, the wealth of 5 billion individuals all over the world fell. In the meantime, virtually one in ten people in the world live in extreme poverty, surviving on lower than US$2.15 per day.
The fact of a billionaire-driven world economic system isn’t one among democratic emancipation and shared prosperity. For too many, it’s about starvation, poverty, homelessness, exploitation and lack of alternative. To make issues much more unequal, regardless of slightly below 1 / 4 of the world’s inhabitants dwelling within the International North, as of 2024 these nations had been house to three quarters of the world’s billionaire wealth.
Francis R. Malasig/AAP
In keeping with Oxfam, 60% of billionaire wealth comes from “both inheritance, cronyism and corruption or monopoly energy”. This undermines the widespread trope that billionaires ought to be appeared as much as as a result of their wealth is self-made and “deserved”.
Billionaires are additionally lauded for his or her typically extreme philanthropic giving. In 2024, the lifetime giving of the US’s prime 25 billionaire philanthropists added as much as more than US$240 billion. The Gates Basis, for example, made grants value greater than US$77 billion from its inception to the tip of 2023, funding healthcare, training and entry to expertise. Funding magnate and sixth richest individual on the earth, Warren Buffett, has pledged to provide greater than 99% of his wealth to charity over the course of his lifetime via his Giving Pledge.
Clearly these items are important and make an actual distinction to the lives of many individuals. Whether or not it’s medical analysis, poverty alleviation, catastrophe aid, local weather change or arts and tradition, billionaire philanthropy goes a great distance. However there may be extra to that story. Sarcastically, there’s a correlation between financial inequality and billionaire philanthropy. Giving is an emblem of inequality, not equity. As billionaires give an increasing number of, their private wealth continues to develop.
In 2010, 62 billionaires signed up with Invoice Gates and Warren Buffett to provide away at the least half of their fortunes by the point they die. All nicely and good, however within the ten years that adopted, the collective wealth of these 62 individuals virtually doubled.
In keeping with a 2020 report on this pledge:
Zuckerberg and his spouse Priscilla Chan have given an estimated US$7 billion to charity over the previous decade. However Zuckerberg’s giving has been strikingly outstripped by the expansion in his internet value, which elevated by 59% within the first 4 months of the pandemic.
In 2015, Zuckerberg could have pledged to provide away 99% of his Facebook shares in his lifetime, however since then his net worth has grown virtually sixfold, from US$33.4 billion to US$199.3 billion immediately. In that very same ten-year interval, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has awarded a mean of slightly below US$700 million per year in grants.
Whereas billionaires could also be making important philanthropic donations, this doesn’t change the underlying system of inequality that made them wealthy within the first place. And in lots of instances, their philanthropy contrasts starkly with their behaviour on the subject of paying tax.
American billionaires, usually, pay a decrease price of earnings tax than most working households. A 2021 White House Study, the common federal particular person tax price of the highest 400 billionaire households was a paltry 8.2%. The nationwide common was 13%.
If we take a look at tax paid in relation to wealth development, the image appears to be like even worse. Lately launched knowledge from the US Inside Income Companies, analysed by the Individuals for Tax Equity marketing campaign, exhibits in the five years to 2018, the common true tax price of the richest 26 Individuals was simply 4.8%.
No surprise they’ve loads of cash to direct to the charitable causes of their very own selecting. These paying the bottom efficient tax charges, in keeping with this evaluation, included Jeff Bezos (1.1%), Michael Bloomberg (1.8%) and Mark Zuckerberg (1.1%).
Whereas particular person billionaires like Buffett have advocated for the ultra-rich to pay extra tax as a way to elevate the burden from odd residents, it’s clear hardly any have headed the decision. Regardless of his pronouncements, Buffett’s personal effective tax rate on wealth growth within the 5 years to 2018 was estimated by Individuals for Tax Equity to be 0.1%.
What to do?
Democracy is constructed on the concept of well-liked sovereignty: the insistence the “individuals” are collectively those in the end liable for self rule. Central to that is the rule of regulation, whereby all residents, irrespective of how highly effective or rich, are topic to the identical legal guidelines. Leaders like Trump, nonetheless, appear to consider themselves to be above the law.
And when New York Legal professional Normal Letitia James blocked DOGE from gaining access to Treasury Division cost methods, she declared:
this morning, we gained a court docket order blocking Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, from accessing Individuals’ personal knowledge […] I’ve mentioned it earlier than, and I’ll say it once more: nobody is above the regulation.
Musk isn’t the primary billionaire to place himself as a heroic “revolutionary” for whom the legal guidelines don’t apply; the rich have lengthy claimed they’ll clear up the world’s issues higher than democratic establishments. The place hope lies, nonetheless, is that Musk has taken this vigilantism to such extremes, a fightback is happening. He could have gone too far.
Musk’s chainsawing of the American authorities means the vast majority of Individuals now view him negatively. They consider he lacks each the judgement and expertise to do Trump’s DOGE soiled work. Shareholders of Musk’s Tesla are getting nervous, as Tesla inventory costs are freefalling to 50% of their former worth.
Tesla house owners all over the world are promoting their automobiles and new vehicle sales are plumetting. Musk himself needed to plead together with his personal staff to not promote their Tesla inventory. There may be an activist organisation within the UK referred to as “Everyone Hates Elon” orchestrating an organised marketing campaign to discredit the billionaire. Final weekend, a global day of action focused Tesla showrooms all over the world. Protest organisers requested individuals to do three issues, reported the Guardian: “don’t purchase a Tesla, dump Tesla inventory and be part of the ‘Tesla Takedown’ motion”.
Past Musk, there may be growing public scrutiny and mistrust of billionaires and the unjust financial system they signify. Mistrust, which started with activist actions akin to Occupy Wall Road in 2011, is evidenced immediately within the “tax the rich” motion and the so-called “eat the rich” style of flicks, like Parasite (2019) and Triangle of Disappointment (2022), that discover themes of capitalism and inequality.
Economist Thomas Piketty, whose intensive research of inequality put him able to know the true devastation it will possibly trigger, has argued:
Historical past teaches us that elites combat to keep up excessive inequality, however ultimately, there’s a long-run motion towards extra equality, at the least because the finish of the 18th century, and it’ll proceed.
Whereas international inequality has been increasing since the 1990s, there isn’t a motive to consider we can not get again on observe with this longer-term development.
Hopefulness, mixed with a religion in the potential of progress, can animate a political will to alter issues for the advantage of the overwhelming majority of the world’s residents. No seemingly entrenched and immovable state of injustice is fastened.
Because the world tumbles into local weather catastrophe, financial inequality and political populism, the ultra-wealthy must be held to account by society. Extra radically, a brand new political imaginative and prescient is required for a future the place the wealth created by human exercise is shared by the numerous, relatively than hoarded by the few.
As acclaimed writer Ursula Le Guin said in 2014:
We dwell in capitalism. Its energy appears inescapable – however then, so did the divine proper of kings. Any human energy may be resisted and altered by human beings.
Carl Rhodes is the writer of Stinking Rich: the four myths of the good billionaire (Bristol College Press)
