Check out our latest episode of The Pod Millennial! I talk to Seamus Coughlin — cartoonist, political commentator, and creator of Freedom Toons to talk about his ambitious new animated series, Twisted Plots. Seamus shares how a successful crowdfunding campaign helped build something conservatives have been missing: quality entertainment that doesn't preach, but still tells the truth. They dive deep into why storytelling matters more than ever, how the left captured culture by shaping the stories people consume, and reveal how to change it. New episodes drop every Tuesday! Listen, rate (5 stars, of course!), and subscribe!
Let's get into it:
By now, we've all seen the incredible stories of SpaceX staffers who became millionaires overnight after Elon Musk launched the company's initial public stock offering. Cafeteria workers, engineers, who were making less than $100K per year, can now retire, or buy a new home, or travel the world, or send their kids to college, or indulge in that new Caddy, or countless other things they can imagine, because they worked for Musk's rocket company, got stock options, and struck it rich. It's hard to look at that as anything other than the absolute triumph of the American dream.
But for a bunch of leftist politicians, many of whom are millionaires themselves, somehow, despite earning just a meager salary as public servants, are bitching about the existence of those new millionaires and complaining even more about Musk's wealth now that he's become the world's first trillionaire. I can't even imagine what a trillion dollars looks like, but I know it means not having to worry about money at all. Hell, with money like that he could buy Luxembourg, still have enough leftover for the Solomon Islands, and still not worry about money.
So why are all these pols so pissed? "Elon Musk is officially the world's first trillionaire," Liz Warren said with a sour look on her face. "We're living in a time when more and more people are just hanging on by their fingernails to survive in this economy, and Elon Musk has more money and more wealth than anyone in human history. I want to be clear: This is not just some fluke, it is a feature of a rigged economy."
Then she went on a rant about tax loopholes and AI, saying that "we are left with a country where a handful of billionaires at the top pop champagne in their $300 million yachts, while working people take on even more shifts to try to pay off their student loan debt. The top 1% of US earners now have more wealth than the entire middle class. We need to overhaul our tax code. We need a wealth tax, and it's about time that corporations paid their fair share."
I wonder if she included all those newly minted millionaires in her one percent. On Thursday, they were average Joes working double shifts, and on Friday they were members of the 1%. That literally can only happen in the greatest country on earth, and that's America. We all have a shot, but Warren wants to cut the big guys off at the knees, so us little guys can only get a shot with a government handout. Screw that.
And she wasn't the only one. Bernie Sanders, a millionaire who made his money selling anti-capitalist propaganda, said "Today, Elon Musk, a trillionaire, pays the same amount into Social Security as someone making $184,500. If we end that absurdity and lift the cap on taxable income, we can make Social Security solvent for 75 years and expand benefits by $2,400. My Social Security bill does that."
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who likely imagines herself becoming the nation's first female president, claimed that Musk's trillion was unearned. She said: "You can't earn a billion dollars. You just can't earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can do all sorts of things. You can abuse labor laws — you can pay people less than what they're worth — but you can't earn that. And so you have to create a myth. Since you didn't earn that, you have to create a myth of earning it." But he did earn it. And so did all those people working normal jobs at SpaceX who now have millions themselves.
Adam Schiff of California said it can only be a "corrupt system" that allows Musk, CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, Twitter/X, and Neuralink, to become insanely wealthy. "There is something terribly wrong about an economy that produces its first trillionaire," he said, "but cannot provide health care for its people. Or one in which the richest handful of families have the combined wealth of almost forty percent of the rest of the country."
But listen, that's not the metric. We do have healthcare. We have some of the best healthcare in the world. And people with no money access it all the time, not just with government programs but by showing up at the Emergency Room and getting treated. Hospitals give subsidies and forgive medical bills, too.
And we have free education. I quibble with it, for sure, but we have it. And we have massive student aid programs for college. We have the equity that all these people are always demanding. And we have it, in large part, because the nation is rich and has the ability to make lots of people rich. The other thing they don't get is that America is a nation where you can have a good life at any price point—this reality is so underappreciated. When I made $30,000K, I had a good life. And I have a good life now—still far, far from millionaire status.
The reason these rich leftist elites don't like Musk, or the fact that he shares the wealth he creates with his employees, workers, and cafeteria staff, is that money facilitates freedom. And free people don't need to suck up government funds. The socialist elites want to control Americans and a downtrodden, broke-ass population is way easier to control by dishing out free crap than a population that can write its own ticket.
Go be innovative, Americans, we've got to make a million.
Libby