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SpaceX went public Friday. In the process, Elon Musk became the first trillionaire in history — maybe not as wealthy as King Solomon, but certainly on his way.
The IPO priced shares at around $135. The stock opened at $150 and climbed as high as $168 before closing at $161. That gave SpaceX a market capitalization of roughly $2.1 trillion. According to Forbes, Musk’s net worth now sits at approximately $1.1 trillion.
And, like a smooth-running Swiss watch, the Left wasted no time vilifying it.
Maine Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner said:
“Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire. Let’s make sure he’s also the last.”
That statement, in America of all places, is astonishing. My goodness, how far we’ve fallen to see that kind of poisonous thinking espoused into public discourse.
Some 4,400 SpaceX employees became millionaires as a result of the company going public… many multi-millionaires, deca-millionaires, even hecto-millionaires. That includes blue-collar workers; even cafeteria employees shared in the wealth creation becoming millionaires.
This is AWESOME — with a capital A. Capitalize every letter, for that matter.
Will it happen to everyone at every company? Of course not. Most startups fail within a few years. Many companies never go public, but they create wealth. People take risks, and sometimes those risks pay off.
Think about the college graduate whose parents wanted him to take the safe route and sign on with General Electric. Instead, he said no and joined SpaceX. Today he’s a multi-millionaire and semi-retired at 37.
Only in America.
And it wasn’t just employees. Investors who were willing to bet on the company, bet on Musk, and bet on his vision made money Friday — lots of it. They could have lost in that IPO as easily as they gained. That’s the bargain. That’s the risk. And it’s a big part of what has made America the most innovative and prosperous nation in history: Americans betting on themselves and others.
Jeff Bezos, another favorite target of those who demonize capitalism, often talks about the investors who backed him when Amazon was little more than an idea and a dream. He gave them substantial equity because without their capital, the company never would have survived.
As Bezos has said, “They did very well on that deal.”
And they deserved to. Bezos knows and appreciates that; celebrates it and the extreme equity awards all manners of investors have found in Amazon.
So why do so many on the Left seem determined to portray success as something sinister? Why is Musk becoming a trillionaire — something many people once considered impossible — treated as evidence of societal failure rather than human achievement?
My two cents: because if people continue to see extraordinary success as something admirable – it is – they may also continue to value the economic system that made it possible, rather than detest it. That’s a problem for those who seek to expand government control and limit the rewards of private enterprise.
And while we’re at it, keep an eye on some of the Republican populists emerging in American politics today. On this issue, they’re often closer to the progressive Left than they are to traditional free-market capitalism once valued by all conservatives, not just some. Populism is not the same thing as capitalism. It too should be squashed.
On a day when Americans could have celebrated the beauty of a system that rewards innovation, risk-taking, and vision, many on the Left chose to attack it instead.
And we wonder why some people respond to the success of others with resentment rather than inspiration.
The answer is obvious. When success is constantly portrayed as exploitation and achievement is treated as something suspect, people stop seeing what others have accomplished and start focusing on what they don’t have.
That’s not optimism.
That’s propaganda.
And it’s doing real damage to the American spirit.
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