Last week when Elon Musk took SpaceX public, he became the world's first trillionaire.
Not only did Thursday's initial public offering boost his net worth to an estimated $1.1 trillion, but it also turned more than 4,000 SpaceX employees into millionaires.
While the business world congratulated Musk's milestone, Democrats grumbled and demanded a wealth tax.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., released a video in which she whined about Musk's trillionaire status.
"Elon Musk has more money and more wealth than anyone in human history," she groused. "This is not just some fluke. It is a feature of a rigged economy."
Warren added, "The top 1% of U.S. 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."
However, that same top 1% pay 37% of total income taxes.
And Warren still doesn't understand that corporations don't pay income taxes — their customers do. Raise the corporate tax rate and they pass the increased costs on to their consumers. If they don't, they go out of business.
Ironically, Warren recorded her rant from what appears to be the back seat of a limousine as she was carted from one place to another.
She's also a millionaire, despite not having produced a single thing of value in her life.
Musk, on the other hand, founded SpaceX 24 years ago in an empty Texas aircraft hangar on the idea to create a reusable rocket that, after propelling a satellite or capsule beyond Earth’s gravity, could safely return to Earth for another mission.
SpaceX has done that, and now manufactures satellites and modules as well.
The company made headlines when a malfunctioning Boeing Starliner capsule left two American astronauts stranded on the International Space Station for nearly 10 months and were rescued last year — by a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
Warren later reiterated her claim that "We need a wealth tax," and she wasn't alone. Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who both identify as socialists, were also on board.
Ocasio-Cortez referred to a Financial Times story about Musk's trillionaire status and said, "But taxing wealth so normal people can afford to see a doctor and not go bankrupt over inhalers is radical left."
Sanders hinted at a wealth tax.
"Elon Musk's rise to trillionaire status is not a time to celebrate," he began. "It's a call to action to take on the unprecedented income and wealth inequality that now exists and the greed and power of a ruling class that is destroying the social fabric of America."
Like Warren, Sanders is a multi-millionaire who never produced anything of value and owns three homes. When he was criticized for traveling on private jets, he remarked, "You think I should wait on line at United? No apologies for my private jets."
But not only would going after Musk's wealth accomplish nothing, it would also hurt us in the long run.
Geiger Capital observed that "If you taxed 100% of Elon’s net worth, confiscated every penny, you could fund the current U.S. government for about. . . 49 days."
This is based on the projected 2026 federal government spending of $7.4 trillion. Musk's $ trillion in assets would cover 49.3 days. And applying it to the federal debt wouldn't accomplish much, not when it stands at $39 trillion.
It wouldn't even cover this year's projected deficit, which stands at $1.9 trillion.
"We don't have a revenue problem," concluded Geiger Capital. "We have a welfare spending problem." And it's the same problem that we've had for decades.
The last time we had a balanced budget was during the Clinton administration. But Bill Clinton had nothing to do with it — it was all the effort of then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., and his Contract with America.
Last week, when Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, he took more than 4,000 others with him, just as he created other millionaires in his other ventures: PayPal, Tesla, Inc., X Corp., Neuralink, The Boring Company, and OpenAI.
And Democrat-Socialists want to hamstring this? It's reminiscent of something we all learned as kids — "The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs," an Aesop Fable with a moral lesson about greed.
In it a farmer and his wife have a goose that laid a golden egg every day, but their greed led them to kill the goose in hopes of getting all the gold at once, resulting in their loss of the steady source of wealth.
Democrats want to kill the golden goose. They want to kill all the golden geese.
We should celebrate the wealth created through effort and ideas, and instead be wary of the wealth of politicians who produce nothing of value to earn it.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and is a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He's also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and a Second Amendment supporter. Read more Michael Dorstewitz Insider articles — Click Here Now.