LET'S EDUCATE PEOPLE WITH ACTUAL NUMBERS....
The media loves headlines about @elonmusk becoming a "trillionaire."
But most people don't understand what that number actually means.
Let's break it down.
If Elon Musk is worth roughly $1 trillion on paper:
❌ It does NOT mean he has $1 trillion in cash.
❌ It does NOT mean he can spend $1 trillion tomorrow.
❌ It does NOT mean the government could simply seize $1 trillion and spend it.
Most of that wealth exists as ownership in companies.
Think about it this way:
If your home is worth $500,000, you don't have $500,000 sitting in your bank account.
You own an asset.
The same principle applies to company shares.
Now let's compare some numbers.
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
The U.S. federal government spends roughly $7 trillion per year.
Even if Elon somehow sold every share he owned tomorrow and turned it all into cash (which is impossible), that money would fund Washington's spending for only about 7 weeks.
Read that again.
7 weeks.
Not years.
Not decades.
7 weeks.
ELON'S 2021 TAX BILL
In 2021 Elon paid approximately $11 billion in federal taxes.
The median American household pays around $2,000-$5,000 annually in federal income taxes depending on income and family situation.
To equal Elon's $11 billion tax bill, you'd need roughly:
✅ 2.2 million households paying $5,000 each
OR
✅ 5.5 million households paying $2,000 each
That's more households than exist in many U.S. states.
JOB CREATION
Tesla employs over 120,000 people globally.
SpaceX employs more than 15,000 people.
X, xAI, Neuralink, and Musk's other companies employ thousands more.
Directly and indirectly, Musk's companies support hundreds of thousands of jobs.
✅ Those workers pay taxes.
✅ Buy homes.
✅ Support local businesses.
✅ Raise families.
That's how wealth circulates through an economy.
WHAT ABOUT "TAX THE BILLIONAIRES"?
Let's do the math.
The U.S. national debt is now over $40 trillion.
Suppose the government somehow confiscated an entire $1 trillion fortune.
That would eliminate only about:
2.5% of the national debt.
The other 97.5% would still be there.
A spending problem cannot be solved by a one-time wealth seizure.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
America has approximately:
🇺🇸 340 million people
🇺🇸 34 million businesses
🇺🇸 A $30+ trillion economy
The reason America became the most prosperous nation in history wasn't because government bureaucrats created wealth.
It was because entrepreneurs, inventors, builders, investors, and workers created wealth.
✔️ The smartphone in your pocket.
✔️ The internet.
✔️ Amazon.
✔️ Google.
✔️ Microsoft.
✔️ Tesla.
✔️ SpaceX.
Most of the technologies that transformed modern life came from capitalist innovation, not socialist central planning.
Yet some politicians act like success itself is the problem.
No.
The problem isn't that America produces billionaires.
The problem is that America isn't producing enough future millionaires.
A healthy economy should create more owners, more investors, more entrepreneurs, and more opportunity.
Because every billionaire started as a millionaire.
Every millionaire started with a first dollar.
And every thriving economy starts by rewarding people who create value for others.
🇺🇸 America became great by creating wealth.
Not by punishing the people who create it.
How many times do we wake up in the night and can't fall back asleep?
Or maybe have trouble falling asleep because our minds are too full of the day we experienced?
Try memorizing God's Word and reminding yourself that the Lord gives counsel and peace.
🙏
USA. A breakfast counter. The waitress recommended the biscuits and gravy, and when the plate arrived, I thought something had gone wrong in the kitchen.
I say this with shame. The dish looked like a construction site after rain. Pale mounds. Gray ladle-fall. Speckles I could not identify.
In my land, the eye eats first. A meal is arranged like a garden. This meal was arranged like weather.
"Is it… finished?" I asked, carefully.
"Honey, that's what it looks like."
The man beside me was already eating his. He did not look up. "Just try it."
I am a man who has charged hillsides at dawn. I raised the fork. I tried it.
I must now formally apologize to the biscuits, the gravy, the waitress, the kitchen, and the entire breakfast tradition of the American South.
It was magnificent. Warm. Peppered. The biscuit drank the gravy the way a field drinks rain — THAT is why it is shaped like that, you fool — and every mound I had insulted was a soft fold of comfort that my homeland, in eight hundred years, never once thought to invent.
"Well?" the waitress asked.
"I judged it," I confessed. "By its appearance. I am ashamed."
"Everybody does, hon."
Everybody does. A national dish that forgives you for doubting it. It expects the doubt. It waits for you on the other side of it.
Do not judge the gravy by its face. Judge yourself, for hesitating.
I order it every Saturday now. I no longer see the construction site. I see only the garden.
It was a garden the whole time. The eye must be trained.
I’m tired of the government taking money from hard-working American taxpayers. It started in 1913 with the Federal Reserve and the XVI Amendment, which gave Congress the power to impose an income tax. That same year, the first permanent federal income tax began at rates of one to six percent.
Today, our currency isn’t backed by gold or silver, so when the Federal Reserve writes a check, it’s just another IOU. In fact, our entire monetary system runs on IOUs. They’re not just going after people, they’re targeting successful companies too.
Every time a business like SpaceX goes public, the government sees dollar signs, even though thousands of their employees just became millionaires through stock ownership. They shouldn’t be on the backs of working people and businesses like this. 💫
I just want to protect my daughters.
I want them to walk through the city dressed how they want, laughing, with their friends. Like girls in Japan have for a thousand years.
I want to die knowing my granddaughters will still be safe in a park.
That's it. That's the whole project.
I'm seeing a lot of fake information about a potential deal to reopen the Strait and end Iran's nuclear weapons program. First, the Iranians are not receiving any cash, and no funds are being released for simply signing a deal or attending a meeting. The deal is structured to ensure that the US and its allies concerns are prioritized, and that if the Islamic Republic of Iran meets its obligations, then economic benefits will flow to them and to the entire region. This deal has the potential to remake the region and lead to lasting peace.
I've noticed a couple of bizarre things in the reporting over the last few hours. First, people who (rightly) said Donald Trump was a historic president a month ago now criticizing a deal based on unconfirmed media reports. Second, people who say you can't trust a word said by the IRGC who apparently believe anonymously sourced social media posts.
The president is going to get us a good outcome, one way or the other.
@shelleyinaustin@cws2615@nettermike Of course, I agree that everyone is not equally ok. I was intrigued by the Maslow Hierarchy triangle example here and what do we think about the idea that most people have their basic needs met and are essentially seeking something higher. Thanks for the response.
🙏
@shelleyinaustin@cws2615@nettermike I think that a lot people sit at the top of the pyramid economically just by living here, but then they're somewhere near the bottom emotionally and in their level of awareness and maturity.
This article was written by a 26 yr old college student by the name of Alyssa Ahlgren, who's in grad school for her MBA. What a GREAT perspecitve..👍🏽
My Generation Is Blind to the Prosperity Around Us!
I'm sitting in a small coffee shop near Nokomis (Florida) trying to think of what to write about. I scroll through my newsfeed on my phone looking at the latest headlines of presidential candidates calling for policies to "fix" the so-called injustices of capitalism. I put my phone down and continue to look around.
I see people talking freely, working on their MacBook's, ordering food they get in an instant, seeing cars go by outside, and it dawned on me. We live in the most privileged time in the most prosperous nation and we've become completely blind to it.
Vehicles, food, technology, freedom to associate with whom we choose.These things are so ingrained in our American way of life we don't give them a second thought.
We are so well off here in the United States that our poverty line begins 31 times above the global average. Thirty One Times!!!
Virtually no one in the United States is considered poor by global standards. Yet, in a time where we can order a product off Amazon with one click and have it at our doorstep the next day, we are unappreciative, unsatisfied, and ungrateful. ??
Our unappreciation is evident as the popularity of socialist policies among my generation continues to grow. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said to Newsweek talking about the millennial generation, "An entire generation, which is now becoming one of the largest electorates in America, came of age and never saw American prosperity."
Never saw American prosperity! Let that sink in.
When I first read that statement, I thought to myself, that was quite literally the most entitled and factually illiterate thing I've ever heard in my 26 years on this earth. Many young people agree with her, which is entirely misguided.
My generation is being indoctrinated by a mainstream narrative to actually believe we have never seen prosperity. I know this first hand, I went to college, let's just say I didn't have the popular opinion, but I digress.
Why then, with all of the overwhelming evidence around us, evidence that I can even see sitting at a coffee shop, do we not view this as prosperity? We have people who are dying to get into our country.
People around the world destitute and truly impoverished. Yet, we have a young generation convinced they've never seen prosperity, and as a result, we elect some politicians who are dead set on taking steps towards abolishing capitalism.
Why? The answer is this,?? my generation has only seen prosperity. We have no contrast. We didn't live in the great depression, or live through two world wars, the Korean War, The Vietnam War or we didn't see the rise and fall of socialism and communism.
We don't know what it's like to live without the internet, without cars, without smartphones. We don't have a lack of prosperity problem. We have an entitlement problem, an ungratefulness problem, and it's spreading like a plague."
James 1:5 RSVCI
If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him.
https://t.co/6zGeNT7PSP