SpaceX's historic Nasdaq debut on Friday didn't just make headlines — it made Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. And that has a lot of people in Washington furious.
Shares of SpaceX (SPCX) closed up 19.22% on their first trading day at $160.95, pushing the company's market cap past $2 trillion. The milestone instantly catapulted Musk's net worth into twelve-figure territory, and the political backlash was swift.
Sen. Adam Schiff took to X late Friday to vent. "There is something terribly wrong about an economy that produces its first trillionaire, but cannot provide health care for its people," he wrote. He added that "the richest handful of families have the combined wealth of almost forty percent of the rest of the country," calling it "the cost of a corrupt system, where wealth perpetuates itself, and poverty, at the same time."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom piled on, calling the system "rigged." In his own X post, he said: "Americans are struggling to pay for groceries and gas while Elon Musk becomes a TRILLIONAIRE. When the federal government is for sale, the rich get richer and everyone else gets shafted. The system is rigged."
But not everyone sees Musk's fortune as a problem. Investor Bill Ackman pushed back on Sen. Bernie Sanders' criticism, arguing that Musk's wealth isn't a pile of cash sitting in a vault. "Elon is not sitting on a trillion dollar pile of cash, jewelry and gold. He is using his controlling stakes in his companies to advance mankind. Elon's companies don't pay dividends," Ackman wrote. He credited SpaceX with making thousands of employees millionaires through equity.
The debate comes amid a wave of high-profile IPOs from companies like SpaceX and OpenAI, which have reignited calls for a wealth tax. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Sara Jacobs renewed their push, with Jacobs tweeting: "It's beyond sickening that Elon Musk – the world's first trillionaire – pays a lower effective tax rate than truck drivers, firefighters, or nurses. It's not complicated – we need to actually TAX THE RICH."
Sanders separately argued that income inequality has "never" been so extreme, citing data showing the top 0.001% gained $20 million each last year while the bottom 50% lost $27 on average.
Whether you see Musk's trillionaire status as a symbol of innovation or a symptom of a broken system, one thing is clear: the political fight over wealth and taxes is only getting started.
