We’ve all heard that Musk was giving away a MILLION DOLLARS a day to a randomly selected registered voter who signed a petition supporting the First and Second Amendments. While the legality of this effort is debated and the Justice Department seems to have put an end to the foolishness, it demonstrates the incredible wealth gap in this country and the true danger the Roberts Court poses to our democracy.
By declaring that spending money is protected speech, John “Money Doesn’t Corrupt” Roberts has allowed people like Musk to spend obscene amounts to influence our elections and our politicians.
Large numbers are really hard to understand, so Ye Olde Blogge is going to break it down for us.
For most of us, a million dollars is a fortune—an unbelievable and unattainable amount. If you’re careful and diligent, you might could put together a million dollar retirement nest egg over your lifetime. Unfortunately, it isn’t enough to retire on any more; current advise is to get two million.
Here’s how the million-dollar retirement fund works: You invest it in a vehicle that earns a seven percent return. That nets you $70,000 annually without touching your principal. I don’t know about you, but the frugal missus and I can live on $70,000 a year.
For Musk to be handing some random individual a million dollars puts them halfway to retirement. That’s great for them. I’m not knocking that at all. Hell, if I had the chance, I’d sign the gotdamn petition just for a shot at it. Who couldn’t use a million dollars? It makes you a millionaire, just like Thurston Howell, III on Gilligan’s Island, and isn’t that all of us olds point-of-reference?
Let’s put Musk’s wealth in perspective. We need to understand how he can spend a million dollars a day when it takes most of us a lifetime of scrimping and saving to amass that kind of money.
- MUSKS’ NET WORTH: Approximately $300 billion
- DAILY GIVE AWAY: $1 million
- ONE YEAR OF GIVING: $1 million x 365 days = $365 million
- TIME TO REACH $1 BILLION: $1 billion ÷ $365 million = 2.7 years (or about 2 years, 8 months, 1 day, 5 hours, and 16 minutes). That’s just for a billion dollars.
- Total Time to Spend $300 Billion: $300 billion ÷ $365 million/year ≈ 820.5 years
It would take him a millennium to spend his current fortune at one million per day.
It would take him 820.5 years to spend his current fortune at the rate of one million per day.
To put that into perspective, for me as a retiree, I can spend $200.00 per day before I start in on my principle.
That’s a big fucking difference!
There’s no question why our politics are skewed to favor the oligarchs. It’s no wonder we have an entire political party hell-bent on replacing our already flawed democracy with a single-party, pseudo-democratic, minority-rule fascist regime.
We’d be left to suffer under a system that would force us to:
- Consume their mass-produced, highly processed foods, while battling the cancers spawned by their polluting industries.
- Live in the slums we’re forced to lease from them, scraping by while working three minimum-wage jobs.
- Pay sky-high tuition just to educate our children so they can perpetuate this cycle.
- Face slow, painful deaths when we can no longer contribute more to them than we cost.
This is the dystopia they want us to live in—their grand design for profit over people. We are nothing more than cost-profit centers for the centi-billionaire class hoping to reach a net worth of $500 billion or even a trillion dollars before the climate can no longer support eight billion people.
It’s a cruel irony that they will milk us for every penny, using us up like we’re some cheap natural resource and throwing our corpses away like so much pollution.
This election is about whether the average American can continue to exist outside of their subservience to the Musks of the world.
But, that’s just my opinion. Let me know what you think, especially about the wealth disparity and the way it distorts our politics, in the comments.
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The Psy of Life 
But he can’t spend that money because he doesn’t have that money. It’s all paper.
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But it isn’t paper money. It is electronic money. It’s just electronic signals shifted between and stored in various computers.
Jack
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Then tax it.
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Write your Congress person.
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“The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Remembering William Butler Yeats and “The Second Coming”, I offer this update:
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Dulled and lulled by lying leaders and platitudes
Numbing us all and clouding our thoughts with
Monotonous tired clichés and trivial drivel
When mendacity ascends, something worse is sure to follow
Decency and reason are soon cast aside
Deceit, blame, anger and hate are unleashed
And together they rage across the land
Distorted vision darkens souls with bitter resentment
And a stand for truth draws wrath from the believers of lies
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Howdy Dave!
You and Yeats have it just about summed up. I think the old poet would approve. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Blog on Sibling!
Jack
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I’ve been trying to remember the title or author of a dystopian sci-fi I read about ten years ago. In it, that list you have under “We’d be left to suffer under a system that would force us to:” is all covered by nearly universal indentured servitude, with parents having to sell their child’s indenture at birth to obtain any health care, education, or opportunity. It is a story of a nation, or perhaps a world in which one company, a sort of combination of Amazon, Meta, and Google owns everything, and there is no government at all. It is a system of wealth and power for a few and perpetual debt for the many.
I don’t know that we could ever get to that extreme, but it does express the essential structure of the dream world of the Libertarian (Ayn Rand type) centi-billionares like Musk, who, by the way is said to dream of being the architect, the John Galt of the new order, a job that Trump, who surely has never read the book, seems inclined to give him.
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Disgusting chuq
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But beyond human comprehension without a lot of effort, which most of us aren’t willing to put into it.
Most people think, billionaire is the new millionaire without realizing how much greater the wealth of a billionaire is and what it can buy.
The deck is stacked against us. A democracy, if we can keep it.
Jack
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Only time will tell how bad we want this democracy. chuq
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I can’t imagine that Harris doesn’t win the election. I said the same thing in 2016, but this time I mean it.
Jack
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And, that is how, the rich big businesss supporters, who want to, limit external competions, will more than likely, rob the election, by, bribing the voters, and, there’s no, government agencies set up, to, ensure that, there’s no, “shady businesses”, that might, change the outcomes of, the, American presidential, election.
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Howdy Taurus!
While it is very publicly happening in the US, it is happening in democracies all around the world. We do have our Department of Justice, for now, that is standing up for the rule of law. We have our Courts, which, mostly, stand up for the rule of law. Right now, the US is in the fight of its life for its very survival as a democracy. So, you can’t say there is no government agency set up to ensure that there is no shady business.
This election, like all those before it will be as safe, fair, and secure as any have been in the world. It is in the court challenges that Trump will try to steal the election.
If the US loses this fight, then you have to contemplate a world without the US. Who will keep the rising axis of China, Russia, and Iran in check? Who will protect the Taiwans of the world?
Huzzah!
Jack
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with the Supreme Court, primarily, conservative, they will basically follow the “orders” of the Republican Party, and, now, Trump might win the presidency, and that would be two out of THREE branches of the U.S. government, under the “thumb” of the Republican Party, and, we can expect power to get, abused in this case for sure, and even IF Trump doesn’t win, I’m sure, he’ll be able to, swing the votes of the Supreme Court Justice to his, favor, so, it really, does NOT matter what the outcomes of the elections woudl be this year, chances are, he’s more than likely, to win, based off of solely the fact, that the Supreme Court justices are more than likely to rule in favor of the Republican Party candidate, as they’re now, primarily, conservative, and people can kiss the right to marry who they love, the more radical beliefs goodbye for sure!
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The Supreme Court isn’t exactly taking orders from Trump. Several have been bought by big money interests. Others have been influenced by conservative think-tanks that have helped their careers along. The corruption on the Court is less explicit and more implicit. The immunity case demonstrated that.
After the election, the Republican Party could control all three branches of government, albeit with slim margins in the House and Senate. If that’s the case, the US will be radically reshaped over the next two years as they hustle to pass legislation and squash court challenges to create their dystopia.
Huzzah!
Jack
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Quite frankly I am more interested in hearing (someday) what Elon and Putin are discussing on those reportedly frequent calls between the two of them. I am less concerned with how much money Musk has. Is he a security risk for the United States or not?
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Howdy John!
I’m am worried about the wealth disparity, which has only been getting larger around the world, but especially in the States. It is a harbinger of social unrest, which we’re living through right now. If we are to survive this unrest, we’ve got to shrink the disparity.
A billion is so much more than a million that the centi-billionaires can and are wrecking our democracy with their money. The Super PACs are literally buying psychopaths to run for office and do their bidding. The media talking heads are millionaires working for billionaires and doing what they say. The billionaire class is swamping the economy and destroying what we’ve spent two hundred fifty years building.
We absolutely have to be concerned about it.
Musk bought Twitter to destroy it as a platform for coordinating the “resistance” to the fascist movement of the Republican Party. Now, he’s turned it into a conduit for conspiracy theory and a firehose of Russian propaganda. That’s what they talk about. They both have the same goal: to remove America so that they can ruthlessly exploit the rest of us and become trillionaires before the climate collapses and can no longer support them in the lifestyle they’ve become accustomed to.
Huzzah!
Jack
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