Bernie Sanders goes after the coolest capitalist of all, Elon Musk
Recently, Sen. Bernie Sanders took some time out from being the gray eminence of the Biden for President campaign and vented his spleen on Twitter against the coolest capitalist of all, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX fame.
“While 40 million Americans face eviction, Elon Musk has nearly tripled his wealth over the past four months and now has a net worth of more than $70 billion.”
Bernie went on to rant about how Musk and his fellow billionaires need to be despoiled of their wealth to pay for coronavirus relief. He is cosponsoring a bill called “The Make Billionaires Pay Act” for that purpose. He also provided many of his young supporters with a conundrum. If any capitalist exists who is as popular as an entertainment celebrity, that man is Elon Musk. He is making his billions in ways that his admirers find utterly awesome.
Musk has disrupted two major industries, electric cars and space travel. Both of these enterprises are defining the 21st century.
While Tesla’s line of electric vehicles has benefited from government subsidies and tax breaks, they have an appeal that combines environmental virtue with style reminiscent of the Detroit auto industry of old. One of Tesla’s latest ventures is the Cybertruck, an electric pickup truck. Musk has just concluded an agreement to produce Cybertrucks deep in the heart of Texas, one of the most business-friendly states in the Union. The Tesla line of electric vehicles are high tech marvels.
However, Musk has energized space travel in ways that have people more excited about exploring the high frontier than they have been since the Apollo moon landings. SpaceX has already developed the reusable first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, lowering the cost of space flight. The Falcon Heavy debuted a few years ago by launching a used Tesla Roadster into interplanetary space with a mannikin dubbed “Starman” at the wheel. The image of Starman at the driver’s seat of a space car was one of the most iconic of all time.
More recently, the SpaceX Falcon 9 launched two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station aboard a Crew Dragon spaceship. The two astronauts, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, returned to Earth after a tour on the ISS, splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico the same way that Apollo astronauts came back from the moon decades ago.
Musk is already working on a new spacecraft that will render the Crew Dragon obsolete. The Starship, as the rocket ship is called, will take people and cargo to the moon, Mars and beyond. SpaceX recently flight tested a prototype of the Starship, dubbed the SN5, with a 150-meter hop. The sight of an object the size and shape of a grain elevator, flying on a tail of fire in the Texas sky, and landing safely was spectacular, to say the least.
Elon Musk wants to build a city on Mars, taking colonists and the things they need to survive on Starship rockets, to be launched by a first stage called the Superheavy. SpaceX is busily deploying a constellation of small satellites, called Starlink, that will provide internet communications worldwide. Money generated by Starlink’s services will fund Musk’s Mars dream.
SpaceX and NASA have entered into a mutually beneficial partnership. The Crew Dragon has already ended America’s reliance on the Russian Soyuz. A version of the Starship is in the running to be a lunar lander, which, if all goes well, will deliver American astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024 for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972 as part of NASA’s Artemis program.
Musk is famous for having combined his two principle businesses by launching a Tesla roadster into space.
Bernie Sanders has made a career out of casting rich, successful men as demons. He regards billionaire as cash cows for his socialist dreams rather than as creators of goods and services that people want. Sanders, like all socialists, has not created anything but hot air.
In taking on Elon Musk, Bernie Sanders has made one of the greatest blunders of his political career. He comes across as a crotchety old man yelling at a younger, hipper guy. When Musk is remembered as one of the most consequential figures of this century, Sanders will be all but forgotten.
