• American inequality is rising despite higher wages (CNN)
• Why Elon Musk’s ‘f— yourself’ Dealbook moment wasn’t the worst part of the interview (MSNBC)
***

According to some who were born with shit-for-brains, he invented the electric car. Other ignoramuses see him as a once-in-a-generation mastermind, one who builds rockets in his spare time using his bare hands. And then there are the dupes that worship this man for saving free speech.

But who is Elon Musk, really? What is his purpose—his role in the world? When you peel away the layers, what is left? 

After peeling away the layers of puffery, what you have left is a poster boy, a spokesman, some seemingly-flawless version of a human. In this case, the poster boy represents a flawed concept called trickle-down economics.

Before explaining trickle-down economics further, I need you to go back in time. Imagine a torchlit chamber in a medieval, stone castle and a bunch of armor-wearing, distinguished-looking monarchs sitting around a round table constructed with slabs of timber. 

Now that you can see it, put that image out of your mind. Forever. Returning to present-day, envision a faux-wood-panel back room in a cheaply-built, cheesedick country club where every flatscreen TV plays Fox News, 24/7. A group of Rush Limbaugh-looking Caucasians sits there, eating steaks while discussing stock buybacks, layoffs, and their collections of Hitler memorabilia. 

Elon strode into this back room, stood in front of these men, and pledged to uphold the low-rent-rich-dude way of life. His mix of master-raciness and concentration-campiness stiffened their armbands and his South African accent gave him a hint of the exotic that was sure to titillate the whitebread, cracker-barrel crowd even further.  

Socialism-for-the-rich white nationalists needed a superhero. And Phony Stark…I mean…Elon Musk volunteered. 

“With white power comes great responsibility,” said the men as Apartheid Clyde ventured out of the cheesedick back room and into the wilderness. 

Trickle-down economics isn’t hard to understand. It asks the masses to place their faith in the hands of rich white men who hate them. Men like Elon Musk. TDE’ers lecture about hard work even though they don’t seem to know much about the subject. They despise Social Security and Medicare. They push the USA into wars we can’t afford while also joking that only suckers serve in the military. During financial crises, they rant and rave about the government that signs their bail-out checks. 

In his travels, Elon spread the word that rich white guys were magical and taxes were for little people. With him now shouldering the burden of embodying the self-serving agenda, his rich white supporters nurtured his public image. Over the years, Elon’s TDE crusade got backed up with Libertarian-themed Marvel movies, flattering media stories about his dating life, and loads of hype about his companies. Accomplishments were embellished, failures ignored. (Kind of like trickle-down economics itself: losses get socialized and gains get privatized.) 

Like most spokesmen and pitchmen, the poster boy for trickle-down economics had to embody all that is great and wonderful, come across as a picture-perfect bro-homo sapien without a care in the world. Because Elon Musk embraced trickle-down economics and the power of rich, white men to create jobs out of thin air, every second of his life must be pure bliss. 

That was the sales pitch, anyway. 

But like so many late-stage capitalism sales pitches, this one overpromised and underdelivered. Over time, the inherent problems make themselves known and the failures usually seem so obvious, in retrospect.

TDE continues to saddle the nation with debt and kill the middle class. TDE’s poster boy is ruining his free-speech platform and also rolling out a Tesla truck that’s more expensive with less capabilities than promised. 

Democracy and equality…or fascism and inequality. As we gear up to begin 2024, the United States of America seems to be at a crossroads. 

“The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickles down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.” 
– Will Rogers 

Earlier posts:
• Romeo whiskey tango.
• Operation Week Off.
• The era of anti-Semitic tightwaddery.
• NYC vacay. May, 2003.
• A gigantic thank you, from me to Rush Limbaugh.
• Open letter to a selfie of my drunk-ass self, taken on August 11th, 2001.

I also write fiction. I have two dark comedies available, Fearkiller (Volume 1) and Notes from Trillionaire Island: Fearkiller (Volume 2), as well as Revolutionizer Alpha, the first book in a sci-fi series. I also wrote a story about God. It was weird, but then I decided to make the story and its sequel free. And all of the sudden, it didn’t seem as weird. Writing about God is much less weird when you write about God without charging money for it.