Sununu: [Musk is] so rich he’s so removed from the potential financial influence
Donald Trump sold himself as so rich that he couldn’t be bought. He would spend $600 million of his own money to win the presidency. “I mean, part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich,” he told ABC in 2011. And in the fullness of time, the man sold NFTs of himself and Trump sneakers and Trump Bibles and Trump scents.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) reassures CNN’s Dana Bash that Elon Musk is incorruptible like that. He’s got both hands in the Trump 2.0 administration, sure. But he’s not “doing it for the money.” He’s not into making money for the money but for the betterment of all mankind. Musk loves mankind from which “he’s so removed.” It’s people he can’t stand. How dare we ask him to pay more in taxes to benefit them?
Three years ago, Paul Krugman wrote (gift link):
Elon Musk doesn’t think visionaries like him should pay taxes the way little people do. After all, why hand over his money to dull bureaucrats? They’ll just squander it on pedestrian schemes like … bailing out Tesla at a crucial point in its development. Musk has his sights set on more important things, like getting humanity to Mars to “preserve the light of consciousness.”
Billionaires, you see, tend to be surrounded by people who tell them how wonderful they are and would never, ever suggest that they’re making fools of themselves.
But don’t you dare make fun of Musk. Billionaires’ money gives them a lot of political clout — enough to block Democratic plans to pay for much-needed social spending with a tax that would have affected only a few hundred people in a nation of more than 300 million. Who knows what they might do if they think people are snickering at them?
[…]
What I suspect, although I can’t prove it, is that what really drives someone like Musk is an insecure ego. He wants the world to acknowledge his unequaled greatness; taxing him like a “$400,000-a-year working Wall Street stiff” (my favorite line from the movie “Wall Street”) would suggest that he isn’t a unique treasure, that maybe he indeed doesn’t deserve everything he has.
Sununu should be embarrassed to make this argument in public. Should be.