An excess of billionaires is destabilising politics - just as academics predicted

[DFW]

3. I'll start taking Musk seriously when he personally starts "embracing the pain."

While I don’t subscribe to much of the rhetoric that sounds a lot like the rhetoric here (Germany) 90 years ago, with all its Enteignung mania (one reason the modern German constitution forbids double taxation and thus struck down a wealth tax proposal), telling a society’s worst-off to embrace their pain is condescending, insulting and downright cruel. I’m not advocating a National Socialist approach to “tax the rich,” i.e. kill the ones you don’t like and take everything. Even if one were to confiscate every cent Musk has and distribute it equally to every American citizen, we’d all get a one-off bonus of about $700. Big deal.

However, if Musk were required to give up all access to his fortune for two years, and be made to embrace the pain the homeless feel for that time, I’m pretty sure he’d be singing a different tune by the end of his “sabbatical” in the real world.