Doubt that Elon Musk ‘earned’ his trillion? Rightwing media says you’re in an ‘impotent envy cult’ | Arwa Mahdawi

For 12 glorious days in June, Elon Musk experienced something nobody else in the history of humankind has ever experienced: trillionaire status. Did all those zeros make Musk happy? Did the army of children he has sired love him more? Did he find inner peace? We’ll never know because Musk was dragged back to being a boring old billionaire last Wednesday , after shares in Tesla and SpaceX plunged amid a broader tech sell-off. Of course, it’s possible that by the time you’re reading this the stock market has shifted again and Musk is back to being a trillionaire. That’s the beauty of the modern economy: the super-rich can make or lose more money in a day than most of us would ever see in thousands of lifetimes. Between January and June, Musk increased his net worth by a cool $322bn , or more than the GDP of Portugal. There is a lot of interest in the fluctuations on Musk’s financial scoreboard. But according to various politicians and conservative media outlets, us commoners should not be asking ridiculous questions such as: does Musk’s trillionaire status reflect the United States’ dangerous shift into oligarchy and staggering inequality? Pedestrians walk by screens showing visuals of Elon Musk and SpaceX branding at the Nasdaq MarketSite Exchange in Times Square in New York City. …