OPINION:
In circles where people worry more about their net worth than salvation or the fate of the Yankees, big news this month was that Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire.
Good for him, I suppose, although I am not sure what a private citizen might do with $1 trillion.
Unfortunately, as a result of reaching that milestone, Mr. Musk is getting a lot of advice — or threats, depending on how you view these things — about how he should spend his fortune from people deeply embedded in the federal government.
For instance, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who started her career as an excellent oil and gas lawyer but subsequently lost her way, thinks the right answer is for the federal government to take away Mr. Musk’s cash and give it to those who provide childcare.
Ms. Warren must have missed the past six months or so, so let me help: The provision of childcare, at least in certain provinces of this once-great nation, is rife with scams and corruption.
Alternatively, Ms. Warren would like to take Mr. Musk’s cash and give it to colleges. Evidently, she is unaware that, in many, if not most, instances, college is an even bigger scam than childcare.
The senator from Massachusetts is not alone. Rep. Ro Khanna, California Democrat, wants to take Mr. Musk’s cash for a grab bag of socialist projects, as do the rest of the collectivists in Congress.
The truly alarming part of the story is that the disease is creeping across the aisle. Sen. Bernie Moreno, a former car dealer from Ohio and a Republican who should know better, proposed, along with Ms. Warren, a pretty dramatic increase in the payroll tax (which funds Social Security).
They want to increase the effective tax rate to 50% for those who are careless enough to make more money than the government thinks they should be making. If these two get their way, about $3 trillion more would be taken from taxpayers and given to the government over the next 10 years.
The idea that we should just keep feeding the actuarially unsound Social Security program without trying to fix its underlying foundational rot makes about as much sense as painting a beach house that is about to go into the sea with the next wave.
What do Mr. Moreno, Ms. Warren, and the rest of the scofflaws and industrial-scale shoplifters have in common? They are senior decision-makers in an organization — the federal government — that cannot balance its budget, keep the peace, win wars, preserve the value of the currency, secure the borders (with the notable and welcome exception of President Trump), educate the young or do anything else that might give voters confidence in their ability to manage what they are already being given by you, me and Mr. Musk.
Maybe if they could be good stewards of the $7.5 trillion they already spend every year, it would be easier to think about giving them more cash.
I am not a fan of Mr. Musk — too much of his fortune comes, directly or indirectly, from regulatory schemes, government policies and government spending for my liking. Yet I do not think the federal government should pick his bones clean to fund whatever schemes the collectivists can imagine, any more than I think it should be able to pick clean the bones of anyone else who makes more than $185,000 a year.
The terrible and irreducible reality is that just about everyone involved in government — Republicans, Democrats, communists, bureaucrats, probably even the occasional anarchist — is absolutely certain that they can spend your money better than you can, irrespective of whether you made it by building cars or rockets or pizzas or whatever.
The record, of course, suggests that confidence is woefully misplaced.
Do not give your cash to the government. Even if you do not like plutocrats (such as Mr. Musk), do not let the government take their cash either, no matter what envy-based propaganda the statist crowd offers.
There are two kinds of people: us and them. Do not be confused about which side you are on.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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