Nothing exposes the politics of envy more than politicians whining about an entrepreneur’s growing wealth. Society’s lazy moochers cry that it’s “unfair” that the industrious and hardworking producers actually make more money.

Shoot, if money actually grew on trees, these moochers would be the ones sitting in the shade under the trees, whining that it wasn’t fair that more motivated individuals worked hard to pick up as much of that money as possible. Or to make the analogy work better, they’d complain that the industrious individuals not only worked hard to pick money, but used their money to buy and plant more money trees, thereby growing the entire economic opportunity pile.

With Elon Musk’s SpaceX going public last week and, in so doing, generating enough capital to make him the first individual to hit a trillion dollars in wealth, a number of Democrats have decried this as unfair and as evidence that the wealthy are not taxed enough. Senator Elizabeth Warren never saw a rich person’s money that she didn’t covet, so she decried Musk’s new trillionaire status as a “wake up call” — in a video screed posted on Musk’s social media platform, X. “This is not just some fluke; it is a feature of a rigged economy,” she explained. In another post, she complained, “The typical American household would have to work more than 11 MILLION years to make Elon Musk’s level of wealth. We need a wealth tax.”

As comedian Tim Young wryly replied, “A typical American household doesn’t create SpaceX.”

As for the wealth tax, the obvious response should be a simple question: Why? Is it because Warren would spend the money better than Musk can?

It’s interesting that Warren’s personal wealth is estimated to be $8 million. How did she accumulate that wealth? She certainly hasn’t built any massively important companies or products that people the world over use and even depend upon for their livelihood.

Indeed, if anything, Warren has made life more expensive for average Americans by pressing for higher taxes, greater regulations, and more restrictions on Americans’ freedoms. But maybe even more destructive has been Warren’s false narrative that one cannot earn such wealth, and, furthermore, that the wealthy aren’t paying their fair share in taxes.

As we have repeatedly noted, the richest 1% pay nearly half of federal income taxes.

Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders also harped on this “unfairness” fiction, as he posted on X, “If we end that absurdity and lift the cap on taxable income, we can make Social Security solvent for 75 years and expand benefits by $2,400. My Social Security bill does that.”

Why do we need to lift this “absurd” cap on taxable income? It exists to keep the grubby hands of politicians like Sanders off Americans’ hard-earned dollars.

California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom, who oversaw fiscally irresponsible, onerous tax policies that have chased Musk and other wealth creators out of the state, likewise railed about Musk on X: “Americans are struggling to pay for groceries and gas while Elon Musk becomes a TRILLIONAIRE. When the federal government is for sale, the rich get richer and everyone else gets shafted. The system is rigged.” Really?

If by “rigged” Newsom means that a free-market economy rewards those who work hard and make wise investments to compound their wealth, while leaving those who refuse to work at the bottom, then sure.

Of course, all of these leftist politicians decry Musk’s wealth in an effort to deceive people about the fact that his multiple major businesses have proven to benefit and generate more actual value and wealth for people than have these leftist politicians’ welfare redistribution programs.

It is particularly ironic for Newsom to smear Musk, given that California has wasted billions of tax dollars on combating homelessness/vagrancy, only to see the problem worsen. California has also wasted billions of dollars and many years on a high-speed rail to nowhere. Meanwhile, Musk has not only given us Tesla and self-driving vehicles, but he’s also sending astronauts to space with the goal of landing humans on Mars. In fact, at the rate things are going, Musk will likely have people on Mars before California has commuters riding its high-speed rail — and maybe for less money.

The fact of the matter is, free-market capitalism works because it ensures that the hardest-working, hardest-driven, most industrious and inventive rise to the top. And their rising to the top proves to benefit the rest of us, many times more than any government program ever has.

Instead of bemoaning Musk’s wealth, these politicians should be praising his industriousness for the many blessings it has brought to the U.S. Unfortunately, they won’t because they are driven by the politics of envy. If they can’t have it, then they’ll attack those who do.