June 2026
Welcome to The Billionaire Bulletin, brought to you by Tax the Greedy Billionaires and the Extreme Wealth Center. Each month, we explore how extreme concentrations of wealth are distorting our economy and eroding our democracy. Join our mailing list to get this newsletter in your inbox every month.
THE TRILLIONAIRE BULLETIN
We’re switching up The Billionaire Bulletin this month for one important reason: SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, went public and he just became the world’s first trillionaire.
This isn’t a milestone. It’s a five-alarm fire.
It’s critical to remember that Musk built this fortune on the taxpayer’s dime. Musk’s companies have pulled in at least $38 billion in government contracts, subsidies, and tax breaks, with billions more guaranteed in the years ahead. In 2020, federal contracts made up over 80 percent of SpaceX’s revenue, and yet the company has paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002. Our tax dollars paid for the rockets, the satellites, the launchpads, and the infrastructure that ties them together. As a result, Musk has accumulated more money and power than any human in history.
WHAT’S NEXT: TECH BILLIONAIRES CASHING IN AT AMERICANS’ EXPENSE
The truth is, Musk’s new trillionaire status marks the beginning of one of the largest wealth transfers in human history.
Dozens of tech and AI CEOs see dollar signs in high-profile Initial Public Offerings, or IPOs, a process in which a private company sells shares of itself to the public for the first time. Both Anthropic and OpenAI confidentially filed proposals for their initial public offerings just days before SpaceX went public. These companies, built on publicly funded science and trained on (stolen) data created by all of us, will mint a new class of millionaires and billionaires almost overnight.
A handful of investors are about to become obscenely wealthy at the same time thousands of tech workers are being laid off and millions of Americans struggle to make ends meet. We’re not talking about a few more names on a Forbes list. We’re talking about an entrenched oligarchy: a class of people with so much concentrated wealth and power over our economy and democracy that they get to decide the future for the rest of us.
That should frighten everyone—and demands immediate action from elected officials across the country.
THE BETTER FUTURE: A WEALTH TAX ON MUSK AND BILLIONAIRES
Such extreme concentration of wealth and power demands bold solutions that actually address the systemic rot that led us to this moment. That means we have to go beyond asking billionaires who accumulated unfathomable wealth in a fundamentally unfair system to “pay their fair share.”
We must start using tax policy as a tool to reduce the wealth and the power of the ultra-wealthy. That’s why we’ve proposed the “Five and Dime” wealth tax: A 5% tax on households with wealth over $50 million and a 10% tax on households with wealth over $250 million.
If this “Five and Dime” wealth tax had been in place from 2015 until 2026, Musk would be worth $285 billion—that’s 72% less than his current $1 trillion net worth.
Congress has the power to shrink the fortunes of the ultra-wealthy and reduce the coercive control they currently wield over our economy and democracy, while generating trillions in revenue to invest in the public good.
Just think about what a billion or a trillion dollars actually buys you: the power to reshape entire industries, the ability to extract value from essentials like housing and health care, to own media and information platforms, to fund the politicians who write the rules, to behave like an unelected shadow government, taking a flame-thrower to the American Dream.
We must tax extreme wealth in order to make Musk and others like him less wealthy and reduce the power they hold over our lives—or risk forfeiting our agency and future to the ultra-wealthy.
MUST WATCH: BILLIONAIRE TAKEOVER NETROOTS PANEL
Tax the Greedy Billionaires’ own Igor Volsky was joined by Rep. Maxwell Frost, Rep. Becca Balint, author Megan Greenwell, and Justin Unga from End Citizens United for an in-depth conversation about the dangers of extreme wealth. This panel explores how billionaire wealth concentration is driving up housing costs, healthcare prices, and everyday expenses while undermining democracy. Watch the full panel on YouTube.
NEWSWORTHY NUGGETS
- “Billionaire Wealth Surges Past $9 Trillion for First Time” – Americans for Tax Fairness
- “‘Trillionaires Shouldn’t Exist’: Obscene Musk Milestone Spurs Calls for Aggressive Wealth Tax” – Common Dreams
- “The Final Frontier of Tax Avoidance: Elon Musk’s SpaceX Has $1.9 Billion to Gain from Defunding the IRS” – The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy
- “Think Musk the billionaire was bad? Brace yourself for Musk the trillionaire” – The Guardian
- “You Have No Idea What a Trillion Dollars Is—and We Have Proof” – The Wall Street Journal
- “Billionaires, private equity are driving up costs in Michigan” – The Detroit News
- “Billionaires’ Billions Are Increasing Faster Than Ever” – The New York Times
- “The Case for California’s Billionaire Wealth Tax” – The New York Times
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