Final month, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk added to his listing of firsts when he grew to become the world’s first trillionaire.
Many individuals, from Wall Avenue to Primary Avenue, celebrated this mind-boggling feat. However Rachel Gittleman wasn’t one among them. The Seattleite was among the many roughly 300,000 federal employees who had been both fired or pressured to resign after Musk joined the Trump administration, taking cost of the Division of Authorities Effectivity.
From the time Gittleman was employed on the Workplace of Scholar Support in July 2023 till she was fired two years later, she earned about $200,000. In those self same two years Musk’s wealth grew from $232 billion to $726 billion.
“On March 11, 2025, we had been alerted by e mail that our division could be affected. We acquired discover that the workplace could be abolished and that the work we did could be achieved outdoors” of the federal authorities, Gittleman mentioned.
Gittleman’s job as a scholar mortgage ombudsman was funded by the U.S. Division of Training. When mortgage debtors had disputes with their mortgage servicer, they might name Gittleman for assist. She had a caseload of about 400 shoppers and in addition labored with state officers who oversee scholar loans.
“My system entry was shut down earlier than getting the e-mail,” mentioned Gittleman, who now works as president of the American Federation of Authorities Workers. She wasn’t allowed to show over her caseload or notify shoppers about what had occurred. After a interval of authorized maneuvers, she was formally fired in August.
Musk understood his project from President Donald Trump. Not solely did he create hardships for presidency employees, he dismantled businesses that assist the acute poor such because the U.S. Company for Worldwide Growth, which supplied medication and care to hundreds of individuals worldwide.
But, whereas doing so he was working to develop into a trillionaire.
In a capitalist society anybody who amassed such wealth is seen as successful, at the very least financially. However peel again the layers and Musk’s story isn’t one among rags to riches. It’s one among privilege, excessive wealth and earnings disparity. Musk can thank America’s political local weather and its monetary markets for his success.
In 2010, the Supreme Courtroom dominated in Citizens United v. FEC that donations by firms and unions to political campaigns are a type of free speech.
Musk donated about $290 million to Republican candidates and PACs through the 2024 election cycle.
This ruling helped the rich purchase entry to the levers of presidency, from faculty boards to the presidency to the Supreme Courtroom. And on Tuesday, the courtroom went even additional and removed limits on how a lot political events can spend with candidates for Congress and president.
Cash certainly talks. Musk’s SpaceX, coincidentally, acquired greater than $4 billion in authorities contracts and different perks in 2025 alone.
As political donations have grown since 2010, so has the wealth hole, because the wealthy have gained from tax breaks, company deregulation and tax constructions that make it attainable for billionaires to pay much less of a share of their earnings in federal taxes than do lecturers and nurses.
In the meantime, individuals on the decrease finish of the earnings ladder contribute to a system that retains them on the backside. Whereas the center class and the wealthy have benefited from totally different tax applications over the previous 15 years, low-income individuals nationwide have misplaced floor over many years, in response to the Pew Heart, partly as a result of declining worth of the federal minimal wage, which has been at $7.25 for 17 years. Washington’s minimal wage is at $17.13 an hour, a 2.8% enhance from a yr earlier.
A University of California, Davis study discovered about 1% of employees earn the federal minimal wage or much less. Many such employees have two or three jobs.
Because the midterm elections close to, and speak of the 2028 presidential race has begun, the affect of cash in authorities and the disparities it has created ought to be on all candidates’ platforms. Musk isn’t the one one wielding his pockets in authorities. He’s simply the richest.
