Laissez Faire, Laissez Mourir

Visualizing plutocracy.

There is an economic arrangement in which whoever cannot pay to survive is told, “Die, then.” We live in it. The world minted its first trillionaire in June 2026, when SpaceX went public and Elon Musk’s net worth passed $1 trillion. That is a quarter of what the bottom half of America (66 million households) owns combined,1 1 Federal Reserve, Distributional Financial Accounts. The bottom 50% of US households held $4.1 trillion, 2.5% of household net worth.  and the entire wealth of five million median families. This is what a trillion looks like.

▼ each speck is one million dollars(the median family owns a fifth of one)$10 billion$20 billion$30 billion$40 billion$50 billion$60 billion$70 billion$80 billion$90 billionone hundred billion$110 billion$120 billion$130 billion$140 billion$150 billion$160 billion$170 billion$180 billion$190 billiontwo hundred billion$210 billion$220 billion$230 billion$240 billion$250 billion$260 billion$270 billion$280 billion$290 billionthree hundred billion$310 billion$320 billion$330 billion$340 billion$350 billion$360 billion$370 billion$380 billion$390 billionfour hundred billion$410 billion$420 billion$430 billion$440 billion$450 billion$460 billion$470 billion$480 billion$490 billionfive hundred billion$510 billion$520 billion$530 billion$540 billion$550 billion$560 billion$570 billion$580 billion$590 billionsix hundred billion$610 billion$620 billion$630 billion$640 billion$650 billion$660 billion$670 billion$680 billion$690 billionseven hundred billion$710 billion$720 billion$730 billion$740 billion$750 billion$760 billion$770 billion$780 billion$790 billioneight hundred billion$810 billion$820 billion$830 billion$840 billion$850 billion$860 billion$870 billion$880 billion$890 billionnine hundred billion$910 billion$920 billion$930 billion$940 billion$950 billion$960 billion$970 billion$980 billion$990 billion☞ scrollone trillion dollarsThou hast scrolled twenty-five metres.Go in freedom.

One trillion dollars. One million specks, 64 tall and 15,625 wide. The plate runs ninety-four thousand pixels, some twenty-five metres of paper. At one dollar per second, a million takes 11½ days, a billion 32 years, the trillion 31,700 years.

Capital compounds, labour does not. At a modest 7% annual return, $1T invested yields a median household income ($83,730)2 2 U.S. Census Bureau, Income in the United States: 2024, report P60-286, September 2025.  every 38 seconds, and a working life every 25 minutes. For a trillionaire, regardless of their eccentric spending, it is virtually impossible to outspend their returns, leading to a snowball effect on net worth.

Taxes impact primarily workers. The 25 richest Americans added $401 billion to their net worth over 2014–2018 and paid $13.6 billion in income tax, a true rate of 3.4%.3 3 ProPublica, The Secret IRS Files, June 8, 2021. The “true tax rate” compares federal income tax paid with growth in net worth over the same period. Musk paid 3.27% (zero in 2018), Bezos 0.98%, Buffett 0.10%.  Billionaires worldwide pay tax equal to 0.3% of their wealth a year.4 4 G. Zucman, report to the G20, June 2024. 

None of this breaks the law. The plutocrats “got their wealth by legalizing cheating.”5 5 Richard Stallman, Rigged for plutocrats, political notes, October 28, 2018.  They never sell, rather they use shares as collateral and borrow from the bank (buy, borrow, die). Billions pass untaxed to heirs whose classmates owe an average of $40,467 in student loans.6 6 U.S. Department of Education, Federal Student Loan Portfolio, second quarter of 2026. 42.6 million borrowers owe $1.72 trillion in federal loans. 

In 2025 billionaire wealth grew $2.5 trillion, nearly all the wealth of the poorest 4.1 billion people. Aid cuts in 2025 could cause 14 million more deaths by 2030.7 7 Oxfam, Resisting the Rule of the Rich, January 19, 2026.  Die, then. The plutocrats hold on to their power “by lying and rigging elections” and “have no moral right to either this wealth or this power.”8 8 Ibid. Stallman.  Laissez faire for them, laissez mourir for the rest.

Tax the rich. Tax net worth. Tax inheritance. Suckers!

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