# Laissez Faire, Laissez Mourir > Visualizing plutocracy. By David Álvarez Rosa, 26 October 2026. Canonical: https://david.alvarezrosa.com/posts/laissez-faire-laissez-mourir/ 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,[^fn:1] and the entire wealth of five million median families. This is what a trillion looks like.

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)[^fn:2] 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%.[^fn:3] Billionaires worldwide pay tax equal to 0.3% of their wealth a year.[^fn:4] None of this breaks the law. The plutocrats "got their wealth by legalizing cheating."[^fn:5] 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.[^fn:6] 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.[^fn:7] 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."[^fn:8] Laissez faire for them, laissez mourir for the rest. Tax the rich. Tax net worth. Tax inheritance. Suckers! [^fn:1]: Federal Reserve, [Distributional Financial Accounts](https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/). The bottom 50% of US households held $4.1 trillion, 2.5% of household net worth. [^fn:2]: U.S. Census Bureau, [_Income in the United States: 2024_](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-286.html), report P60-286, September 2025. [^fn:3]: ProPublica, [_The Secret IRS Files_](https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax), 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%. [^fn:4]: G. Zucman, [report to the G20](https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/report-g20.pdf), June 2024. [^fn:5]: Richard Stallman, [_Rigged for plutocrats_](https://stallman.org/notes/2018-jul-oct.html), political notes, October 28, 2018. [^fn:6]: U.S. Department of Education, [Federal Student Loan Portfolio](https://studentaid.gov/data-center/student/portfolio), second quarter of 2026. 42.6 million borrowers owe $1.72 trillion in federal loans. [^fn:7]: Oxfam, [_Resisting the Rule of the Rich_](https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaire-wealth-jumps-three-times-faster-2025-highest-peak-ever-sparking), January 19, 2026. [^fn:8]: Ibid. Stallman.