For 12 glorious days in June, Elon Musk experienced something nobody else in the history of humankind has ever experienced: trillionaire status.

Did all those zeros make Musk happy? Did the army of children he has sired love him more? Did he find inner peace? We’ll never know because Musk was dragged back to being a boring old billionaire last Wednesday, after shares in Tesla and SpaceX plunged amid a broader tech sell-off.

Of course, it’s possible that by the time you’re reading this the stock market has shifted again and Musk is back to being a trillionaire. That’s the beauty of the modern economy: the super-rich can make or lose more money in a day than most of us would ever see in thousands of lifetimes. Between January and June, Musk increased his net worth by a cool $322bn, or more than the GDP of Portugal.

There is a lot of interest in the fluctuations on Musk’s financial scoreboard. But according to various politicians and conservative media outlets, us commoners should not be asking ridiculous questions such as: does Musk’s trillionaire status reflect the United States’ dangerous shift into oligarchy and staggering inequality?

No, the important thing to remember about the talented Mr Musk is, to quote a Fox News op-ed: “he earned every penny.” Over at the Wall Street Journal, they’re saying Musk is so wealthy because “his companies have created tremendous value”.

Republican senator Cynthia Lummis, meanwhile, told TMZ (of all outlets) that “Musk’s money was raised because the harder he worked, the smarter he was, the luckier he got.” According to Lummis, “it’s absolutely logical that Elon Musk is the first trillionaire” and he deserves everything he has because of his global contributions to society – though the 700,000 people around the world estimated to have died because Musk took a chainsaw to USAID may have begged to differ.

The lovefest continues. The National Review........

© The Guardian