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A Billionaires’ World – The New York Times


Two years ago, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman published a statistic you don’t usually see. That’s the share of wealth owned by the richest 0.00001% of Americans.

Saez and Zucman estimate that that slice represents only 18 households. Each person has an average net worth of about $66 billion by 2020. With that, the group’s share of national wealth has increased by nearly 10 since 1982.

This wealth conveys great power to a small group of people. They may try to shape politics, as the Koch family did. They could create a global charity, as Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates did. They can buy a national media organization, as Jeff Bezos did.

Or they can buy a social network when its policies annoy them, as Elon Musk is in the process of doing.

Twitter announced yesterday that their board has accepted a $44 billion bid for the company from Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and currently the richest person in the world. He’s using $21 billion of his own cash on the deal.

Musk, who calls himself a “liberalist,” has suggested he will be less aggressive than Twitter’s current management about blocking certain content – including misinformation. , most likely. He plans to take the company private, which will give him more control than he has over a public company.

This deal is the latest example of how extreme inequality shaping American society. A few very wealthy people end up making decisions that affect millions of others. Of course, that’s always true. But it is more true when inequality is too high. In the US economy, wealth inequality has even surpassed its peak in the 1920s, as another chart from Saez and Zucman’s study shows:

Musk’s deal is also reminiscent of the Golden Age, when my colleague Shira Ovide Written: “The closest comparison to this might be 19th-century newspaper magnates such as William Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, and the fictional Charles Foster Kane, who used their papers to pursue political agendas. personalism, sensationalizing world events and harassing their enemies.”

Following news of the Musk-Twitter deal yesterday, I asked Andrew Ross Sorkin about his reaction to it. Andrew, as many readers know, has covered business and finance leaders for the past two decades at The Times. He created and operated Our DealBook newsletter.

Andrew’s answer got me thinking about the larger questions of this inequality, and I’ll pass the rest of today’s lead to him. Below his thoughts on the Twitter deal, we include more Times news, as well as analysis from elsewhere.


Musk’s acquisition of Twitter will raise big questions about the influence of the billionaire class and the power of technology on our national discourse.

This month, Musk complained that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Meta, has too much power, arguing that the way the Meta is structured, the “14th Mark Zuckerberg” will one day run it.

Now, Musk will own Twitter entirely as a private company. He will report to himself. So if he decides to allow Donald Trump to return to the platform – which looks like the elephant in the room – it will be Musk’s choice and his choice alone. (Trump has stated that he will not return, as he wants to support his own social media platform.)

Washington is trying to understand Musk’s ideology. He is a self-styled libertarian without an ideology. But is not having an ideology an ideology in itself?

Musk said he wants more “free speech” and less censorship on Twitter. What would that mean in practice? Bullying more? More lewd comments and pictures? More misinformation?

Perhaps an opening window for Musk’s approach was a tweet he sent on Friday mocking Bill Gates with a crude reference to anatomy, as a way to achieve even with Gates, who admitted to betting on Tesla stock.

What raises this question: When conspiracy theorists falsely posted that Gates was paying to develop a Covid vaccine to implant a chip in people, Twitter rated the content down and added a verification message. . If Musk was running Twitter at the time, would he have let those posts become his arch-enemies?

The deal will give Musk enormous influence over politicians, celebrities and the media, with the ability to create platforms and de-platform them at will.

But some will also sway with him in disfiguring ways what the public sees on Twitter. For example, Twitter has no presence in China. Musk does: A large part of Tesla’s growth depends on that country. What happens when Chinese officials ask him to remove content from Twitter that they find offensive?

Back in the United States, Musk’s SpaceX business is largely dependent on contracts with the Department of Defense. His Tesla business is in discussions with the US government about a national charging station infrastructure. His Boring company, which specializes in tunneling, relies on governments for contracts. If a politician who controls the purse strings of any of Musk’s companies publishes false information, will Musk get rid of it?

There are no answers to these questions yet. But we will find out soon. Maybe on Twitter.

Christine Emba, The Washington Post: “What we have here is a perfect example of a ‘peak billionaire’ – the ability of someone who is amazingly rich, to take no responsibility, to make decisions with the power to change his or her life. a lot of people – not based on their mood and unreasonably deep pockets. ”

Jessica J. González, CNN: “He used the platform to discredit and disparage people who disagreed with him, and he lashed out at journalists who wrote or produced things he didn’t like. Furthermore, he used the platform to sow doubt about a Covid-19 vaccine.” (Musk doubted the need for a second dose last year.)

Anand Giridharadas, The Times: “We’re going to have to learn to see through stories of fraud to elevate people like Mr. Musk to heroes. We’ll have to legislate for real railings – perhaps like those created by the European Union’s Digital Services Act – on social media platforms too big to entrust. democracy “.

The crowds are a bit larger and there are fewer large yachts, but the Venice Biennale remains “the most igniting combination of art between creative minds, breathtaking wealth and a global culture looking to the future”, Jason Farago write in a review.

The Biennale includes a main exhibition on contemporary art, along with more than 90 pavilions where countries host their own performances. This year’s main program revolves around surrealism, cyborgism and plant and animal life and the majority of participants are women. It’s “a tight and challenging show, whose optimistic vision of liberation through imagination feels rare today,” Jason wrote.

A few highlights from the national presentations: Canada’s Stan Douglas used photography and video art to dive into the crossover uprisings of 2011 (Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, Riots in London). And Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, a Roma artist, created a 12-part tapestry stitched together with images of Romani migration and daily life.

Yesterday’s Spelling Bee pangrams are Belching and Feed, take care. Here’s today’s quiz – or you can Play Online.

This is Wordle today. This is Small crossword todayand a clue: Chap (five letters).

If you want to play more, look for all our games are here.


Thank you for spending part of the morning for The Times. See you tomorrow. – David

PS Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened 36 years ago today. Two days later, the Soviet Union announced.



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