Sheryl Weikal:

A society with one trillionaire and millions of people in poverty is something to be deeply ashamed of, actually.

Edward Luce in the FT: Elon Musk is a real-life Bond villain (archive).

I could write three more Swamp Notes just summarising Musk’s other incendiary postings in the past few days — alleging California’s elections have been rigged, describing the Southern Poverty Law Centre as a “criminal organisation”, claiming that European and American whites are the “least racist people in human history”, saying George Floyd died of fentanyl, nor asphyxiation, and so on. Or I could remind Swampians what he did to USAID during his Doge rampage last year. “The picture of the world’s richest man killing the world’s poorest children is not a pretty one,” Bill Gates told the FT. But I have made my point. I have no idea whether Musk is an engineering genius, or just a savvy and lucky venture capitalist. The scientific world is divided on that question. I do know that he is a monstrous human being.

There is something terribly wrong about an economy that produces its first trillionaire, but cannot provide health care for its people.

Or one in which the richest handful of families have the combined wealth of almost forty percent of the rest of the country.

https://bsky.app/profile/nytimes.com/post/3mo47fh6y432z