How America’s wealthiest people can hate populism but love Trump

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Ultrawealthy corporate CEOs have a good reason to love Donald Trump’s 2017 tax policy, which was written with them in mind. But Trump’s rich-guy tax break didn’t deliver the promised economic benefits and has cost the nation trillions. If it’s extended, as Republicans want, it will cost trillions more.

The CEOs are okay with that. They are also likely just fine with the Project 2025 tax plan, which includes even more enormous gifts for the wealthy while settling the cost of government on working and middle-class Americans. That’s all good to the CEOs.

What seems to worry them is Trump selecting Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate. Vance has been selling himself as a populist. Not a racist who just finds “populism to be a more friendly label. But a real populist—one who has even teamed up with corporate bogeywoman Sen. Elizabeth Warren on a bill to claw back bonuses awarded to executives at failed banks.

Those CEOs don’t need to worry. Vance has proven himself a world-class hypocrite who was more than happy to burn his dignity to secure Trump’s blessing. There’s no reason to believe his economic populism is more real than anything else about him.

As CNN reports, labor leaders certainly don’t believe Vance is on their side. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler called a potential Trump-Vance administration “a corporate CEO’s dream and a worker’s nightmare,” in a statement released on Saturday. “Sen. JD Vance likes to play union supporter on the picket line,” said Shler, “but his record proves that to be a sham.”

And there’s another reason why some of the wealthiest Americans may be supporting Trump. It’s not because Trump’s economic policies are good; it’s because they are bad. Bad in just the right way.

According to billionaire investor Mark Cuban, this is all a cryptocurrency play.

Elon Musk just announced that he was plowing $45 million a month into a pro-Trump PAC after previously promising to support neither candidate. He's also gathering other tech billionaires around him, encouraging them to make sure all the money goes to Trump and none to Biden.

All this could be just Musk being an ego-driven racist and misogynist who fully clicks with the Heritage Foundation’s plans for a nationalist takeover. After all, he just declared that he would drag two corporations from California to Texas due to his extreme hatred of transgender people.

It’s worth noting that Musk has a trans daughter who wasn’t speaking to him as of last September. The billionaire seems to be taking his anger out on the whole nation, even if that means teaming up with people who have tried to destroy his core business. That may be the end of what passes for Musk’s strategy.

But, according to Cuban, there’s a bigger reason why billionaires are willing to provide Trump with a campaign grubstake.

Trump’s economic policies—extending tax cuts and attempting to patch the budget using universal tariffs—can be counted on to cause inflation. Meanwhile, nations around the world are preparing for the chaos that would come if Trump squeezed back into the Oval Office.

High inflation. High instability. According to Cuban, these are exactly the kind of conditions that drive up the price of bitcoin.

“How high can the price go?” asks the investor. “Way higher than you think.”

Cuban points out that the number of bitcoins is limited by its underlying algorithm, but how much value those coins can be given, or how many fragments can be made from each coin, is unlimited. In an unstable America, cast adrift from allies and facing rising inflation at home, bitcoin could easily become the “safe haven” currency—especially if Republicans follow through on plans to devalue the dollar.

Combine that huge potential rise in bitcoin values with a decrease—or even elimination—of capital gains tax, and the ultrawealthy could see their investment in Trump’s campaign as a low-risk down payment on almost unlimited wealth.

This, all of this, may be no more than speculation on the part of Cuban. Musk and Cuban have argued repeatedly online, including Musk declaring that Cuban is a “racist” because he supports diversity programs and calling Cuban a liar for saying that Black airline pilots have to meet the same qualifications as anyone else. Cuban has also dismissed Trump as “a snake oil salesman.”

Cuban's “boost crypto” theory is compelling, but it shouldn’t be taken as gospel. It certainly should affect how ordinary people should vote.

It doesn’t matter if billionaires ever make a fresh entry on bitcoin’s sacred blockchain. The trillions of dollars they’ll save from Trump’s promised tax breaks and the trillions more they would get from the Project 2025 plan are more than enough to justify their investment.

This is a tweet from billionaire investor David Sacks, who has hosted high-dollar fundraisers for Donald Trump.

Ben Horowitz Bill Ackman Cameron Winklevoss Doug Leone Elon Musk Eoghan McCabe Ken Howery Kyle Samani Marc Andreessen Jacob Helberg Joe Lonsdale Palmer Luckey Peter Thiel Shaun Maguire Trevor Traina Tushar Jain Tyler Winklevoss Come on in, the water’s warm. pic.twitter.com/tf09tsM6fg

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) July 17, 2024


This election is the worst of the billionaires vs. ordinary Americans. If they win, the next one will be oligarchs vs. peasants.

And peasants don’t get a vote.




 
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