Love Thy Trillionaires
Christianity Today
July 9, 2026
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Getty / Edits by CT
Last month, Elon Musk became the first trillionaire in recorded history.
A trillion requires imagination. It approaches a quarter of total US federal tax revenue. It exceeds the combined net worth of Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos. According to Oxfam, it surpasses the total wealth of the poorest 46 percent of humanity. Money at this magnitude does more than stretch our math; it forces a moral question. Is it wrong to be a trillionaire?
For the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)—who won congressional primaries in New York City just days after Musk’s milestone—the answer was never in doubt.
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Darializa Avila Chevalier won after condemning billionaires for hoarding wealth while ordinary New Yorkers are priced out of their neighborhoods. Claire Valdez promised that emerging technologies would serve communities instead of corporate executives. Even Brad Lander, though not a DSA member, unseated two-term Congressman Dan Goldman on a pledge to put working people ahead of the uber-rich.
All three were backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who responded to Musk’s trillion on X with “Reason #1,000,000,000,000 why we should tax the rich.” At the victory celebration the night of the primaries, Mamdani declared that New York was showing America a new path for politics. Valdez supporters could be heard chanting: DSA. DSA. DSA.
Those supporters likely skew young. The Democratic Socialists of America, once a marginal organization of 6,000 members, now claims more than 120,000 members with chapters in all 50 states. Themedian age of members dropped from 68 in 2013 to 33 in 2017. This change in affiliation reflects a broader generational trend. A March 2025 Cato Institute and YouGov survey found 62 percent of Americans aged 18–29 held a favorable view of socialism, compared with 43 percent of all adults.
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This movement presents itself as a working-class revolution, and on the surface, its politics are not outlandish. Tax the rich. Close the wealth gap. Make billionaires pay their fair share. Many Americans across party lines support higher taxes on the wealthy. You do not have to be a socialist to think Elon Musk’s trillion dollars raise legitimate questions.
But go a little deeper and something different emerges. A Pew Research Center survey found that one-third of Americans under 30 think it is “morally wrong” to exist as a billionaire. Among young Democrats, the number approaches one-half.
Rhetoric reflects this belief. Bernie Sanders has called for a moral and political fight against billionaires. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused figures like Elon Musk of gutting Medicaid and Medicare to enrich themselves. Mamdani called America a land where “the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more” while “children go to sleep hungry.” This is not simply a disagreement on tax policy. This is a moral crusade—and moral crusades need villains.
The logical endpoint of that crusade showed up in December 2024, when Luigi Mangione murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk. Many young Americans made Mangione into a folk hero. According to the Cato.) Institute, 35 percent of Americans under 30 believe violence against the rich is sometimes justified.
So is this finally the time when the poor rise up against the rich? Not quite.
The DSA’s own surveys describe a membership that is primarily white and highly educated. When the DSA swept New York this summer, its strongest precincts were wealthier ones. Lower-income voters backed comparably moderate Democrats. The working-class revolution is being led by people who have never gone without a meal.
Though it wears the mask of compassion, the DSA movement is primarily motivated by resentment of the rich. The distinction is important. Compassion looks at someone suffering and asks how to help. Resentment keeps glancing upward, measuring its own circumstances against someone else’s success. One builds. The other burns.
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Unfortunately, resentment of the wealthy may be the most defining quality of my generation’s politics, cutting across ideological lines in ways that should alarm everyone.
The right has its own version. Instead of railing against the billionaire class, it warns about globalists, financial elites, and shadowy networks of power. The vocabulary is different. The emotional logic is identical. Find the small, powerful group responsible for everything that feels broken, and direct your fury that way.
And, of course, all roads lead to Israel. Jewish Americans make up roughly 2 percent of the population yet are disproportionately represented in finance, in media, and among America’s wealthiest entrepreneurs. For a generation primed to see concentrated wealth as morally suspect, that disproportion becomes a target. An Anti-Defamation League survey found that Millennials and Gen Z were more likely than any older generation to agree that Jews have too much power in the business world. The DSA, founded by the pro-Israel Michael Harrington, voted at its recent convention to make support for Israel’s right to defend itself an expellable offense.
The far left and far right arrived at the same place by different roads, because they were always animated by the same impulse. And the Bible has a name for it: coveting.
Scripture is not gentle with the wealthy. Jesus warned that riches can crowd out faith. James condemned landlords who exploited their workers. The prophets raged against people who trampled the poor. We know what greed does to those who have too much. We are slower to reckon with what coveting does to those who have less. That’s what makes the tenth commandment so remarkable.
Christians are not immune to wanting what others have. In fact, we’re often uniquely susceptible because we have sophisticated vocabulary for disguising our desire. The Christian on the left wraps resentment in the language of justice and solidarity. The Christian on the right wraps it in the language of protecting Western civilization from shadowy elites. Both can quote Scripture to justify their anger. Both can be entirely blinded by envy.
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My generation has inherited real economic burdens. Housing costs are staggering. Student debt has delayed families and homeownership. Many young adults feel as though the opportunities their parents enjoyed have quietly closed. Christians should never minimize those realities. We should care deeply about justice, generosity, and the poor. But hardship can quickly become fertile soil for envy, and envy is a weed that Scripture takes seriously regardless of how justified it feels.
Jesus was not subtle about what to do with your enemies. Love them. My generation has decided that trillionaires are the enemy. But the ultimate question is not whether Elon Musk deserves a wealth tax. It’s whether we’ll see him as a human being made in the image of God and worthy of love.
Is it wrong to be a trillionaire? I am not sure. Christians can disagree about economic policy. But I am sure of something else. If you spend your whole life despising the rich, the greatest tax will be on your soul.
If my generation becomes known for anything, I hope it is not our ability to count someone else’s money. I hope it is our willingness to count every person—rich and poor alike—as our neighbor. Will you love your trillionaires?
Luke Simon is the codirector of student ministries at The Crossing in Columbia, Missouri, and an MDiv student at Covenant Theological Seminary. He has written on Gen Z, technology, masculinity, and the church. You can follow him on X.
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