Elon Musk holds the largest fortune on Earth, and almost none of it is cash. Almost all of it is the value of the companies he owns, mostly Tesla and SpaceX, with a smaller piece in xAI and the platform formerly called Twitter. His net worth is a number that rises and falls every day with what investors think those companies are worth. In a single recent year that number rose by hundreds of billions of dollars without him selling a thing, because the shares he already owned were priced higher. The way the fortune grows is also the way it can shrink. Nobody can take that wealth from him, but a great many people can lower it, because the value of his companies depends on things the public can affect: government contracts and subsidies, low taxes, paying customers, cheap labor, and the confidence of investors. When any one of these weakens, the number comes down.
This is a campaign playbook for doing exactly that, lawfully. Some of the work belongs to the people we elect. A legislator can pass a tax. An agency can cancel a contract. A treasurer can sell a pension’s shares. An attorney general can bring a fraud case. The rest is open to everyone else. A juror can weigh a lawsuit honestly. A worker can organize. A shopper can buy another car. A reader can hand a neighbor the facts. No single one of these actions lowers his net worth by much. Done by enough people at the same time, together they bring the number down steadily, and not one of them requires breaking a law.
This is an action guide. We already know what Musk is, so nothing here sets out to prove it.
A note on using this. It works best on paper. Printed and kept somewhere we pass every day, by the door or on the fridge, it stays in reach for any day it feels like there is nothing to do. We get more done treating it as a habit, one small action a day, about twenty minutes: a phone call, a letter, a complaint filed, a fact sheet handed to a neighbor. We pick the one that fits the day, and we do that one. Kept up day to day, that does more than one long afternoon that never comes.
And it is made to be shared. We can print a stack and hand them to a group we already belong to, our union local, our congregation, our parent association, or our neighborhood group, and help one other person start. Each person we bring in can lead a campaign of their own, and a few of us who share it widely reach far more people than any of us reach alone.
The playbook is built in campaigns. Each one explains a single idea and the evidence behind it, then walks through every office that can act on it, because the same demand looks different depending on who hears it. A governor can sign or veto and can propose a budget. A state representative can introduce a bill. An attorney general can investigate and charge. A treasurer can sell. A mayor and a city council can decide where local money is spent. A neighbor can stop buying. The job in each campaign is to take one idea to all of them, tailored to what each can actually do, and to keep at it. We do not have to do all of it. We pick the campaign that fits us, take the actions we can, and bring other people in to take the rest.
A note on the scripts. Each call or letter below comes with a guideline, never a script to read word for word. The brackets are where our own information goes: our name, our town, why this matters to us, and what we are asking the office to do. The people we are calling hear hundreds of identical messages and one real one. Ours is the real one, so the guideline is only a place to start.
The booklet runs to twelve campaigns and a hundred actions, and all of it is free to download below. Here is the first campaign in full, enough to start today. The other eleven take the same approach to making his companies pay the tax they avoid, cutting the public contracts and subsidies, holding the self-driving claims to the law, pulling public money out of his stock, charging the crimes already on the public record, raising the cost of his labor, and showing our neighbors the numbers.
Campaign one. Tax extreme wealth.
Start with how the fortune actually grows, because it explains why he pays so little on it. Most of us are taxed before we ever hold our own money. The employer takes the tax out of the wage, and the check that reaches the kitchen table is what is left. Musk lives under a different arrangement. He does not draw a wage worth counting. He owns shares, the shares rise in value, and the rising value is not taxed, because the law taxes income only when it is realized, meaning when something is sold, and he does not have to sell. When he needs cash he borrows against the shares instead, pledging the stock as collateral, and a loan is not income, so he receives that money untaxed. He lives on borrowed money secured by a holding of stock that keeps rising and is never taxed while it does. That is how a man whose net worth climbed by hundreds of billions of dollars in a single year can pay a smaller share of his living than the people who clean his offices. The tax code leaves a gap between wealth that rises in value and the small part of money it agrees to call income.
A tax on great fortunes, or on the yearly rise in them, taxes that money directly, and the idea is already in force in places we can name. Massachusetts voters passed a four percent surtax on income above one million dollars in 2022, and the money now pays for public schools and transportation, with collections well above what the state projected. Washington State enacted a seven percent tax on large capital gains, and its supreme court upheld the tax in 2023 against the claim that it was unconstitutional. Outside the country, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, and Colombia tax wealth itself today. France debated a version, sometimes called the Zucman tax, that would set a minimum levy on the largest fortunes. Brazil used its turn leading the G20 to put a two percent global floor on billionaires before the other governments, and several of them backed it. This is a policy that exists, raises real money, and survives in court.
The reason it has not passed everywhere has nothing to do with legal difficulty. It comes down to political will, and political will is the thing organized people change. California’s version died because the governor there opposed it, which tells us exactly where the pressure has to go. The demand fits every level of government, and it sounds different to each office, so here is how to make it to each one.
United States senators. Our two senators can co-sponsor Elizabeth Warren’s Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, a two percent yearly tax on fortunes above fifty million dollars and three percent above a billion, or Ron Wyden’s Billionaires Income Tax, which taxes the yearly rise in a billionaire’s stock whether or not he sells, closing the exact gap Musk uses. A guideline to adapt in our own words: “My name is [name], I live in [town], and [why this matters to you, for example that you pay a higher tax rate than Tesla does]. I am asking the senator to co-sponsor the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act and the Billionaires Income Tax, and I want to know where they stand.”
Our House member. The House has companion versions of both bills. A guideline: “My name is [name], in [town]. I am asking the representative to co-sponsor the House version of the Billionaires Income Tax and to put that position on the record.” A position in writing is one we can return to at the next election.
State representative. A state does not have to wait for Congress. We can ask our state representative to introduce or co-sponsor a state wealth or capital-gains tax, and point them to the State Revenue Alliance lawmakers who already wrote model bills, among them California’s Alex Lee and New York’s Gustavo Rivera. A guideline: “I am a constituent in [district]. Massachusetts and Washington State already tax their wealthiest residents and the courts upheld it. I am asking you to introduce the same here, and to tell me whether you will carry it.”
State senator. A bill has to pass both chambers, so we make the same ask of our state senator. A guideline: “I am a constituent in [district]. I am asking you to introduce or co-sponsor a state tax on the largest fortunes, and to tell me whether you will carry it.”
Governor. A governor can place a wealth or capital-gains tax in the budget and sign it, and a governor can also end it with a veto, which is what happened in California. Because the governor’s public position decides so much, we can ask our own governor to endorse the tax out loud and in writing. A guideline: “I am a [state] resident. I am asking the governor to use the budget to tax the state’s largest fortunes and to say so publicly, the way Massachusetts and Washington State already have.”
State tax-writing committee. A bill can be held in committee and never reach the floor, and a bill that never gets a hearing is one no member ever has to vote on in public. We can call the chair of our legislature’s revenue or finance committee and ask for a hearing and a floor vote. A guideline: “I am a constituent in [district]. I am asking the chair to give the wealth-tax bill a hearing and a vote, so my representatives have to take a public position on it.”
City council. A city council cannot levy a wealth tax, but it can pass a resolution urging the state and Congress to act, which puts the council on record and adds weight to the legislators above it. We can draft the resolution and bring it to a council member to sponsor. A guideline: “I am a resident of [city]. I am asking the council to pass a resolution calling on the state to tax its largest fortunes, and to name a sponsor.”
County board. A county board can pass the same kind of resolution, and county boards often hear from fewer residents, so a single steady voice has more effect there. A guideline: “I am a resident of [county]. I am asking the board to pass a resolution urging the state to tax its largest fortunes, and to name a sponsor.”
Request a meeting in person. A meeting does more than a call or an email, and every state and federal legislator keeps a local office with constituent hours. Any of us can ask for one and make the case face to face, with the specific bill ready. A guideline, to the scheduler: “I am a constituent in [district]. I would like to meet with [official] about a tax on extreme wealth. I can come to the district office, and I will bring the bill I am asking them to support.”
Show up where they already are. Legislators hold town halls and public events, and a question asked out loud in front of other voters becomes part of the record. We can go, ask the official to commit to taxing extreme wealth, and keep asking until the answer is plain.
Put the demand in public. We can post the plain facts and the ask around town, on community boards and in shop windows, wherever our city’s rules allow, so the call to tax extreme wealth is in the open and not only in an inbox.
That is one campaign of twelve. The full booklet has a hundred lawful actions in all, and it is free, with nothing to buy and no membership. It works best printed and kept somewhere we pass every day, one small action at a time.
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I've been floating an idea of a citizen's class action suit against Elon Musk for his DOGE activities that stole all of our data. Do you have any interest or know an attorney who may take the case? It may not yield a penny, but the negative publicity could make a dent in his fortune if shares drop or goods boycotted.
His net worth is all he is. Comes up empty when it comes to humanity and the qualities of content that requires.