The folks who think “every billionaire is a policy failure” may need to update their progressive populist slogan. Elon Musk, currently worth about a quarter trillion dollars, is on track to hit the full trillion sometime in 2027. That’s according to a recent report from Informa Connect Academy. Now this isn’t some sophisticated bit of analysis. Rather, the forecast merely assumes that Musk’s vast wealth continues to grow at an annual average rate of 110 percent. 

Of course, past performance does not guarantee future results. If it did, however, Musk would soon be joined by several other trillionaires in the coming years if these projections hold true. The report anticipates India’s Gautam Adani, founder of the Adani Group conglomerate, reaching trillionaire status in 2028, followed closely by Jensen Huang of Nvidia. Indonesia’s Prajogo Pangestu and LVMH’s Bernard Arnault are also predicted to join the trillionaire ranks by 2028 and 2030 respectively. And then? As CNBC reports on the study:

Some top billionaires who seem like strong candidates to quickly reach the four-comma club don’t make the top 10. Jeff Bezos, currently the world’s second-richest person, with $200 billion, according to Bloomberg, is listed at No. 12, and wouldn’t become a trillionaire until 2036. Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Google founders, are also slated to wait 12 years to become trillionaires — although artificial intelligence may accelerate their rise.

While folks on the far left might see the emergence of trillionaire entrepreneurs and business builders as a societal red flag, they would be wrong to do so. The Age of the Trillionaire would likely result from creating valuable companies and innovations that benefit all of us as consumers, workers, business owners, and investors. The ability to generate such value-driven wealth is an American economic superpower.

The emergence of trillionaires would almost certainly indicate a thriving economy that rewards innovation. Crucially, 98 percent of the value created by new technologies benefits consumers rather than entrepreneurs. Vast wealth often fuels further innovation through investments and philanthropy, while the prospect of enormous success motivates ambitious, potentially world-changing ventures. Oh, and don’t worry: Historically, technologies initially accessible only to the ultra-wealthy eventually become widely available, suggesting that today’s trillionaire-making innovations could become tomorrow’s solutions to global challenges. As I write in my 2023 book, The Conservative Futurist: How To Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised:

Imagine living in a world where you have access to unlimited energy, resources, and opportunities: a world where you can travel to the stars or stay on Earth and enjoy its beauty. Sounds like a kind of paradise, right? This should be the world of Blade Runner, a world of human-level AI, genetically engineered androids, space colonies, and flying cars. All these staggering technological developments should have created a world of almost unimaginable prosperity where humanity has new capabilities to solve big problems. Rather, Blade Runner is a film classic known for its visually impressive, dystopian world-building. … I call this the Blade Runner Fallacy. Economic history has shown repeatedly that in a dynamic, progressing economy the consumption habits of the rich—automobiles, air travel, computers, giant TVs, smartphones—eventually become the consumption habits of everyone else. It’s not like Musk has access to a better COVID-19 vaccine than I do. Indeed, what Musk is doing at SpaceX is a good example of this phenomenon. Its innovations are dramatically reducing the cost of space launches such that a realistic path now exists for regular people eventually going to and living in space, not just the super-rich.

While I understand concerns about wealth concentration, it’s important to recognize that the emergence of a trillionaire is likely to occur in the context of overall economic growth and technological advancement. The rising tide of innovation and progress, exemplified by that first trillionaire, has the potential to lift all boats, creating opportunities and a better quality of life across society. The milestone will represent the culmination of innovations that have the power to transform our world for the better and create value that extends far beyond the wealth of any single individual.

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