Aye on the Ball

Thank you for Wayne O’Leary’s excellent column “Billionaire’s Ball” [2/15/25 TPP] on Donald’s coterie of billionaires and their retrograde agenda for the non-billionaires among us. You can’t fit every nuance into a limited space and I would like to add that their obscene and socially destructive wealth (How many hospitals, medical research facilities, schools, and decent affordable homes can Elon Musk’s $450 billion build?) flows from the labor, intelligence, skill, self discipline, honesty, decency, willingness to work together, social spirit, and sense of community of the rest of us. And especially in the case of tech billionaires from the legacy of centuries of collectively supported public education and research.

Most of these billionaire guys and ladies don’t know the first thing about how to make what they sell. Capitalist property relations and laws have allowed them to appropriate what only the collective can produce. And the collective draws its strength, even its very existence, from the dignity, belief in mutual support and co-operative spirit of the great majority. A society made up of Donald Trumps and Elon Musks wouldn’t last a week. A nest of vampires, by definition, can’t survive.

Thank you,

ED BELLER, The Bronx, N.Y.