Musk beware

$612 billion can become $3,000 very quickly

At the height of the Depression that Democrats call Great because it gave them power for 50 years, Yip Harburg wrote the lyrics to the song Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; Now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower up to the sun, brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

The song is an anti-capitalism anthem and tribute to the forgotten laborers who built the railroads and the skyscrapers only to lose their jobs. Their plight was used by Marxists to advance the socialist (Junior League communist) cause. Harburg adopted the nickname Yip, which stood for Young People’s Socialist League.

The song is sad but laborers were not the only victims of the worldwide collapse of the economy. Their bosses went broke.

Indulge me this morning as I rattle off some history of Cleveland, where I grew up in my grandmother’s house. It was between Little Italy and Little Budapest with Shaker Heights as its backdrop. The house was high on a hill, reflecting my grandmothher’s childhood in Wheeling.

On a clear night you could see the lights from Terminal Tower, which at the time was the tallest building between Chicago and New York City. The skyscraper held that title for 64 years before Key Tower opened catacorner on Public Square from the Terminal.

First and foremost, the Terminal Tower was a railroad station, albeit a 52-story tall railroad station, but nonetheless that was its purpose.

Oris Paxton “O.P.” Van Sweringen and Mantis James “M.J.” Van Sweringen, two young men from Wooster, Ohio, developed the project—as well as Shaker Heights—and along the way, they made railroads great in Cleveland and gave the city its first rapid transit system.

13 years ago, Pete Beatty laid out the story of the brothers who slept in twin beds in the same room all their lives even when they built and lived in a 54-room mansion. They never married. They never had children.

He wrote, “The Sweringen empire began very modestly. O.P. negotiated an option to sell a house on the East Side of Cleveland. This entailed listing a house that he didn’t yet own, but would pay for out of the proceeds of the eventual sale. The leveraged buyout, wobbly financed, was a Sweringen trademark from the very beginning. The brothers cleared $100 in the deal. They were in the game.”

Selling houses they didn’t own caught up with them and they wound up in bankruptcy court. But they bounced back. Instead of buying houses and selling them, they decided to sell land. To do this, they bought land and incorporated the town of Shaker Heights in 1912.

Shakers (United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing) viewed sex as the root of original sin and practiced complete celibacy—not even to procreate. Communities grew by adopting orphans and attracting adult converts.

The cult died out but they owned some nice farmland that a syndicate from Buffalo acquired for $316,000 in 1889. It was worth half that when the Van Sweringens came along. In their 20s, they made a deal to sell the land, which its owners now saw as a white elephant.

More than a century later, Shaker Heights remains an upscale suburb. Driving from the suburb to downtown took 45 minutes by road. The brothers built a rapid transit along the railroad lines to cut the time to 12 minutes.

Their railroad connection began with their purchase of a farm from a widow, whose brother handled the detail. He was Alfred Holland Smith, who would become the head of New York Central Railroad.

Cleveland was the main hub of the railroad and Cleveland’s lines were a mess. The brothers straightened it out and built the terminal—which doubled as the link between the suburb and downtown.

The brothers also acquired 30,000 miles of railroad lines including the Nickel Plate Railroad.

When the Terminal Tower opened in 1927, they were worth $3 billion—which would be the equivalent of $57 billion today adjusting for inflation. But if you go by the value of gold, it would be $612 billion.

But it was all paper profits. When the stock market crashed and the trains stopped running, their fortunes vanished. They died in 1935 and 1936 respectively with $3,000 each to their name. Like the Shakers, they left no heirs.

Let this be a caution to Elon Musk.

But Jimmy Kimmel said:

“Tomorrow, SpaceX will reportedly launch the biggest IPO in history. An IPO is when a private company starts selling shares to the public for the first time. And once SpaceX does that, Elon Musk is expected to become the first ever trillionaire in the history of the world. I’ll hold for applause.”

[Audience boos/laughter]

“Okay. And what makes that even more unsettling is that this man, our first trillionaire, the richest man in the world, is also one of the weirdest people we’ve ever seen on this planet. This obscenely wealthy weirdo has the ability and means to blow up the moon if he chooses and also to put a lot of other people’s money in his pockets.”

Readers, please do me a favor. If Highlights of the News on Saturdays ever falls that low, tell me. Write “You Kimmeled” in comments.

At least Bill Maher, who also wants to confiscate Musk’s money, can tell a joke. Maher said, “Elon is now a trillionaire. Now I give Elon his props. He has created amazing things. Yes, SpaceX is amazing, so is Tesla, Neuralink, and Starlink. Elon owns a company that can rewire your brain. It’s called Twitter.

“Elon says he will use his wealth to get to Mars because he believes one thing above all: if you have to leave Earth to avoid California taxes, you do what you have to do.”

But most liberals stopped telling jokes and became them.

Pocahontas said, “Elon Musk just became the world’s first trillionaire. The typical American household would have to work more than 11 MILLION years to make Elon Musk’s level of wealth. We need a wealth tax.”

Really?

That means it will take 440 million years to pay off the national debt. She spends $7.5 TRILLION a year—and she wants to spend more? For what? Hasn’t her party defrauded the country enough?

We know what Musk is doing with his money. Neuralink chips are helping paralyzed people control computers, phones, cursors, robotic arms, or other devices just by thinking. The blind may see again.

Tesla is building cars that drive themselves, which will allow baby boomers to maintain autonomy.

SpaceX is catching rockets and saving astronauts stranded in space left by Joe Biden and his fellow heartless Democrats. The plan is to build a way station on the moon and colonize Mars.

NASA spent $668 billion in the last 40 years. It cannot catch rockets or save astronauts. Not knocking NASA, just saying capitalism is needed too,

Starlink is giving people around the world access to the Internet. Just 30 years ago, you used cups to call AOL to get online.

While he did or is doing all this, ask yourself why a government taht spends $7.5 trillion a year has not already done this?

Musk’s fortune could be gone tomorrow. But what he will leave behind has already helped millions of people.

In the end, we all die paupers. Until we do, please spare the brother a dime because not long ago he built the city you are living in.