Elon Musk Slams Bernie Sanders: "Makers" vs. "Takers" Debate
The Billionaire and the Senator: When Enemies Find Common Ground
I’ll be honest, when my editor first sent me this story, I groaned. Another headline about Elon Musk and Bernie Sanders trading barbs on X? It felt like a tired rerun of the same old class warfare drama we’ve watched for years. The richest man in the world versus the progressive firebrand. The “maker” versus the “taker” .
But here’s where it gets interesting. Buried beneath the familiar insults and ideological grenades, I found something I didn’t expect: a single, glaring point of agreement. It’s a moment that tells us more about the state of American power than any of their fiery disputes ever could.
Let’s start with the latest salvo, because you can’t understand the agreement without the conflict. Just this month, Musk laid out his “maker” philosophy with the clarity of a mission statement. “My Tesla and SpaceX shares… only go up in value as a function of how much useful product those companies produce,” he wrote . His wealth, he argues, isn’t a static pile of gold, it’s a direct reflection of value created for the public. Then came the punchline, aimed squarely at politicians of Sanders’ ilk: “They take and they’re on the take, because they cannot or will not make” .
Sanders, for his part, doesn’t shy away from the fight. He’s framed their fundamental disagreement perfectly. For Musk, the adventure is in relentless creation, even if it means, as he’s suggested, that AI and robotics could eventually make human labor obsolete (a future he envisions leading to “universal high income”) . For Sanders, that’s not an adventure; it’s a threat. “I do lack ‘any sense of adventure’ when that ‘adventure’ will… force tens of millions of workers out of their jobs,” he fired back . The goal, he insists, must be to improve life for all, “not just to make you and your fellow oligarchs even richer” .
This clash isn’t new. Remember a few years back when Sanders tweeted about the wealthy paying their “fair share,” and Musk’s infamous reply was, “I keep forgetting that you’re still alive” ? That’s the tenor of their relationship. A deep, personal, and philosophical chasm.
Yet, in late 2024, something remarkable happened. Bernie Sanders, the champion of taxing billionaires, posted three words on X that made me do a double-take: “Elon Musk is right” .
Wait, what?
He was agreeing with Musk’s scathing criticism of Pentagon spending. Musk, recently tapped to co-lead a new government efficiency effort (the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE), had been railing against what he saw as epic waste . He called manned fighter jet programs “trash” and highlighted that the Pentagon had just failed its seventh consecutive audit, unable to track billions of dollars . Sanders, the longtime critic of the military-industrial complex, stood with him. “The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions,” Sanders echoed .
For a moment, the “maker” and the “taker” were on the same page. Musk’s simple, one-word response to the news of Sanders’ support? “Cool” .
But this fragile détente over government waste only highlights how much deeper the real divide goes. It’s not just about taxes or spending. It’s about two completely incompatible worldviews on how society should function and what government is for.
To understand Musk’s “maker” ideal, you have to look at his recent trajectory. This is a man who once described himself as “half Democrat, half Republican” and “somewhere in the middle” . Today, he’s a chief financial backer of Donald Trump, having contributed nearly $119 million to a pro-Trump political action committee . He’s been given a formal role in Trump’s administration to “cut government spending and root out waste” . His political evolution has been a steady march toward a techno-libertarian vision, where creation is sovereign and bureaucratic inertia is the ultimate enemy.
And here we get to the core philosophy. In a revealing conversation, Musk called empathy a “bug” in Western civilization . He clarified he’s not against compassion, but argued that what he termed “civilizational suicidal empathy” was being exploited, making the country weak . This isn’t just a throwaway comment. It’s the intellectual framework for the “maker’s” disdain for the “taker’s” system. From this view, a government powered by empathy, one that prioritizes social safety nets, welfare, and equitable distribution, isn’t just inefficient. It’s a fundamental software flaw that threatens the entire project of advancement.
Sanders, naturally, sees this as a dangerous and illegal power grab. He’s sounded the alarm, not just on policy, but on the constitutional implications. “Every American should be concerned the richest guy in the world is running all over this country acting, in a sense, illegally, unconstitutionally,” he warned in a recent interview . “Congress passes laws here… You can’t just arbitrarily do what Musk is doing” .
That’s the real battle. It’s not a schoolyard spat. It’s a fight over legitimacy. Musk believes his legitimacy comes from the tangible value he creates, the cars, the rockets, the jobs, the stock appreciation shared with employees . Sanders believes legitimacy flows only from the democratic process, from laws written and approved by the people’s representatives, not by the whims of a private citizen, however “productive” he may be.
So, where does this leave us?
We’re left with a nation where the most powerful unelected individual and a leading voice of the political left can agree that a $886 billion defense budget is a mess . Yet, they are hurtling toward a profound constitutional crisis over who has the right to fix it, and what values should guide the solution. Musk, from his position at DOGE, seeks to dismantle bureaucracy in the name of efficiency, framing human-driven governance as an obstacle to progress . Sanders sees a billionaire “acting, in a sense, illegally,” undermining the very foundations of democratic accountability .
Their agreement on Pentagon waste is the exception that proves the rule. It’s a fleeting consensus on a symptom, papering over a total war over the cure. The “maker” wants to streamline the machine, even if it means viewing empathy as a system error. The “taker” wants to reclaim the machine for democratic purposes, arguing that a government stripped of compassion has lost its soul.
In the end, this story was never really about two men. It’s about which of their visions we, as a society, recognize as legitimate. Is value created only in the private sphere, by those who “make”? Or is it also created in the public sphere, by those who seek to “take” and redistribute, through democratic means, to build a more just and stable society? The answer to that question will shape our future far more than any tweet ever could.