The World’s New Richest Man, Bernard Arnault, Is Hardly Better Than Elon Musk
Hold your applause for luxury brand magnate Bernard Arnault, the billionaire who just surpassed Elon Musk as the richest man in the world. He may not be taunting the Left on social media, but he’s just as much an emblem of grotesque inequality.
Bernard Arnault, billionaire and chairman of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, in Vendome, France, on Februrary 22, 2022. (Nathan Laine / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Thanks to the short-circuiting of Tesla’s share prices, Elon Musk is no longer Earth’s richest man. The new holder of the inglorious title of the world’s wealthiest man is LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault.
News of Musk’s cash flow slippage has struck some liberals and leftists as cause for celebration, prompting a round of high-fives on social media. “French sophistication beats US clueless hi-tech,” read one tweet from a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
The Musk-dunking is understandable on some level. Since taking over as CEO of Twitter in October, the clown prince of Big Tech has behaved a bit like a Gen-X Donald Trump, a billionaire bad boy who makes business and personnel decisions based on arbitrary whims or wounds to his Mars-sized ego. In contrast, “Bernard Arnault lives his life as most of us might with those billions: buying art, throwing parties, helping to rebuild Notre Dame, not trolling,” tweeted a former Obama staffer turned CNN analyst.
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