Is Elon Musk the One Trillion Dollar Man?
November 8, 2025 11:15am
The headlines screamed "Musk Receives Trillion Dollar Pay Package from Tesla." And the anti-capitalist ne'er-do-wells went nuts. They're screaming all kinds of complaints. "That's insane!" "That's criminal!" "No one is worth that kind of money!" "Kill the billionaires!"
And one I haven't heard yet - and I probably haven't heard it yet because it requires math, and most anti-capitalist losers are too stupid to do the math - although their Leftist overlords will no doubt do the math for them, and it will soon be parroted at Communist protests and street riots. And that is that Elon Musk is receiving the pay of seven million workers. I based that calculation on 50 weeks of 40 hour work weeks, so 2000 hours per year times the $7.25 federal minimum wage times ten years. So with those numbers, a minimum wage worker would get paid $14,500 per year. That's $145,000 over ten years, which is the same length of time as Musk's contract. And then I divided $1 trillion by $145,000 and got 6,896,551 workers, which is close enough to seven million that I rounded up. I know that's a horrible way to compare Musk's pay package to what a regular employee gets paid. But, hey, most of what the Left complains about is poorly developed and is indefensible upon examination and the use of facts, reason, and logic.
Fortunately, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Hakeem Jeffries, AOC, and other Democrat politicians don't have the authority to set private sector pay; at least not yet, although they'd love to have that power. It is the shareholders who get to set private sector pay. I'm excluding union contracts and legislated mandates in government contracts for the moment. Well, 75% of Tesla shareholders approved the $1 trillion pay package for CEO Elon Musk at Thursday's shareholder meeting.
But contrary to what the propaganda press wants you to think, they didn't just agree to pay Elon Musk $1 trillion dollars over the next ten years. What they agreed to pay Elon Musk was $1 trillion over the next ten years IF certain sales goals are met, and IF the company's stock price rises to certain levels.
For Elon Musk to receive the full $1 trillion, Tesla would have to sell 20 million vehicles, 10 million active FSD (Full Self-Driving) subscriptions, have 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation, along with manufacturing 1 million Optimus humanoid robots. Not only must those lofty sales goals need to be achieved, but Tesla stock would have to increase nearly five-fold. That would add about $7 trillion to Tesla's market capitalization. And earnings would have to increase by 8000%. That was not a typo. It would mean Tesla earning $400 billion in annual profits.
Now, there are payouts for hitting intermediate goals along the way. So it's not like Musk will be working for free unless and until he earns the $1 trillion a decade from now. But his pay package is not what the Leftists are complaining about. Would you pay someone ten cents for every dollar they increased your net worth? I would. And so would you. And so would every single person complaining about Tesla shareholders offering such a deal to Elon Musk. If he earns that $1 trillion, it will be because shareholders have earned $9 trillion. In other words, Musk would be worth every penny of that $1 trillion. And besides, a lot of that compensation would be in the form of stock not cash.
You want to talk about outrageous pay packages? Let's talk about Jimbo Fisher at Texas A&M. Let's talk about Brian Kelly at LSU. Let's talk about James Franklin at Penn State. Let's talk about Dabo Swinney at Clemson. Let's talk about Mike Norvell at Florida State.
If you think it's insane to pay a trillion dollars to someone who increases the value of his company by $7 trillion, then you must have really lost your mind over college football coaches who get paid multi-million dollar salaries even if their teams lose ten games in a twelve game season and then have buyout clauses in their contracts that require schools to pay them $49 million - $76 million if they get fired. Your outrage would be justified in the case of college football coaches. But if you're outraged over Elon Musk's pay package at Tesla, then you're either clueless about its details or you're clueless about economics. And in the case of the Leftist malcontents crying and complaining about it, it's both.
If Elon Musk gets that trillion dollars - and I don't think he will, because I don't see Tesla meeting the requisite sales or market cap goals - but if he somehow does, it'll be because he's worth every penny.