The Trillion-Dollar Man

Authored by Noel Williams via AmericanThinker.com,

If he had any, Bernie would be pulling his hair out at the prospect of Elon Musk becoming a trillionaire.

Socialist imbeciles spurn success, preferring downtrodden masses who wallow in government dependence rather than exerting individual independence. As is well known, socialists portray billionaires as a “policy mistake.”

Extrapolating from that, they must consider the potential coming of trillionaires as a policy catastrophe.

The first man likely to reach that lofty target — if his companies meet stringent performance objectives — is Elon Musk.

At first blush, that seems exorbitant, but let’s run some numbers.

Musk heads several remarkable companies, but for this exercise, we’ll focus on Tesla, which was founded in 2003. 

Tesla’s current headcount is about 125,000 (give or take). 

Average headcount (hard to calculate due to extreme scaling) over its lifespan is approximately 51,000. 

Average salary (excluding bonuses and benefits) is also approximate, at about $100,000 per annum.

So, 23 (years in existence) * 51000 (average headcount) * 100,000 (estimated avg. salary, per above link) equals $117,300,000,000.

That’s over 117 billion dollars paid to direct Tesla employees over its lifespan — again, that excludes all the other benefits that may accrue.

Remember, this is before ramping up production of Tesla’s Optimus robots that will become the predominant contributor to revenue (and productivity gains that will benefit society at large).

It is estimated that Tesla alone supports over 600,000 jobs (think supply chain and contractor jobs).

So let’s consider their larger impact on growing societal wealth.

It’s tricky to determine the average salary of such positions, but let’s go with a conservative $60,000 per annum.

Here’s the calculation: 23 (years in business) * 600,000 (jobs tied to Tesla) * 60,000 (approx. salary) equals $828,000,000,000.

That’s over eight hundred billion, by golly (combine that with the above, and you’re teetering on one trillion).

Admittedly, these are imprecise estimates (maybe underestimates), but the point is clear: Tesla alone has generated enormous payrolls for direct and indirect employees combined, and the future looks brighter still.

In fact, Tesla is inexorably becoming much more than a car company: there are all-important data repositories, AI, energy, autonomous driving, and robots. Indeed, if Musk hits the pay targets that may catapult him to trillionaire status, the estimated market cap of Tesla will be around 8.5 trillion dollars.

That’s Tesla, but there’s also Neuralink, the Boring Company (tunneling, etc.), X, and xAI. Oh yeah… then there is SpaceX, which currently employs thousands of dedicated full-time workers worldwide.

Its Initial Public Offering is gearing up, with an anticipated value of well over $1 trillion.

The socialist politicians propagating envy will have hysterical fits over that.

Speaking of whom, Obama once mused that at some point a businessman has “earned enough,” and that is well below a billion dollars. Well, given all the societal wealth (not to mention philanthropic aid and services to hapless victims of natural and man-made disasters throughout the world) that Musk has generated, maybe one trillion dollars is about enough.

Who would you rather have access to those resources: a creative, market-driven entrepreneur (albeit one who occasionally benefits from industrial policy), or a fuddy-duddy, central-planning socialist sequestered from the dynamism of consumer-oriented markets?