As anticipated, Tesla shareholders did a very unprecedented factor, approving a pay bundle for Elon Musk that could, over the following decade, flip the CEO into the world’s first trillionaire.
First, some vital caveats: Tesla and Musk have to hit sure milestones, together with elevating its already lofty market capitalization by 466%. Is it potential? Sure. Probable? Depends on whom you ask. But since there’s a not-zero probability Musk pulls it off, it’s value exploring what we speak about after we speak about a “trillion.”
A number of tech and monetary media have been tossing the T-word round these days as if it means one thing. The factor is, it doesn’t. You understand how I do know that? Quick, consider a trillion … something. A trillion greenback payments. A trillion grains of sand. A trillion puppies. Whatever you’re imagining that quantity to appear to be, you’re method off. One trillion is a lot comically bigger than something we are able to wrap our heads round, it’s virtually meaningless.
And that’s, partially, why Tesla, in its pivot to develop into an AI and robotics firm, is leaning into hyperbole. If I’d informed you that Tesla simply accredited an eleventy-gazillion-jillion-dollar bundle, it wouldn’t make a lot of a distinction. Musk already has a $475 billion fortune — more cash than anyone particular person wherever, ever, within the historical past of the world, and for sure more cash than any particular person could ever spend.
Consider the instance cited by KRWG columnist Jerry Pacheco in 2020: If you spent $40 per second, across the clock, it will take you 289 days to exhaust a billion {dollars}. If you probably did the identical factor with a trillion {dollars}, it will take you 792.5 years to go broke.
Just for kicks, although, let’s discover what occurs when a 1 is adopted by 12 zeros. What could you buy? What would it not appear to be?
For a trillion bucks, you could purchase:
–1,428 peak Shohei Ohtanis. Ohtani, probably the best baseball participant ever, secured a $700 million contract over 10 years with the Dodgers. A measly 0.07% of a trillion.
–Every single automobile bought within the United States this 12 months. Terrible funding, although — these issues begin shedding worth the second you drive them off the lot.
-10,000 CEOs of Starbucks. Brian Niccol, the espresso chain boss, is paid a pauper’s sum of almost $100 million.
–333 supertall skyscrapers. If you’re within the New York space you may need glimpsed the brand new JPMorgan Chase headquarters on Park Ave and thought, “wow, that probably cost a fortune.” And you’d be proper: It cost $3 billion! That is a fortune. But you’d should construct it roughly 333 extra instances to hit $1 trillion.
–2,000 Jeff Bezos yachts. Though you’ll have to price range about $25 million per boat, annually, for upkeep.
– 465 Icon of the Seas. If you need extra of a party-boat vibe, you could buy Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, the world’s largest cruise ship. You could buy 465 of them, the truth is. And that’s additionally about as many ships as are within the US Navy, which is a high quality dimension to your personal private fleet.
-The total Ivy League, 5 instances over. Collectively, the endowments of the eight most elite American universities come out to about $200 billion. You can’t put a worth on schooling, in fact, however for a fifth of a trillion, the Ivy League is steal.
–A $2,923 bonus for each single particular person within the United States. Look at you, being so charitable! (Beware the inflation, although — we’ve been down this path before.)
–Switzerland. OK, truthfully, undecided in case you can buy a nation, however the landlocked Alpine nation’s nominal annual GDP got here in at just below $900 billion final 12 months. A flipper’s dream!
-Every home in Hawaii. There are 572,781 households in Hawaii, and in accordance with Zillow they go for under $826,575, on common. Eat your heart out, Larry Ellison.
-Coca-Cola, plus a Coke for everybody on the planet. Drop a cool $300 billion on the company, and also you’ll nonetheless have lots left over to buy all 8.2 billion people a 12-pack of Coke.
-Toyota, Volkswagen, Stellantis, Hyundai, Ford, and GM. If you need to compete towards Tesla, you’re gonna want scale.
-ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. Who is aware of, possibly the entire electrical automobile factor doesn’t work out, and Tesla decides to get into the interior combustion enterprise. Buying the highest three largest American oil firms could assist there, too.
Bottom line: For higher or worse, we’re getting into an period by which firms and their CEOs can amass wealth in numbers so massive, our brains truly don’t know find out how to perceive them. The wealth on the prime is meaningless — orders of magnitude past the numbers most of us glean from our personal financial institution statements. One quasi-upside? Understanding the absurdity of 1 trillion something makes the $38 trillion US nationwide debt that economists have been blathering on about for years look virtually smart. Our large nationwide debt is simply 38 potential Elon Musks? Just 7.5 Nvidias? Eh, I’m positive we are able to handle that.
—NCS’s Chris Isidore contributed to this text.