Elon Musk makes $381,904.19 per minute. (I got his daily income from this website, and then divided by 1440, the number of minutes in a day, to get this figure.) The US census reports that the median household income (not individual, household) from 2023 was $80,610 per year. Elon Musk's income in one minute is well over four and a half times this. I'll reserve any political assertions for the discussion; for now I simply want to ask this very simple question: Is Elon Musk doing more work in one minute than everyone in an average American household combined does in 4.5 years?
A Simple Question about the Current US Economy
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Pay isn't normally decided by how much work. It's imperfect but normally it depends on how many people you serve.
For example a teacher serves about 20 children in her class while professional athletes serve millions of people every game, so the athlete is paid more
Level of service matters as well. For example a doctor sees as many people a day as a waitress but his skills is more rare and more valuable to people than having a plate brought to you
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@Math_Enthusiast
Is Elon Musk doing more work in one minute than everyone in an average American household combined does in 4.5 years?
No. Not sure who is saying that he is though.
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@Math_Enthusiast
Also it's weird that this is only really brought up when a company is doing well. If the leadership of a company causes it to crash, everyone is fine blaming the people on top.
Hmmmm
Correct me if I'm wrong, but based on your response I will assume that your answer to my yes or no question is no. Anyway, to respond to the point you made, yes, it does often seem to be the case that pay is determined in this way. Assuming that pay should be determined in a way that maximizes total well-being of everyone, could you please explain how these spending choices fit that model? You are also of course free to admit that they do not fit into this model. Before you respond to this, I would like to address a few things that I feel might be relevant:
The concept of extreme wealth as an incentive for a higher "level of service": If these jobs that have a higher "level of service" don't require significantly more work, (as you seem to indirectly admit) than there needs to be some other justification for why this extreme incentive is necessary. I can understand possibly considering these jobs somewhat more important, but a ratio of over 4.5 years to one single minute is completely absurd. Also, let's imagine for a second that professional athletes and teachers had the same income as each other. Don't you think that if all of the teacher positions were taken and a large number of professional athlete positions were open, that people would be flocking to the athlete positions regardless of there being no difference in pay? This monetary incentive really doesn't need to exist, and even if there is going to be one, it should certainly be small enough that we don't have such a small percentage of people consuming such a ridiculously large amount of resources.
Elon Musk's philanthropy: I admit, Elon Musk doesn't just spend his money on private jets that cost enough to provide basic necessities to 321 children throughout their entire childhoods. (The link included earlier mentions a $75,000,000 private jet. I got the cost of providing basic necessities to a child through their childhood from this website, and then simply did some basic division.) He does make large charitable donations. My question is this: How is this better than a world where all of his unnecessary wealth goes directly to charitable causes? These donations aren't him being incredibly generous; they're him being at least decent enough to put some of his ridiculously excess unearned wealth where it actually belongs.
Note: This is intended as a reply to Wylted, but for whatever reason the site is not letting me make it one.
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@Savant
Is Elon Musk doing more work in one minute than everyone in an average American household combined does in 4.5 years?No. Not sure who is saying that he is though.
His salary earning suggests that. Elon Musk's income in one minute is well over four and a half times the annual income of median household.
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@Savant
No. Not sure who is saying that he is though.
No one that I'm aware of. I just wanted to start the discussion off with that question. "No" is hopefully an obvious answer, but it's helpful to establish that we all agree on that right out of the gate. Beyond that, I wanted to throw some numbers down to give some perspective on just how ridiculous the volume of resources he has at his personal disposal is, regardless of what he possibly could have done to earn it.
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@Shila
His salary earning suggests that.
Only if you assume that salary is determined solely by level of effort. You would be wrong.
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@Math_Enthusiast
I wanted to throw some numbers down to give some perspective on just how ridiculous the volume of resources he has at his personal disposal is
Saying any level of possessions is ridiculous is going to be arbitrary. Wealth is relative. Why isn't it ridiculous to make $100,000 a year?
How is this better than a world where all of his unnecessary wealth goes directly to charitable causes?
It's better because it's unlikely anyone's going to assume the risk of investing if they get punished for it.
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@Savant
Saying any level of possessions is ridiculous is going to be arbitrary. Wealth is relative. Why isn't it ridiculous to make $100,000 a year?
I didn't intend the "ridiculousness" of this to be a statement of absolute truth. I was simply trying to explain why I brought these numbers up in the first place: To draw attention to something that is horribly imbalanced. What exactly is so horribly imbalanced here? Well...
It's better because it's unlikely anyone's going to assume the risk of investing if they get punished for it.
Thank you for providing a nice segway here. What is so imbalanced is that we consider a good investment valuable enough that we let some live in such extreme luxury while others starve. I don't care if it makes investing a little less appealing; no one should have a private jet. It's a waste of resources, and that is that. If you want to know what I would have us do instead, I believe that people should be employed to make good investments, and the resulting large quantities of wealth should be controlled by the government and used for public interest. Is this fair to the investors? Well, they aren't doing anything more important than, say, doctors, so yes, it is absolutely fair, and the current "free market" system isn't fair to those who struggle to get enough to eat while Elon Musk buys private jets with money that could have fed hundreds of children for almost two decades.
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@Math_Enthusiast
It's a waste of resources
Resources that wouldn't exist if no one invested.
we consider a good investment valuable enough that we let some live in such extreme luxury while others starve
Less people are starving after thousands of years of trade and innovation. You know, investments.
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@Math_Enthusiast
The recent auditing by Doge, shows why trusting the government to spend money wisely is retarded.
See my thread on USA ID
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@Savant
Your response seems to consist entirely of reasons that investments are highly important, which I do not deny. Do you have any problem with the idea of employing specific people to be investors? You didn't respond to it, and if your focus is on making investment as effective as possible, this would be the way to go:
- More qualified investors: Currently, anyone can risk their life savings on the stock market and other investments if they so choose. Wouldn't it be logical to require people to actually know what they are doing? It protects investors and boosts efficiency.
- Less risk: The worst case scenario for these investors would be getting fired, not losing everything. Furthermore, the government money being used would generally not be in too much danger given that these individuals would be well-educated on careful investments.
- Higher capitalization rate: The resulting decrease in poverty would give more people the opportunity to even get the necessary education, and people who are already decently well off would be able to invest far more money than they would have otherwise.
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@Math_Enthusiast
Is Elon Musk doing more work in one minute than everyone in an average American household combined does in 4.5 years?
No.
It is neither an insightful question nor answer if we leave it there. As with many such wealth stats, that site is substituting changes in net worth over time as income from wages/salary. Some years, that number is negative. Turns out that Musk does not take a salary. This “income” figure is derived mainly from:
Unrealized gains: the present value of one’s investments if they were to liquidate completely. If that figure decreases, it is called an unrealized loss.
Capital gains: the profit from selling an investment for more than one bought it for (ie a realized gain).
Passive income: this is income other than from salary/wages, such as rental income and dividends.
Knowing the above, do you think that we would somehow make higher salaries if Musk and the like’s net worth remained static (no “income”)?
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@cristo71
It doesn't really matter whether the money is from a "salary" or not. Salary or not, Elon Musk can still buy the $75,000,000 private jet I've mentioned a few times now and not even notice a dent. In fact using the data from that website, even though, yes, these numbers may sometimes be negative, on average he makes up for that private jet 7-fold every single day.
Knowing the above, do you think that we would somehow make higher salaries if Musk and the like’s net worth remained static (no “income”)?
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking here, but I'll answer both potential versions of the question that I see:
If Elon Musk's net worth were static, would that mean that the rest of us have higher salaries than him?
As you pointed out, he doesn't even have a salary now, so yes it would. I'm not sure how it matters though. He would still have hundreds of billions of dollars in his possession, which is easily enough to live in the greatest luxury that is possible at this point for the rest of his life and still have more money to spare than the rest of us could ever dream of.
If Elon Musk's net worth were static, would that lead to an increase in the salaries of everyone else.
If his net worth stopped going up because his investments were tanking, that would indirectly have a negative impact on the rest of us as well. What I would really like to see is people like him being reduced to the fixed salaries that the rest of us live on while the money from these investments goes to the good of the public. (See my current discussion with Savant for more details on this idea.) That might not raise our salaries directly, but it could substantially lower our taxes, thereby having that effect.
The recent auditing by Doge, shows why trusting the government to spend money wisely is retarded.
I hope you don't think that I would trust our current government with this. Government competence is one issue. Having a fair and effective economic system is another. The latter is what we are currently discussing.
Once again, this was supposed to be a reply to Wylted, but it won't let me post it every time I put them in the mentions.
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@Math_Enthusiast
As a general rule, people do not willingly trade money unless they feel the service or good was worth as much or more.
This implies value of the services/goods created through the risk taking and management of Musk is actually higher than the money he currently has. There is only one way to select the best risk taker, and that is for them to produce value. Salaries are for people who take zero risks creating value, and therefore, cannot be compared to Musk.
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@Greyparrot
Is the total value of the goods and services created indirectly by Elon Musk greater than the money that he has? Yes. Does that mean that he should have that money? No. As I mentioned in post #7, if your goal is to maximize the well-being of everyone then giving people an amount of money equivalent to the value that they produce is not necessarily a good system, as intuitive as that system may initially seem. If your goal is not to maximize the well-being of everyone but instead to give people the money that they "deserve" then our disagreement lies not in how our society should meet its goals, but what those goals should even be.
Regarding this idea of selecting the "best risk taker", do you have any thoughts on my concept of employing investors? As I pointed out to Savant, it could quite effectively sort for good investors while not draining the economy just for the sake of incentivizing them to invest.
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@Math_Enthusiast
Does that mean that he should have that money? No.
You are basically telling millions of people what they should trade their money for. Ethically, that's highly immoral. Every single person purchased the goods and services for what they felt was a bargain or else they would not willingly trade. Every single person would be that much poorer without the goods or services worth more than the money traded. You are advocating for the decrease in the standard of living for millions of people by saying Musk should not accept their money and provide a better value in exchange.
That's also immoral.
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@Math_Enthusiast
employing investors?
Those are opposite concepts. Employers are investors, employees outsource their risks (investments) to their employer.
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@Math_Enthusiast
- More qualified investors: Currently, anyone can risk their life savings on the stock market and other investments if they so choose. Wouldn't it be logical to require people to actually know what they are doing? It protects investors and boosts efficiency.
This is basically what index funds and mutual funds are. However, (a) Most investments will go up anyway, and (b) investments from a lot of people are needed to determine the value of a company in the first place. 1,000 investors is better than 100. The current system allows a lot of money to be invested while also not forcing people to invest anything.
Also Elon Musk would clearly be one of these "qualified investors" since he became the richest person in the world, so you shouldn't have a problem with him making that much money.
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@Greyparrot
You are basically telling millions of people what they should trade their money for. Ethically, that's highly immoral.
I must say, I'm a little confused here. I am telling millions what they should trade their money for? Like I'm forcing them to buy certain things? Maybe that's not what you were trying to say, but it sounds like you think I want the government to be able to tell people what to buy. I don't.
Every single person purchased the goods and services for what they felt was a bargain or else they would not willingly trade.
I don't deny it.
Every single person would be that much poorer without the goods or services worth more than the money traded. You are advocating for the decrease in the standard of living for millions of people by saying Musk should not accept their money and provide a better value in exchange.That's also immoral.
I'm not saying that these trades shouldn't be happening. I'm saying that we have a system where amounts of wealth orders of magnitude larger than any individual should ever have their hands on are being entrusted to those who make these trades, and I am suggesting that that money be handled by a third party that won't spend it on private jets, mansions, and movie set pieces. Yes, stopping these investments from happening would decrease the quality of life of millions, but I'm not saying that they should stop happening. By keeping these undeniably economically helpful investments in place while not giving all of the resulting wealth to just a few people, we could improve quality of life for millions.
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@Savant
This is basically what index funds and mutual funds are. However, (a) Most investments will go up anyway, and (b) investments from a lot of people are needed to determine the value of a company in the first place. 1,000 investors is better than 100.
Okay, so we would have a lot of investors. There is no reason to believe that these investors would be any less capable of determining the value of a company. In fact, they would likely be more capable.
The current system allows a lot of money to be invested while also not forcing people to invest anything.
When did I suggest forcing people to invest? I wouldn't be requiring everyone in the entire country to invest. In fact, most people wouldn't be allowed to invest. Meanwhile, as I already pointed out, we would actually see an increase in the amount of money which could be invested since these people would be investing government money, of which there is a lot, rather than their own money, of which there is relatively very little.
Also Elon Musk would clearly be one of these "qualified investors" since he became the richest person in the world, so you shouldn't have a problem with him making that much money.
Okay, so he would be one of the qualified investors. He has quite the resume, so I'm sure he could easily get the job with a great salary right off the bat. A "great salary" would be six figures, though, not twelve.
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@Math_Enthusiast
That premise of outsourcing investors assumes there is no long tail on a normal distribution curve, where Musk lies at the far tail. You can't replace Musk with multiple inferior investors and expect the same product value.
Even if he takes the money the people willingly gave him and spends it on all on Jets, not only did he make the millions of people wealthier by trading a more valuable product than the money they gave him, but he also helped the jet manufacturers.
That's a double win for everyone, so you should encourage more of what Musk is doing. And also objectively realize that Musk is undercompensated for the wealth he created due to the fact people gave him less money than the product was worth.
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@Math_Enthusiast
these people would be investing government money, of which there is a lot
And where are you getting that money? From taxpayers. So you are forcing people to invest, just indirectly.
wouldn't be allowed to invest
Why not? Additional money being invested is good.
Okay, so he would be one of the qualified investors.
Someone like Musk is doing more than just investing, they also make high-stakes decisions on how companies are run. I suppose you could replace that with central planning, but then you just reinvented the Soviet Union.
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@Math_Enthusiast
I wanted to throw some numbers down to give some perspective on just how ridiculous the volume of resources he has at his personal disposal is, regardless of what he possibly could have done to earn it.
What Elon Musk has is Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, plenty of children and money and autism.
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@Math_Enthusiast
I believe that people should be employed to make good investments, and the resulting large quantities of wealth should be controlled by the government and used for public interest.
There are already people— fund managers— privately employed to do that. Would you prefer that only government could employ fund managers?
People get into investing chiefly to accumulate and control wealth. If you take away that control from investors, they are then disincentivized to put as much money, time, and effort into investing.
If his net worth stopped going up because his investments were tanking, that would indirectly have a negative impact on the rest of us as well.
How do you believe, say, Tesla stock tanking negatively affects the rest of us?
What I would really like to see is people like him being reduced to the fixed salaries that the rest of us live on while the money from these investments goes to the good of the public.
You think that a person’s stock shares should be confiscated past a certain point? Musk is not even a stock investor per se. He is an entrepreneur and innovator and hence a creator of wealth. His investments are mainly in companies which he has created and led. Do you think the government should take over ownership of his companies?
Realize that Musk wouldn’t even have attained such wealth in the first place under the confiscatory system you suggest. Your system only has large amounts of wealth to confiscate because it was accumulated up until now under a totally different system. Your system will not accumulate much wealth going forward from the time it is implemented. The government’s share will then get smaller and smaller over time. This is a huge flaw in your suggestion.
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@cristo71
This is a huge flaw in your suggestion.
The guy is just a student. He doesn’t have any investment only student bills.