Elon Musk is on pace to become the world’s first trillionaire by 2027, according to a new report from a group that tracks wealth.
Informa Connect Academy’s finding about the boss of electric carmaker Tesla, private rocket company SpaceX and social media platform X (formerly Twitter) stems from the fact that Musk’s wealth has been growing at an average annual rate of 110%. He was also the world’s richest person, with $251bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, as the academy’s 2024 Trillion Dollar Club report began circulating Friday.
The academy’s analysis suggested business conglomerate founder Gautam Adani of India would become the second to achieve trillionaire status. That would reportedly happen in 2028 if his annual growth rate remains at 123%.
I genuinely wonder how this creep keeps failing upward
In higher circles, wealth is considered a measure of competence.
It is a core tenet of capitalism: “Well if he’s such a bad businessman, why is he so rich?”
One of the ways they hide their incompetence is buying the talents of other, actually skilled people.
Another is ostentatious displays of wealth to impress other members of the owner class of your absolute flushness of cash and calmness of mind to keep faith in whatever your schemes are this week to stay relevant
Billionaires should not exist, and a trillionaire is simple an abomination
I hope someone viciously kills him before it can happen.
Like, to be clear I am not threatening or anything, but no such thing as a trillionaire should exist, and it’s absolutely something that should be punished.
There is no moral way to get there.
Right now, if he were able to convert all of his $241.8B to cash, then distribute it evenly among all of the employees at all of his companies, he could give each of his 146,000 employees $1.6M.
No one person should be that wealthy. I don’t necessarily think that billionaires should be abolished, but I do think they should be paying a shit load more in taxes than they are.
Also, before anyone says it, yes, I know it’s not as simple as converting his holdings to cash. I’m just saying “if it were possible”.
if he were able to convert all of his $241.8B to cash
That’s the assumption everyone makes but it’s a false premise. If he tried to sell all his shares it would cause the stock price to collapse, his wealth would plummet, and his companies would be in jeopardy. Far from being able to give all of them $1.6M, they would all likely lose their jobs.
That’s also the issue with taxing them. If someone owns a billion dollar company (based on the price of their shares of stock) we call them a billionaire but they might not have very much money in cash (say a few million). Suppose we want to tax them 10% of their wealth: that’s $100 million! They don’t have enough cash to pay for that, so they have to sell shares, which causes the share price to go down, which negatively affects the company and the workers.
I think the issue is with how we view ownership of a business vs other things, like a yacht. The yacht can be sold to pay taxes and it won’t affect other people. The company cannot. In a lot of ways, the company isn’t just a possession of the owner, it’s a responsibility. These days I feel like we don’t talk enough about responsibility.
There are infinite possible ways to implement wealth tax. If you want to avoid your scenario, tax corporations on their profits, reducing the dividend payout to shareholders. For example.
These people have ALL THE MONEY and it needs to be stopped, like yesterday. Find a way.
