Read our editorial on the growing opulence and misery here.
Elon Musk—already the world’s richest man—is set to become the first trillionaire in history. Tesla shareholders voted to approve a stock package worth $1 trillion to be merited out when Musk hits certain performance targets over the next ten years. The package stipulates that Tesla’s stock market valuation should grow from $1.4 trillion to $8.5 trillion over the next decade, and meet other goals like expanding the automation of Tesla’s production lines—which will throw thousands of workers out of work—and increasing sales of Tesla’s self-driving software.
In response to the shareholders’ vote, Musk declared that they are a “fantastic group of shareholders.” Despite Tesla’s plummeting stock and declining sales in the U.S. and overseas, the shareholders’ vote represents a vote of confidence in Musk’s abilities, largely based on their reverence for his aggressive tactics against workers and their hopes that his push into artificial intelligence technology will pay off. Musk’s current wealth represents 1.6% of total U.S. GDP, according to the monopoly Yahoo Finance.
Musk is on track to receive a massive windfall over the next decade, which stands in stark contrast to the realities of what the international proletariat and oppressed peoples of the world face. According to the World Bank, 700 million of the world’s people live in extreme poverty, which they define as living on less than $2.15 per day. A further 3.5 billion people (half the world’s population) live in poverty, defined as living on less than $6.85 per day.
One of the top monopolists and at the forefront of U.S. imperialist reaction, Musk spearheaded the DOGE initiative, advocated for massive cuts to the state bureaucracy, targeted what remains of social services, and executed the mass layoff of government workers. Along with other monopolists like Jeff Bezos and Brian Niccol, Musk has been fighting tooth-and-nail against unionization efforts by workers for years, all while workers at their companies continue to suffer injury and death.
Musk has also trafficked in the ultra-reactionary conspiracy theory of “white genocide” to drum up support for the domination of his tech monopoly Starlink in South Africa, pressuring the government to give the monopoly preferential treatment. The monopolist Musk also benefits from the latest US aggression against Latin America, which aims to secure and expand its domination of rare earth minerals in the region used by tech monopolies.
Photo: Elon Musk. Credit: Gage Skidmore.
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