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Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has denounced a plan by Tesla’s board to grant its CEO, Elon Musk, a compensation package worth $975 billion, which would make him the world’s first trillionaire.
On Friday, Tesla’s board submitted a filing proposing a plan that would grant Musk over 423 million shares if Tesla hits $8.5 trillion in total value by 2035 — up from the company’s current value of roughly $1.1 trillion.
Those shares, worth $143 billion today, would bring Musk’s stake in the company to a staggering 29 percent.
As the richest man in the world, Musk is currently worth $435 billion. This compensation package would cause his wealth to skyrocket, and would amount to nearly an entire percentage point of the total U.S. household wealth combined.
“Another $900 billion for Elon Musk, while 60% live paycheck to paycheck? Really?” said Sanders in a post on social media on Monday.
“This is not only grossly immoral. It is insane economics,” he went on. “No society can survive when one man becomes a trillionaire while the working class struggles to survive. This cannot stand.”
Indeed, the wealth gap in the U.S. is growing rapidly. A recent Oxfam report found that global billionaire wealth has soared by over $6 trillion since 2015. And a RAND analysis found this spring that $79 trillion in wealth has been redistributed from the bottom 90 percent of Americans to the top 1 percent over the past 50 years.
Everyday Americans are struggling. A Bankrate survey found in January that roughly 6 in 10 Americans say they couldn’t afford an unexpected $1,000 emergency expense.
Meanwhile, the economy is in a downturn. On the same day of the Tesla board’s filing, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report showing extremely low hiring numbers in August, with only 22,000 new jobs. The unemployment rate rose to 4.3 percent — the highest since the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. The numbers are reflective of a volatile economy, experts said, with CNN noting that “job growth is practically nonexistent.”
Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act will make it even harder for everyday Americans to survive, representing one of the largest redistributions of wealth in a single piece of legislation in modern history. The bill will kick millions off of their health insurance, and will sap $1,600 from the poorest 10 percent of households while giving the richest 10 percent of households an extra $12,000 yearly, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Musk is personally responsible for much of the current economic downward spiral. U.S. companies recently announced plans for a record amount of layoffs, citing “Department of Government Efficiency” actions.
DOGE has already had a sweeping impact, accounting for nearly half of layoffs across the country in just the first few months of Trump’s presidency. Hundreds of thousands were directly laid off, while the rogue group’s cuts to research are threatening hundreds of thousands more jobs that are supported by federal grants.
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