Elon Musk could transfer $1 million in stock to each of his 153,473 employees,
which would cost him $153 billion and he would still have a net worth of $302 billion!
He'd still be the richest man in the world and would still have $56 billion more than Jeff Bezos!
And some of that money he has came from under-paying factory workers at his Fremont, California
assembly plant. For a long time the hourly rate was $22 (not sure what it is now) but auto
plants in the Midwest were paying that or better and he was paying $22 per hour in one of the
highest cost of living areas in the country.
Elon is now worth more than Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates combined.
All businesses should be worker or consumer cooperatives. Capital shouldn't be divorced from stakeholders like in our current capitalist system, but rather socially owned by the direct stakeholders like in Mutualism.
And some of that money he has came from under-paying factory workers at his Fremont, California
assembly plant. For a long time the hourly rate was $22 (not sure what it is now) but auto
plants in the Midwest were paying that or better and he was paying $22 per hour in one of the
highest cost of living areas in the country.
All those employees were given stock options as part of their total compensation which those other auto factories did not give to everyone.
All the early floor workers would be multi millionaires if they kept their initial stock, not counting using the employee program to buy more at a discounted rate or further employee incentives.
Anyone who joined a little after the Model S was being sold and the early model 3 time up to around mid 2020 would have around a quarter million if they didn't aquire any additional stock.
I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla as a company created the most employee millionaires of any recent USA company due to giving every employee stock as part of their compensation.
Early SpaceX employees are in a similar boat, but it's harder to get rid of their shares since it's private so it's harder to quantify it.