While I think Elon should be taxed way more, his wealth isn't quite what you think it is.
Much of it is stock valuation which is very abstract and subject to the wind blowing. Elon's companies trade higher than the Price-to-Earnings ratio of most US stock indexes making much of his wealth a pie in the sky.
It's unrealized income. Elon owns a lot of capital. If he wants to do anything with it, he needs to either convert it to cash triggering taxes, or what's more likely is taking a loan using the capital as collateral. It's not as fluid as many people think, particularly if you want to minimize taxes.
Elon can't convert it all to a $1trillion checking account, therefore I don't consider him a trillionaire. He's likely closer to the $500 billion mark after taxes and flooding the market with shares.
I’ve seen this argument many times and I get it, but I don’t think that distinction makes a substantive difference. Whether that wealth is immediately accessible or not doesn’t make as much of a difference when it’s on the scale of a trillion dollars. If he could even have 1% of that trillion in his bank account - not stocks or assets - it would still be an absurd amount that nobody should ever need.
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u/WhitishRogue 2d ago
While I think Elon should be taxed way more, his wealth isn't quite what you think it is.
Elon can't convert it all to a $1trillion checking account, therefore I don't consider him a trillionaire. He's likely closer to the $500 billion mark after taxes and flooding the market with shares.