Last Thursday afternoon as Tesla shareholders were deciding to give their CEO Elon Musk a package that could be worth 1 trillion dollars, CNN’s Kasie Hunt was discussing it on her show, The Arena. Hunt concluded her interview with Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) by asking, “Do you think Elon Musk should be a trillionaire, is that a thing we should have?” In other words, should we put a limit on how much financial success a U.S. citizen, especially a conservative one, should be allowed to attain? Just when you thought you’ve heard it all!
Khanna answered that he is all for Musk, or anyone, making all the money he can make, so long as they give a chunk of it to the government, on top of the taxes that are already in place. “..I’m all for Elon becoming a trillionaire, as long as we can have a 5 percent trillionaire tax…My problem is not the wealth generation. It’s that it hasn’t been taxed. Have a wealth tax on all these billionaires and trillionaires.” That answer seemed to please Hunt, who then broke the trillion bucks down this way.
HUNT: ..If you spent $40 every second of every day, it would take 289 days to spend a billion dollars. And if you did the same thing with a trillion dollars, it would take you 792 and a half years to go broke. The other option would just be to give the entire population of the United States $3,000 at a go.
She then turned to panelist Scott Jennings, who educated Hunt on the ‘American Dream’.
HUNT: ..But at what point is like this too much, right?
JENNINGS: I disagree, and I think you — I think often when we discuss populism in politics, we ascribe a level of resentment to America’s working class. It doesn’t exist. They believe in the American dream. They believe in working and working hard and getting ahead. Elon Musk came to America. He created this company. It creates lots of jobs. It’s innovative. I mean, he’s one of the most important people on planet Earth.
And so, if he can have that kind of success and it — and it lifts up people along the way, the people who work for Tesla, the people who buy their products, this is a good thing. This is the American dream. We shouldn’t begrudge someone for having success in America.
Amen! Next it was CNN Contributor Lulu Garcia-Navarro, also with the New York Times, as if you can’t tell from her reaction.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: There’s two things about this. First of all, it’s obscene. And the split screen of people not getting SNAP benefits and Elon Musk getting $1 trillion is not a great one. The second thing I’ll say is that this is actually structured — they’re not just handing him $1 trillion. They’re actually trying to give him an incentive to work harder. And so, he might not ever get $1 trillion. We should be clear.
Calling the Musk deal “obscene” is actually what’s obscene. If we asked if it’s fair that Kasie Hunt is making between $1 million and $1.5 million a year to just read other people’s wealth stats on CNN while other people work much harder for much less, would she find that offensive? Would she consider it a personal attack?
But anyway, whether Musk can satisfy the several requirements to earn the trillion, is far from certain. That was artfully pointed out on CNBC’s Power Lunch on Friday by Brian Sullivan: “Before everybody goes bonkers over the one trillion dollar figure, know the details, because the pay package while massive, only happens if Musk and Tesla hit some very heady, maybe impossible targets.” Sullivan said they include 20 million vehicle deliveries, 1 million Robo taxis in production, and 1 million humanoid robots delivered.
There is no doubt that Musk and Tesla have their work cut out for them. But so do we. The real scary part of all of this is not the deal, but the left-wing reaction to it, led by socialist-sounding scolds like Hunt. Questioning how much money is too much money for someone to make in America is scary stuff.
