Most people find it hard to wrap their heads around how much money billionaires actually make. The amounts are so big that they stop making sense after a while.
Things are getting worse, not better. According to Buzzfeed, Elon Musk just won a vote from Tesla shareholders that could give him $1 trillion in company stock over the next ten years if he hits certain targets. That breaks down to about $100 billion every year.
One comparison has really gotten under people’s skin. Musk is going to make more money each year than every single elementary school teacher in the entire country put together. The United States has 4 million elementary school teachers; he will pocket $3 billion more per year than all of them combined. One guy making more than 4 million teachers.
The numbers get even crazier when you look at other jobs
Musk’s yearly earnings will match what all 3.2 million cashiers in America make together. He will pull in $72 billion more than every family doctor in the country, $68 billion more than every mechanical engineer, and $47 billion more than every police officer. This is not the first time Musk has sparked controversy with his views and actions, as people continue to argue about everything he does and says.
When this information started making the rounds online, people had a lot to say.
Berkley professor Robert Reich wrote on X: “Thanks to his new Tesla pay package, Elon Musk could stand to make $3 billion more per year than all 1.4 million elementary school teachers in the U.S. combined. Still wondering if inequality is out of control?”
Several people brought up what someone could actually do with that kind of money. One comment said, “He could literally pay them all and still be rich. Same with world hunger. But he won’t because he has the empathy and emotional intelligence of a damp sponge.”
Other folks noticed that even with these huge differences in wealth, plenty of regular Americans will still cheer for billionaires. As one person said, “A minimum wage worker with no health care in middle america will celebrate this.” Recently, he has also been trying to compete with well-known websites like Wikipedia, which has only added more fuel to debates about how much power and influence he has.
“Any school teacher has more work ethic in their pinky finger than Elon Musk has in his entire body. Make. Billionaires. Pay. Their. Fair. Share,” New Mexico Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez wrote on X.
This whole thing has gotten people talking again about the gap between rich and poor in America. Many are asking whether anyone should be allowed to make this much money when millions of people working important jobs can barely pay their bills.
Published: Nov 21, 2025 04:45 pm