After Tesla shareholders approved a pay package that will pay Elon Musk a trillion dollars over ten years, the far-left Washington Post required two bylines to publish a 14-line piece having a brain hemorrhage over it.
Did you know that $100 billion per year…
…is about the same as the “combined paychecks of all 3.2 million cashiers” in America?
… is $3 billion more than combined salaries of America’s “1.4 million elementary school teachers”?
Don’t ask me which ass they pulled this beauty out of, but if you’re not already outraged enough by the teachers and cashiers, did you know that America’s “917,000 human resources specialists” will make “$26.7 billion less than Musk’s average annual pay package”? [emphasis original throughout]
Human resources specialists? I don’t even know what that is, but I’m guessing that not one of those 917,000 has ever launched a satellite into space or caught a spaceship in a pair of chopsticks.
Obviously, by bringing up the feverish (and toxic) cult of personality around our oh-so precious teachers, the Post is all about outrage porn here. Plus, there’s no context in the article. It’s just one line after another that basically says, Can you believe this?!?
Listen, you don’t have to like it, but a fact of life in America is that people with unique skills get paid more than those of us without unique skills. Nothing against elementary school teachers, but pretty much anyone with a triple-digit IQ can become an elementary school teacher. Same with a cashier. I’m not saying that to be insulting. There are all kinds of people who can do my job. I’m nothing special. If the Washington Post were to report that Elon Musk will make more than every middle-aged wise guy who shit-posts online, that would sound about right to me.
The truth is simply this… If you can hit a little ball with a round stick three times out of ten, you’re going to make millions of dollars. If you’re good-looking, charismatic, and can act, you can make millions. If you can sing, if you can throw a football, if you can hit a golf ball accurately… Those unique gifts are the ticket to wealth. That’s not to say a lot of hard work is not required, but no matter how hard an average guy like I might work, I’d never be able to sing like Sinatra, act like Brando, or field like Willie Mays.
Musk is our era’s Einstein… What he’s creating today will affect mankind for as long as mankind manages to exist. He’s like Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison combined — an idea man like Jobs and a brilliant engineer like Edison.
Like anyone in a free country, Musk deserves whatever someone is willing to pay him, and unlike those elementary school teachers, he does not have a corrupt public union shielding him from accountability or concrete deliverables, not to mention a market wage.
There are reports that Robert Downey Jr. got $50 million to return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. What does the Washington Post have to say about that? We’re talking about a lousy superhero movie compared to a guy who is currently our only hope to expand mankind into space.
Without Musk, there would be no Tesla, and the future of humanity would be something less, if only in its aspirations.
The only overpaid people in this story are the two idiots needed to write that idiotic article.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
