When Elon Musk crossed the $1 trillion mark after SpaceX’s stock market debut on Friday, he did more than rewrite financial history.
The Pretoria-born entrepreneur’s fortune has also provided a striking illustration of the scale of global wealth inequality, one that resonates in South Africa, one of the world’s most unequal countries.
Musk, who attended school in Pretoria before emigrating to Canada and later the US, is now estimated to be worth more than $1 trillion after investors piled into SpaceX shares following the company’s public listing.
The scale of that wealth is difficult to comprehend. Business Day reported on Monday that Musk’s fortune is now equivalent to roughly 72% of all the tax revenue collected by South Africa since 1997.
In rand terms, his wealth is estimated at about R18 trillion, more than three times the size of South Africa’s annual economic output, according to the publication.
The trillionaire milestone has reignited debate about inequality around the world. Al Jazeera described Musk’s rise as occurring amid “rising angst over global inequality”, while anti-poverty organisation Oxfam said Musk’s fortune would exceed the combined wealth of the poorest 46% of the world’s population or about 3.8 billion people.
Hitting $1 trillion would mean Musk’s wealth grew by over $550 billion over the past year, equivalent to an average rate of over $1 million per minute, it said.
While some may celebrate Musk as a South African entrepreneur who helped build companies that transformed industries, others see the emergence of the world’s first trillionaire as a symbol of a global economy in which wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of individuals.
“A trillion dollars in the hands of one man is incompatible not only with an affordable economy but also with a healthy democracy. Economic inequality begets political inequality and ordinary people bear the brunt while billionaires continue to write the rules for their own benefit,” said Nabil Ahmed, senior director of economic justice at Oxfam America.
Oxfam’s analysis found that if Musk spent $1 million per day, it would take him 2 740 years to spend $1 trillion. With $1 trillion, Musk could give $100 to everyone on Earth and he would still be one of the 10 richest billionaires in the world, with more than $184 billion left over.
Meanwhile, a 10% tax on Musk’s $1 trillion fortune could end global extreme poverty for a year, lifting over 800 million people above the extreme poverty line.
Statistics South Africa has estimated that about 55% of South Africans live below the upper-bound poverty line, while unemployment remains among the highest in the world.
Against that backdrop, the idea that a single individual can command wealth measured in trillions of dollars inevitably sparks questions about fairness, opportunity and who benefits from economic growth.
For South Africans, Musk’s trillionaire status may evoke a mixture of pride and discomfort: pride that one of the planet’s most influential entrepreneurs grew up in the country and discomfort that his personal fortune now dwarfs the resources available to a country still grappling with deep poverty, inequality and unemployment.