A $1000,0000,0000,000 CEO pay deal for a company with a market cap under $1400,000,000,000... seems slightly generous, perhaps even a little extravagant.


Slightly generous, and even a little extravagant, is probably a good way to describe it.

But put yourself in the shoes of us poor shareholders who have to make a decision about how to vote. Would we rather have our $1,400,000,000,000 company maybe go to 7x to $10,000,000,000,000 and give 10% of that to the guy who took us there? Considering that it was close to bankruptcy in 2008 when that guy took over as CEO in 2008, and up to $1,600,000,000 at the IPO in 2010, and now up another 875x to $1400,000,000,000 (a lot more zeros) today, and that Musk would have to take it up another 7x to $10,000,000,000,000 to get this extravagant bonus. And the problem being that if that happens under Musk as CEO, he takes $1,000,000,000,000, so there's only $9,000,000,000,000 left to divvy up amongst us other shareholders who don't work there?

Or should we take our chances on having someone else in charge and hope the company goes up to at least $9,000,000,000,000 so we can do just as well?

It's actually not hard to accept a little extravagance if you think of it that way.