We've lived amongst Elon Musk headlines for so long now that it's easy to forget just how much he sounds like a sci-fi character. He runs a space company and wants to colonize mars. He also runs a company that just implanted a computer chip into a human brain. And he believes there's a pretty high probability everything is a simulation and we are living inside of it. But the latest Elon Musk headline-grabbing drama is less something out of sci-fi, and more something pulled from HBO's "Succession." Elon Musk helped take Tesla from the brink of bankruptcy to one of the biggest companies in the world. And his compensation for that was an unprecedentedly large pay package that turned him into the richest person on Earth. But a judge made a decision about that pay package that set off a chain of events resulting in quite possibly the most expensive, highest stakes vote in publicly traded company history. The ensuing battle over Musk's compensation is not just another wild Elon tale. It's a lesson in how to motivate the people running the biggest companies that – like it or not – are shaping our world. It's a classic economics problem with a very 2024 twist. Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
On the TED radio hour, NYU professor Scott Galloway says older Americans have failed to live up to the social contract between generations.
We talk a lot about income inequality, but we don't talk a lot about generational inequality, but we have purposely transferred wealth and opportunity from young people to old people.
Generation gaps.
That's on the Ted radio hour from NPR.
This is planet money from NPrdez.
Yeah, so, okay, we're here to talk about, I mean, is it overstating it to say, like, the most expensive, highest stakes vote in, like, I don't know, publicly traded company history or something?
I think that's fair.
I mean, this is a really unusual situation.
This is reporter Dana Hull.
She has been covering the Tesla company for more than a decade, works at Bloomberg now.
Regular voice on their Elon, Inc.
Podcast.
Yeah, we wanted to talk to Dana because Tesla and Elon Musk have found themselves or really put themselves into the middle of a story that sounds more like the plot of HBO's succession than real life.
The basic story is this.
Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO, helped to take his company from the brink of bankruptcy to one of the biggest companies in the world.
And his compensation for that was an unprecedented, unprecedentedly large pay package that turned him into the richest man in the world.
But.
But then a judge undid the entire compensation plan, taking away Musk's entire, unprecedentedly large pay package.
That decision, of course, also unprecedented, which then set up the also unprecedented high stakes vote we mentioned earlier, where shareholders got to weigh in on whether they agreed with the judge's decision.
Tesla is the largest automaker in the world in terms of market cap.