Elon Musk attends the Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center on Nov. 19, 2025, in Washington. Photo by AP Photo/Evan Vucci

I am not alone in struggling to get my head around the idea of Elon Musk as the world’s first dollar trillionaire. “What does that mean and what’s that about?” wondered Pope Leo in a recent interview.

Last month, Tesla approved an extraordinary incentive plan, worth US$1 trillion in shares to Musk if the mercurial chief executive meets stretching goals. If this is a landmark in executive pay, it seems fabulously remote.

To put it in terms Musk might appreciate, imagine that the distance from the centre of our Earth to its surface represents US$1 million of executive pay. That threshold was probably crossed for the first time almost a century ago by Eugene

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