I tried do to just that, because i believed that it wouldn't paint a better picture for the billionaires, and I also dont like that people have downvoted your comment without providing explanation.

Assuming Musk started working at 18yrs old, which would have been in 1989, 35 years ago. And assuming he started at 7.25 dollars an hour, and never got a raise, he would have accumulated roughly 527.800 dollars by now.

40h * 52w * 7.25 usd = 15080 usd 15080 usd * 35y = 527 800 usd

His net worth (according to meme) is a staggering 273 000 000 000 dollars. Obviously he had to have a pay rise to get there, lets calculate that rise, starting from 7.25 dollars an hour.

273000000000 ÷ 527800 = 517241.37931034

So his pay rise averaged over 35 years, would be an absurd 517240%, or 14778% per year. The yearly average pay rise is roughly 4-5%, its not even remotly close.

All of this assumes that Elon started with 0 dollars to his name, he didn't. So in reality his hypothetical pay rise wouldve been a a bit lower. However the minimum wage wasn't 7.25 dollars in 1989, and I haven't accounted for inflation. Still the numbers would probably be similarly insane.

Even in a somewhat more accurate form, I think the core statement of the meme still rings true.

[–] SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That's not how exponential growth works. The pay increase would be in the ballpark of 50% per year for that amount of gain in 35 years.

And remember, wealth accumulates in passive investments, so even if you made $7.25/hr for 35 years, you'd have over $1m if you didn't spend any of it and it accumulated at over ~3% per year.

[–] autriyo@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago

Oh, you're right. Although 50% per year is still insane.

And I definitely forgot about investing, but also didn't account for inflation, which maybe would cancel e/o out.

Doesn't really matter if you consider the difference between a million and a billion is roughly a billion.