[jfengel]

He can't spend this trillion. It's not real.

It's the notional value of multiplying the last sale price times the number of shares he has. He can't spend the money until he sells the shares, and there's no reason to think that they would actually all sell for the last selling price.

In fact, Musk is restricted from selling shares at the moment. His bank balance is the same today as it was yesterday.

(Caveat: he can borrow money today, using the shares as collateral. When the debt comes due, he can sell shares to sell it. So if he wanted additional spending money today, he could have it. Probably not up to the full trillion dollars, but some absurdly large sum.)

(Caveat bonus: he can actually roll over that borrowing indefinitely -- borrow more money to pay back the last one. Meaning that he's just acquired all of that money without having to pay a single dollar in taxes. It's good to be rich.)

[figassis]

You've made my point for me. He will never need to spend the trillion personally, it's humanly not possible, but it was already not possible to spend his previous wealth, and if he had started selling that it would crater, but now, he can sell much more of it before he sees the effect, and this goes on. This is what infinite wealth means, you can continually spend more that you could yesterday. Money is money is money.