Billionaire Elon Musk Explains Why He Doesn’t Contribute to Employees' Retirement Fund, Twitter Divided

World’s richest man, Elon Musk was recently questioned on Twitter regarding accusations of not paying retirement funds to Tesla employees. Given a large amount of wealth Tesla and SpaceX bringing every year, people wondered why they were not contributing to the employee’s retirement fund: 401(ok) which is the most common retirement account used in the United States of America. In this schematic, a worker adds a share of their pay for saving which is matched by the employers -- something the world’s richest man has not done for the last three years, according to a financial report.

Financial journalist Rob Kozlowski shared a report from @pensionnews and said “.@Teslaskips 401(k) match for a third straight year.”

This tweet was then picked up by NBC journalist Stephanie Ruhle, who quoted this Tweet and even tagged the owner Musk.“What am I missing? Tesla has paid @elonmusk billions & they are unwilling to match employee 401Ks? Do I have this wrong?” she asked.

To everybody’s surprise, Musk responded to the Tweet to offer up an explanation.“Everyone at Tesla receives stock. My comp is all stock/options, which I do not take off the table. That’s what you’re missing,” Musk said.

As it turns out, Musk isn’t lying. In a 2020 article by Electrek, it is clear that Musk offers his employees stocks choice as compensation. According to the website, it is not rare for tech companies to offer stocks as compensation, so Tesla isn’t doing anything illegal or unique. What’s rare, however, is that most auto companies (Tesla is an automaker first and foremost, though mixed with tech) do not offer stock compensations for all employees, whether production associates and sales staff, throughout the organization.

“With the recent major increase in stock price (more than 200% this year alone), Tesla stocks are creating a bunch of new Tesla millionaires,” the reporter claims.

But there was also a downside which states that Tesla has cut the compensation of many employees, especially in the sales staff, over the last few years.

Twitter, as with everything related to Musk, remained deeply divided.

He’s lying to you Stephanie. Sure there’s stock options, but it’s not even remotely compensatory for the average employee. Their vesting structure is a mess & they don’t have the liquidity to back up those shares. Without the inflated share price, they’d be screwed.— Joe G🍴🎭🎼 (@redhotnerd) February 9, 2021

Musk recently caused the rates of Bitcoin and Dogecoin's shares to soar after he showed his 'support' for the cryptocurrencies.