The claim: With $40 billion, Elon Musk could have given everyone in the U.S. $1 million
In the flurry of debate about Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s agreement to purchase Twitter for $44 billion, tens of thousands of social media users shared a tweet that significantly miscalculates the value of the roughly $44 billion Musk has promised to pay if the deal goes through.
“With 40 billion dollars, Elon Musk could have given each of the 330M people living in America a million dollars and still had $7B left over,” reads an April 25 post that more than 150,000 users liked and 30,000 retweeted in a matter of days. “Why aren’t more people talking about this?”
A screenshot of the viral tweet also migrated to Facebook, where it was shared in more than 40 different posts, including one from Canadian page Alberta AF that gained more than 1,500 reactions and 350 shares.
Many social media users pushed back on the calculation in the post, but others took it as fact and responded in kind.
“Greed is an addiction, like anything else,” one solemn response read.
But the author of the tweet, Yale University computer science major Gabe Buchdahl, said it was a humorous reference to a math gaffe from a 2020 MSNBC segment.
Indeed, the math is far from correct. The tweet overestimates how much $40 billion in cash could provide each U.S. resident by a factor of 10,000.
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In addition to the math being wrong, claims about how much Musk could buy instead of Twitter lack some context: the $44 billion won’t all come from him. At least $25 billion of the price Musk agreed to pay will come from loans, which, like any loans, have specific conditions based on Musk’s investment.
USA TODAY reached out to other users who shared the claim for comment.
$40 billion divided among the U.S. population is $120 each
The Census Bureau estimates there are 332.6 million people living in the U.S. But we’ll round that to 330 million to make it consistent with the tweet. We’ll also use the tweet’s figure of $40 billion, though the Twitter purchase price will be closer to $44 billion.
Dividing $40 billion by 330 million, we find that if Musk could secure that amount for a hypothetical distribution to U.S. residents, he could give about $120 to each person.
The key here is that one billion is equivalent to 1,000 millions. Providing $1 million to everyone in America would require about $333 trillion.
It’s important to note, however, that this is hypothetical. Musk’s purchase agreement with Twitter doesn’t mean he has $40 billion in cash lying around.
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Musk will buy the company through an entity he owns and will finance it with $13 billion in debt to banks like Morgan Stanley, $12.5 billion in loans secured against his Tesla stock and $21 billion in equity commitments, the SEC filing shows. Those equity commitments may also be financed through loans.
Tweet was a joke, but taken seriously
In a reply to the tweet, Buchdahl, the tweet’s author, directed “everyone telling me to check the math” to a PolitiFact article about the MSNBC segment to which his tweet alluded.
In the segment, now-retired MSNBC host Brian Williams read aloud a tweet claiming Michael Bloomberg “could have given each American $1 million and still have money left over” with the $500 million he spent on advertising for his suspended presidential campaign, PolitiFact reported. The fact check noted the math in the Bloomberg claim was badly off base.
Nonetheless, while some of the users who shared Buchdahl’s tweet may have seen it as a joke or noticed the error, many did not, comments show.
One user wrote that she was upset by the idea that Musk could have passed out $1 million each to U.S. residents instead of purchasing the social network.
“You know sometimes knowing these stats and details makes me so unhappy and conflicted,” she tweeted. “If I had $1 million I could pay off my house and retire – I’m 67 and have been a practicing RN for 45 years. I’m hoping to go part-time and write.”
Fact check:Fake Twitter employee tweet about Elon Musk spreads online
Buchdahl told USA TODAY that he found the tweet’s spread both surprising and concerning.
“It was scary to see how many people re-posted it thinking the math was correct,” Buchdal wrote in an email to USA TODAY. “If something can spread as truth that is just so blatantly, provably wrong, it’s scary to think about how easy it would be to spread more insidious falsehoods.”
Our rating: False
Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that with $40 billion, Musk could have given everyone in the U.S. $1 million. Even assuming Musk had $40 billion in cash, rather than loans, that amount divided by the U.S. population would give each person about $120.
Our fact-check sources:
- Barron’s, April 25, How Elon Musk’s Twitter Offer Went From No Go to Reality
- Census Bureau, April 25, U.S. and World Population Clock
- Christopher Blair, April 27, Email correspondence with USA TODAY
- Gabe Buchdahl, April 25, Tweet
- Gabe Buchdal, April 27, Email correspondence with USA TODAY
- Politifact, March 6, 2020, Bad math at MSNBC: Bloomberg’s ad spending wasn’t enough to give every American $1 million
- Securities and Exchange Commission, April 21, Musk Elon Acquisition Statement SC 13D/A
- The New York Times, April 26, Elon Musk’s deal for Twitter includes a $1 billion breakup fee
- USA TODAY, April 25, Elon Musk to acquire Twitter in $44 billion deal
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Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.
