“Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they were talking about,” Elon Musk wrote in February on Twitter/X, the social network he bought for $44bn. He capped the statement with a sad face emoji.

Alas, Musk’s information is outdated. A 2024 study found a substantial difference in happiness between the wealthy and people who are low income. “A greater feeling of control over life can explain about 75% of the association between money and happiness,” the study’s author noted.

But there are exceptions to every rule. The world’s richest person doesn’t exactly radiate contentment, does he? Musk seems to spend every waking hour being angry on X. But perhaps he just needs a little bit more money to fix his existential angst. Perhaps, if all goes to plan, and this week’s Space X initial public offering makes Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire, he’ll finally be happy.

Of course, the big issue here isn’t what his imminent trillionaire status is going to do to Musk’s inner psyche, it’s what it’s going to do to democracy. You think Musk-the-billionaire was bad? A trillion dollars is going to afford the rocketman a whole new level of impunity and give him even more power over our lives.

It is hard to wrap your head around how big a billion is, let alone a trillion, so it’s worth pausing to really take in just how obscene this sum is. We’re talking 12 zeros; one million million dollars. If you spent $1m every single day it would take you more than 2,700 years to spend a trillion dollars.

Another way of looking at it: if you are worth $1tn, then $1m is 0.0001%, or one ten-thousandth of 1%, of your net worth. The median net worth in the US is about $192,700; $1m has the same value to a trillionaire........

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