The minimum wage in California is $9 an hour, and to keep up with it, Tesla saw fit to give its co-founder and CEO a bit of a raise with an increase from $35,360 to $37,440 a year. Or just over half the cost of a new Model S.
Musk’s new compensation package was revealed in Tesla’s latest proxy filing with the SEC. He doesn’t actually accept a salary (we’re assuming the extra cash goes into a pizza party slush fund), but don’t feel too bad. He was awarded $78.2 million in stock options in 2012 and owns 26.7 percent of the automaker’s shares, which is valued at around $7.8 billion right now. He’ll be fine.