Justin Wolfers
Professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and author of a widely used i...
“Compared with what Musk lost as a result of this election, $474 million is pocket change. … His personal share of those losses might have been about $10 billion from Tesla and $40 billion from SpaceX. Let's add them up and call it around $50 billion. That's more than 100 times what he spent on this record-busting election cycle.”
Platypus Economics with Justin Wolfers · Money & Markets · November 2026
Context
The economist adds up the post-election drop in Elon Musk's Tesla and SpaceX stakes to show that his record midterm spending was small next to the wealth riding on the outcome.
Transcript
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…times what he spent on this record-busting election cycle. More Than 100 times. So if you thought the big number in this money and politics story was $474 million, fair enough. Look, $474 million is a ridiculous amount of money. It buys a lot of TV ads. It buys all sorts of field stuff. You can send a whole lot of mailers that are going to go straight from the mailbox to the recycling bin. But compared with what Musk Lost as a result of this election, $474 million is pocket change. Now, you might want to ask me for a more careful calculation. You know, stocks move for all sorts of reasons. You don't want to see a share price fall after an election and just declare, aha, that was an election because maybe those shares would have risen or fallen anyway. So we need a comparison. In fact, the comparison group is the broader stock market and it rose that day. The S ⁇ P 500 was…
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Okay. The numbers so far, I'll admit it, they are staggering. And I've had to check my numbers a few times. And they raise the natural question, why would control of Congress matter that much to Musk's companies? Turns out that government matters a lot. Let's start with SpaceX. SpaceX is a…
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