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Currently one share is worth $146

Musk could give every one in the USA $3000 and still have money left.

Musk does not have $3000 x 300,000,000+ in cash laying around.

That is a common misconception about billionaires. His net worth is tied up in assets, and there are not enough buyers to buy every share at the highest offered price per share.

People always retort this. Just change it to $3k in stock, or whatever. It isn’t usually meant to be taken literally, it’s just a reference point for his differential level of wealth.
It seems to be taken very literally by people who say "(Billionaire) could feed everyone for a year instead of..." or such.
Do you think that is what u/pluc was doing?
It's what a lot of people are doing. I'm not just writing a reply to that person, but for everyone who might read it.
Which would benefit him personally. Guy doesn't know the meaning of the term "charity."
Not a Muskologist, but this feels like a good opportunity to talk to the kids about flamboyant public figures and grains of salt.
Maybe the tobacco companies can give out free cigarettes.
On a college campus in the late 1970s, yeah.
In the 70's, you could go to see a movie and get a free box of 5 cigs.
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No coincidence that this is announced just weeks before the midterms, which Musk is almost single-handedly funding for the Republicans. It's essentially a bribe, like the $500 checks that Trump sent out, or the Musk $1M giveaways in the 2024 elections.

How would this even work, practically? Did DOGE steal all the Social Security Numbers of American children (and adults)? Or would Musk require parents to send him the SSNs of their children to verify?

Extremely sad to read to the responses here.
Not really. It was an obvious scam when OpenAI offered it, and it's an obvious scam with SpaceX too. This isn't UBI.

Voters should let these companies remain private, and tax them to pay for their children's healthcare, education and pensions instead.

Scam Plan

(1) Give $11B away

(2) ???

(3) Profit

Step 2 is "Get votes for his preferred political party, and public support for the government writing regulations to make his life easier".

In particular, everybody has a stake in keeping up his stock price. If it doubles, they collectively gain $11 billion, and he gains $500 billion.

That's a lot of profit.

That's dystopian commentary, using one sided arguments to dunk on a state built by elections to promote finance feudalism.

Let's hope our corporate overlords find it i themselves to share their wealth with people, I'm sure they will decide in everyone's best interest just out of charity /s

72M children in the US. 72M shares is 1.5% of his current amount, totaling $10.5B, which is 1.16% of his wealth.

One share is worth $146. On average, it will be 9 years before these kids turn 18 and can touch the share.

In its first few months of public trading, SpaceX ranged from an intraday high of $225.64 in June to a low of $104.83 in August, before closing at $146.03 on October 16. So the future value could be substantially higher—or lower—than the value at the time of the gift.

This is Elon venturing into the ‘Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’ territory where the super rich whitewash their public profiles. I assume he received information that the Democrats are about to wipe the floor with Republicans and his influence will nosedive. It also works as a bribe of sorts, tying the success of his companies to American children. Any politician that interferes with his God complex will be taking money from their pockets.

No he's not doing what Bill Gates did he disdains charity and sees it as stupid virtue-signaling empathy. It's really doing Elon a huge service here to make that comparison. This is to get public support for SpaceX.
My past analogy for me overly protective policies was hypothesizing IBM stock was given to all Americans. This would create a public incentive to create anti-competitive policy to protect that company. I fear this move goes beyond mere superficial public support.
Lot of negativity here around what should be a positive anecdote. Cool move, will likely inspire some kids towards engineering later in life.
Smart move. For less than 11 billion, he will have at least a generation of taxpayers on his side, with a positive view of SpaceX. Bezos better start talking about doing the same thing, otherwise, his company will be at a deficit.
This is bribery 101. All these kids will feel indebted to Musk forever. And sign his praises to everyone.

Simple trick covered in Influence — The Psychology of Persuasion.

https://medium.com/@mappmechanic/influence-the-psychology-of...

Second Principle in the book is — “Reciprocation”, The Old Give and Take…

This principle means that we should try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided us. This is by far, the most universal & widely used method of influence I have seen around the Globe in all communities. Also, this principle has been used since eternity as the archeologist Richard Leakey tells: “We are human because our ancestors learned to share their food & their skills in an honoured network of obligation.”

In order to understand its underpinnings let us see a practice used by the famous Hare Krishna/ISKCON society for fund raising. In the 80’s or 90’s, many people from this society used to be standing in public places & would quickly greet passerby with a small flower like Rose as a gift and in most cases passerby fail to return it as the solicitor says it is a ‘Gift’ from our side. This is a perfect example of rule of reciprocation. Now that the passerby has received a gift so he is indebted to the Krishna’s volunteer. Now the volunteer would quickly ask for a donation and in most of the cases the passerby would not deny and give something.

$146 is enough to buy lifelong loyalty?
Humans have an inherent loss aversion. Meaning they are more fiercely protective over what they already have above and beyond the rational value.
$1 is enough to get people to respond to survey questions.
People should not be fawning over the “generosity” of a man who wants to put most of you out of work.