A couple of days ago, the surge in Tesla's stock price made Elon Musk the second-richest person in the world, with a net-worth of $128 billion dollars. According to Bloomberg, $100 billion of these dollars was gained in 2020 alone, as Tesla's stock has sky rocketed during the pandemic. This can be attributed to the success of his electric cars, specifically the model 3, which is now the best selling luxury car in America. In addition, investors feel optimistic about the future of electric cars and renewable energy, especially with Biden's stance on working to combat climate change.
$128 billions dollars is a large sum of money, and someone could be a real force for good in the world if they choose to put the money to positive use. Bill Gates has done a lot with philanthropy, but as of now Elon's #1 commitment seems to be rockets. Space X, which he has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in, aims to create a Plan B for human life on Mars, rather than work to improve human life on Earth. I know many people have strong opinions about the rich, and I would like to hear what you have to say about Elon Musk. Is a he a greedy billionaire who has an obligation to give away his money to create positive change in this world? Or is he a prime example of the American dream, someone who is making incredible strides to help our world combat global warming, and who has a right to invest his money as he wishes.
I support the latter argument. I think it is amazing that he had a vision to create a better, cleaner world and that he is now making that happen. It's crazy that just several years ago he was on the verge of bankruptcy, but with passion and confidence, he kept his faith in SpaceX and Tesla, and made them massively successful companies. I want to hear your opinions, feel free to disagree with others, and converse in the comments section respectfully.
6 comments:
Considering the almost inconceivably large sums of money that multi-multi-billionaires like Elon Musk have, I don’t think we need to choose one argument or another. I think Elon Musk has enough money to contribute to the greater good here on Earth while also pursuing his own, unique American dream. I’m all for Mars exploration and electric cars. However, I think the uber-uber rich should contribute far more of their money to solving problems like homelessness, drug abuse, lack of healthy food, etc. All of these in the world but also right here in the U.S.! How to make the billionaires do so, that’s the tricky part. I’d be for taxing the multi billionaires much more money because many middle-class, upper-middle class families continue to take the brunt of taxation while people like Elon Musk have more money than they know what to do with. Especially considering how ridiculous it is that people in the Bay Area with a certain income are taxed the same as people in North Dakota with that income. Ridiculous! The uber-uber rich should pay more taxes because they have enough money to drastically improve the world. However, getting that legislation would be incredibly tough, so fingers crossed. The other idea is to simply pressure them publicly through grass-roots or even political movements. Or, and this one seems interesting, have it be a government mandate that the uber-rich donate some percentage to charity. (We know taxes aren’t always used well by the bureaucracies in government). Regardless, I think that America must realize that there are huge gaps from poor, to middle class, to upper-middle class, to rich, to uber-uber-ridiculously-too much-rich. Steeply raise the taxes, public pressure, or donation requirements on people like Elon Musk (there aren’t very many of them anyway!!!) in order to seriously help all levels of people flourish, and they can still build whatever fantastical inventions they please.
Every time I see a news story like this, my mind goes to the workers that toil to ensure the level of success that these billionaires achieve. To keep up with the large promises Elon makes, Tesla workers are on duty for around 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. They work unpaid overtime despite that being outlawed in many places. On average, they make 21 dollars per hour--vastly different than the 16 million Elon makes per hour. Workers claim that,at times, they feel like collateral damage. While I do think that Elon Musk's money is well-earned, I think the fact that his workers are under these conditions while he's making trillions of pretty pennies is unacceptable. Billionaires may have no obligation to serve the poor and needy for the betterment of mankind, but they do have the obligation to uplift those to which they owe their success.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/13/tesla-workers-pay-price-elon-musk-failed-promises
I agree with Danny's statement that we don't necessarily have to choose one argument over the other. However, what is interesting to me is the prevalence of the wealth gap in this country and how the pandemic seems to have further intensified that. These extremely wealthy people are getting richer often by large amounts, while on the other side unemployment and loss of money is everywhere. I think we can say that people like Musk have done something to earn their money. But he, and others, are not directly responsible for the system that has benefited them so much. Even then, I believe there is a point when someone has too much money to use just for themselves. So I think people like Musk should be encouraged, but not necessarily obligated, to use larger amounts of their money to help beyond their own company that will likely only get them richer. Billionaires can be both very successful due to hard work, dedication, good ideas, etc, and use their, what is honestly extra, money in beneficial ways. At the end of the day, what a billionaire does with their own money is realistically up to them. But focusing on a dichotomy of people either being a close off billionaire, or donating all of their money, limits the effects of what could happen. Acknowledging people like Musks's accomplishments as well as the people who helped them get there while simultaneously encouraging them to use their money to help solve problems, I think, is a good place to start.
I always love looking at the infographics comparing a thousand to a million and then to a billion or any other large number. 128 billion can be difficult to grasp, however, relatively, it’s no different from 100 or even 80 billion. It’s a stupid amount of money regardless. It’s undeniable that he is a prime example of the American dream and for certain has no obligations to give away the money that is more or less rightfully his. I feel, as others have stated, with that amount of money, both contributions to SpaceX and fighting climate change are entirely possible. I’m inclined to believe in general, however, the whole SpaceX approach is the wrong way. While it is undeniably cool, the plausibility and benefit of a “plan B” on Mars does not sit well. First, the principal of running from a problem, that Tesla also contributes too to a degree, doesn’t seem right. Second, if a “plan B” was possible, who gets to go while others stay screwed because all efforts were focused on said plan B. Is it the rich after gaining security from an initial Guinea pig wave? What about the massive populations that were a part of the American dream machine that produced Elon and all other uber rich’s wealth? Personally, I don’t follow Elon’s antics all that much but from what I can remember, and a quick google search, the main anti climate change cause I can see a contribution to is the Arbor Day Foundation x MrBeast 20 million tree collaboration. This article goes into examining its overall effectiveness. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-1-million-trees-wont-curb-climate-change-2019-10?op=1 Again, he has no obligation, but personally I feel his focus is misguided and misplaced for the good of humanity. Danny brought up great options on how to be more forceful and place “obligations” for the immensely wealthy, only time will tell if it’ll end up a reality though.
I have to disagree with Anoush's comment. There has been a lot of resentment towards the ultra wealthy recently, most of which I think is unwarranted. I don't deny that at the bottom of these massive corporations there are workers who might be underpaid or face bad working conditions, but the man at the top is not to blame. Of course they are paid $21 an hour and Elon makes $16 million -- that's how having different jobs works? A McDonalds employee makes millions less than the CEO per year, but we don't talk about how "unfair" that is because he's not in the news as much. I can't speak to the differences in working conditions between McDonalds and Tesla, but if Musk's money is "well-earned," then what is there to complain about? I don't think it's fair to say the Musk "owes his success" to his workers. Musk gained his success from being a smart businessman, and employed his workers because that's a necessary step in the manufacturing process. I doubt he has very much connection at all to his factories. If anything, those workers owe their "success" to Musk. While I agree that billionaires have a lot of power in the world and have the ability to create great change (Bill Gates as an example), there is a lot less they can do than people think. People attach this number, $128B, to Musk's name, but that doesn't mean he has that much money at his disposal. He can't just solve world hunger by dissolving Tesla and Space X. There is a lot of good and a lot of bad that billionaires do, but Musk stands for the future, and I want to see how far he can go.
It's kind of crazy that people can have that much money. I can hardly wrap my head around what having $128 billion dollars would mean and what I could do with it. I think it's truly astonishing how there can be some people in the world with such extreme amounts of money, while there are millions that are struggling financially and homeless. That being said, I don't deny that Musk earned his money, though I definitely agree with Nina's point about how the rich get richer quicker and that the proportionality of earnings is truly insane. I don't think that rich people should be mandated to use their money to help others, but I would hope that they would use their money for the better. $128 billion is an inconceivable amount of money and even a small portion of that could benefit so many people so much. There are limitations to this though, especially taking into consideration some of the points Nathan brought up, talking about how although he has this extremely high net worth, a lot of the money is in the company so he doesn't necessarily have direct access to it with the money at his disposal. That being said, it's estimated that he owns $50 billion in shares of the company, and then his personal net worth is at least $66 billion. That's still a ton of money. I think that taxing though needs to be majorly reformed in order to take fair and proportional shares from people of different income levels, meaning that this would take a portion of Musk's money and use it for others.
I also don't really completely agree with Musk's mindset on putting his money into his space company to help the Earth. I think he has plenty enough to go around, meaning he has plenty enough to invest in Space X as well as help the Earth in other ways. I have to agree with Pritish on his views regarding Musk's "Plan B" and I think that we shouldn't give up on Earth yet.
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