Children eat at the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) school feeding initiative last week in Madagascar. The program also provides education and trains older children to learn a profession. (Reuters)
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, challenged a United Nations official’s claim that just a small percentage of his wealth could help solve world hunger.
Musk was responding to comments by David Beasley, director of the UN’s World Food Program, who repeated a call last week following an earlier tweet this month asking billionaires like Musk to “step up now, on a one-time basis.”
Beasley specifically called for action from Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the two men atop the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Just $6 billion could keep 42 million people from dying, Beasley said.
If the World Food Program, using transparent and open accounting, “can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it,” Musk wrote in a Twitter post.
If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2021
This triggered a back-and-forth with Beasley, culminating in an earnest-sounding offer to meet with Musk and provide the transparency he demands, which was met with a long string of derision from Musk’s fans.
.@elonmusk Instead of tweets, allow me to show you. We can meet anywhere—Earth or space—but I suggest in the field where you can see @WFP’s people, processes and yes, technology, at work. I will bring the plan, and open books.
— David Beasley (@WFPChief) November 1, 2021
Musk is CEO of the electric-vehicle company, which last week joined the handful of companies valued at more than $1 trillion.
The $6 billion amount would be just a small fraction of Musk’s current net worth of $311 billion — and less than the $9.3 billion his wealth increased on Oct. 29 alone, according to Bloomberg’s wealth index.
Tesla forms the vast majority of Musk’s net worth. He’s very rarely sold stock in the electric-vehicle maker, whose shares reached a record $1,114 on Friday.
His fortune has also surged thanks to his stake in SpaceX, a private space-exploration company that was valued at about $100 billion last month.
Musk, frequently outspoken on social media, has also been critical of attempts to tax U.S. billionaires.
He said on Twitter that a levy on billionaire wealth would only make a “small dent” toward paying off the national debt, arguing that the focus should be on government spending. Musk also said a billionaire tax would just be the start of taxing the merely wealthy.
Source: www.autoblog.com