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 Programme, 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.com Inc. co-founder Jeff Bezos, the two men atop the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Just US$6 billion ($8.09 billion) could keep 42 million people from dying, Beasley said.
If the World Food Programme, 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.
Musk is CEO of the electric-vehicle company, which last week joined the handful of companies valued at more than US$1 trillion.
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The $6 billion amount would be just a small fraction of Musk’s current net worth of US$311 billion -- and less than the US$9.3 billion his wealth increased on Oct. 29 alone, according to the billionaires index.
But it must be open source accounting, so the public sees precisely how the money is spent.
Photo: Bloomberg
