Not to be outdone by his on-again, off-again girlfriend Grimes, who recently claimed that he lives “below the poverty line,” the world’s wealthiest man has responded with an outrageously out-of-touch remark about his own fortune. Elon Musk said in a recent interview that “nearly everybody” could afford a hypothetical $100,000 trip to Mars. Musk said in 2020 that he planned to establish a metropolis on Mars by the year 2050, which he would populate by transporting 1 million people to the red planet using 1,000 SpaceX Starships.
Musk was also asked how much a trip to Mars may cost travelers wishing to migrate from Earth in a chat with Chris Anderson, the head of TED conferences, released Monday. Musk said the price would be set in part by economics, but that it would have to be low enough for at least a million people to be able to afford the journey in order for his new city on the moon to be populated. Apparently, $100,000 is “cheap” enough in his perspective to make the trip possible for everybody.
“If relocating to Mars costs $100,000, for example,” Musk added, “I believe practically everybody can work and save and ultimately have $100,000 and be able to travel to Mars if they choose.” “We want to make it accessible to everybody who wants to attend,” said the group. $100,000 is not a quantity of money that “nearly everyone” can save up with relative ease, as should be obvious. (The claim that it seems very “I mean, it’s only one banana, Michael, what could it cost?”) $10?“)
For starters, according to a poll conducted in 2021, one out of every four Americans has no savings at all, and 51% have barely saved enough money to cover three months’ worth of bills or less. There are much more people living paycheck to paycheck than Musk thinks — and that doesn’t include those who don’t have a job at all and are scrambling to find food or shelter.
Musk also said that individuals might sell their houses on Earth and use the proceeds to pay for their trip to Mars, but even that is dependent on the incorrect premise that the typical person owns a property.
Is it really feasible that Musk thinks that the ordinary individual has six-figure savings account that they can use to relocate to a new planet rather than helping to cure the one we’re actively destroying? Is this why, despite having enough money to eradicate global hunger on his own, he has decided not to? When this person learns that poverty exists, he’ll be so humiliated that he wasted so much time building imaginary Martian cities instead of utilizing part of his incomprehensibly massive money to assist people on Earth.
Source: InsideHook