World’s richest man, Elon Musk, says he will sell his Tesla stock if the UN could prove that $6 billion would help solve world hunger crisis.
Gatekeepers News reports that world’s richest man, Elon Musk, says he would sell Tesla stock and donate the proceeds to the UN once they can prove that just a tiny percentage of his wealth could save tens of millions of the world’s population from dying of hunger.
Musk said this in response to comments by David Beasley, the director of UN’s World Food Programme. Beasley spoke to CNN’s “Connect the World” last week and hinted that a $6 billion donations from billionaires such as Musk and Jeff Bezos could help 42 million people he said were “literally going to die if we don’t reach them.”
Musk is currently the world’s richest man and recently became the first in the Bloomberg Billionaires index to have an estimated net worth of $300 billion.
At the moment, the Tesla CEO’s net worth is listed at $311 billion. This means that $6 billion amounts to 2% of his wealth. Even with such a donation, Musk would remain at least $100 billion above the second richest person, Jeff Bezos.
Musk is however challenging the claim that the specific amount will solve the hunger crisis. In a tweet, Musk said that if the World Food Programme could show its math then he would “sell Tesla stock right now and do it.” He equally demanded open source accounting on how the money would be spent.
In his response, Beasley tweeted “I can assure you that we have the system in place for transparency and open source accounting. Your team can work with us to be totally confident of such.”
He went on to clarify that the UN World Food Programme had never said $6 billion would “solve World hunger,” which is the wording of Musk on Twitter. “This is a one-time donation to save 42 million lives during this unprecedented hunger crisis. ” he tweeted.
Beasley has repeatedly asked billionaires to step up to address world hunger.
“It’s not complicated, I am not asking them to do this every day, every week, every year.” Beasley said in the CNN interview.
“The top 400 billionaires in the US, the net worth increase was $1.8 trillion in the past year,” he continued.
“All I am asking for is .36% of your net worth increase. I am for people making money, but God knows I am all for you helping people who are in great need right now. The world is in trouble,” he said.
