Elon Musk Wants Proof $6 Billion Can Solve World Hunger

(Bloomberg) -- 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 $6 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. 

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.

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