Bloomberg reports that 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 is asking billionaires like Musk to “step up now, on a one-time basis.”
Beasley specifically called for action from Musk and Amazon 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 the billionaires index.
