Recommendations of the Editorial team
Elon Musk is reportedly on the verge of becoming a trillionaire – and Jimmy Kimmel is anything but convinced that Musk is the right person for this windfall.
“Tomorrow, SpaceX will reportedly launch the largest IPO in history,” Kimmel said, explaining that it would make the company publicly traded. “And once SpaceX makes this move, Elon Musk is expected to become the first trillionaire in the history of the world. What makes this even more disturbing is that this man, our first trillionaire, the richest person in the world, is also one of the strangest people to ever walk the planet.”
He added: “This obscenely rich weirdo has the ability and means to blow up the moon if he wants to. And also to put a lot of other people’s money in his own pocket.”
SpaceX IPO and retirement planning
The presenter pointed out that SpaceX stock would automatically flow into many 401K retirement accounts because of its high valuation, which “could be very risky for retirement accounts because SpaceX doesn’t make money.” “The company lost $5 billion last year,” he said.
Kimmel added that Musk himself told people they didn’t need to save for retirement because the robots he was selling would take care of everything. “Essentially, this maneuver could make Elon a trillionaire and your parents Walmart greeters,” Kimmel said. “Shouldn’t he be going to Mars? Can’t we combine to make it go faster?”
He acknowledged that it would be difficult to “capture” a trillion dollars in one’s mind. “We know a trillion is a number, but it’s so big,” Kimmel said. “We can’t imagine them. Just like we know Elon has lots of children – but we can’t imagine him ever having sex.”
What a trillion could buy
He calculated: “With that money, Elon could buy all the NFL teams and still have $773 billion left. He could use that to buy all 30 Major League Baseball teams, every NBA team, every Wendy’s, every Target store, the entire Beatles music catalog. He could buy Nike, Macy’s and every Hyundai Elantra ever made. And still have $260 billion left.”
Kimmel concluded that Musk, who came to the U.S. from South Africa and doesn’t pay his share of income taxes, “seems like a heck of an immigrant stealing from us.”