Elon Musk Claims He’s Currently Without A Home And Couch Surfs With Friends
Elon Musk is back again to claim that he’s “homeless and crashes on a variety of friends’ couches, and it sounds about as dubious as Elon’s plans to own Twitter. But according to Elon, you can’t hate him for being a billionaire, because he doesn’t even live that billionaire lifestyle. In fact, he’s living more of a “This is awkward, but can I borrow $20 for pizza?” lifestyle.
If there’s anything Elon Musk loves more than making people cringe, it’s pretending he’s not as rich as he obviously is. Last year, Elon moved to Texas, the new home base for Tesla, and he claimed that after selling everything he owned, he moved into a modest $50,000 box house that he rents from SpaceX, and claimed the only other home he owned was one in the San Francisco Bay Area. A stark contrast to the fact that Elon has been named the richest man in the world, a title he passes back and forth with a few other billionaires, like Jeff Bezos, and his net worth is a reported $265 billion. Forgive me, I just vomited my $2.99 store brand knock-off Honey Nut Cheerios into my mouth. Needless to say, you don’t have to look very hard to find someone who doesn’t think Elon deserved even half of the billions of dollars attached to his name. You could spend even less time looking for people who don’t believe a person can “earn” a billion dollars.
All this was presented to Elon Musk during a recent TED interview with Chris Anderson, to promote Tesla’s new Gigafactory in Texas. Chris noted that there are many people who “can’t stand this world of billionaires,” and that it can be hugely offensive that one man can have the same wealth as a billion or more of the world’s poorest people. If you’re one of those people, please don’t lump poor Elon Musk into that group of disgusting wealth hoarders, okay? Please! He’s not like that! He is practically living at a level of poverty seen only by those who use frayed ropes as belts and eat soup out of a tin can while checking that a stray dog hasn’t suddenly stolen their precious polka dot hanky bindle. via Complex:
“I don’t even own a place right now, I’m literally staying at friends’ places, Musk said. “If I travel to the Bay Area, which is where most of Tesla’s engineering is, I basically rotate through friends’ spare bedrooms.” The revelation from the Tesla and SpaceX CEO comes after Anderson asked him about the general disdain that people have for billionaires like himself.
The richest person in the world said that he doesn’t have the same frivolous spending habits as those in the same tax bracket as him, claiming his biggest purchase was a plane that he uses because without it, he “would have less hours to work.”
You can watch Elon attempt to convince the poors he’s just like them at the 1:00:37 mark. And how convincingly he does it! I bet if you check that suit, there’s probably still a Savers Thrift Store 50% discount days tag attached to the sleeve, right next to a stain from a recently-devoured can of soup.
As Elon claims, you can’t fault him for flying a private jet, because that’s something he needs to do business more efficiently. Some might argue that using a private jet with such frequency as Elon Musk does is kind of the definition of a billionaire move. But forget about the plane, everything else Elon does is pure thrift and frugality. Like how this father of seven kids claims now that he has no house to his name, and that if he wants to catch some Zzzzs, he better text a friend with a spare room and a blanket first, and beg for the WiFi password so he can update his memes on Twitter. Okay. I’m not calling him a liar. But I am saying that Elon’s back should be studied by science. Because Elon Musk is 50 years old. I’m not close to 50, but if I spent that much time surfing couches, my only interviews would be with a physiotherapist, and the only usable quote would be me screaming, “Ow ow ow my fucking back! All parts! Upper and lower!”
Pic: YouTube