By Leslie Albrecht
The Tesla CEO is currently worth an estimated $179.5 billion.
When you’ve got more money than you know what to do with, giving some of it away to help other people seems like a no-brainer.
Elon Musk would beg to differ. “It is very hard to donate money,” Musk said in a May 7 tweet. The full quote, which appeared to be missing a couple of words, was, “It is very hard to donate money if you [care] about it doing actual good [and] not merely the appearance of it.”
Musk’s wealth has taken some hits recently, but he’s still the second richest man in the world, with an estimated $179.5 billion net worth. He’s far from the first extremely wealthy person to complain about how hard it is to give money away. Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos made a similar lament when he announced his intention to give most of his fortune to charity in 2022.
Wealthy people have made this observation dating back at least to the Gilded Age steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, who said in 1895 that “the path of the philanthropist is difficult” and “how to do genuine good and not mischief by the giving of money is one of the most difficult problems with which man has to deal,” according to philanthropy scholar Ben Soskis of the Urban Institute. (Adjusting for inflation, Carnegie was worth more than $300 billion at the peak of his wealth.)
Wealthy donors sometimes talk about the burden of giving away money because, they say, they feel a responsibility not to waste their money on ineffective solutions to society’s problems. Critics say that wealthy people use the “difficulty” excuse to justify being too slow, and overly methodical when they give out money.
Musk also wrote in the same tweet, “I’m always looking [for] ways to donate money that are actually good.”
Musk has publicly promised to give away most of his money either in his lifetime or in his will, but his charitable giving appears to have taken a backseat to priorities like running the electric vehicle company Tesla (TSLA), founding the space rocket company SpaceX, and acquiring Twitter.
While some billionaires announce their charitable giving on social media or in other public forums, Musk is comparatively quiet about his charity, though he occasionally tweets about his donations.
He donated 12 million shares of Tesla stock to charity in 2022 (worth $2.42 billion at the time he disclosed it), but didn’t say where exactly the money went. In 2021, he gave $5.7 billion worth of Tesla stock to his personal foundation. The foundation supports renewable-energy research and advocacy; human space exploration research and advocacy; pediatric research; science and engineering education; and development of safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity, according to its bare-bones website. The foundation made $23 million in grants in 2020, according to its latest tax filing.
Musk has said that he considers his businesses to be a form of philanthropy, because, according to him, they exist to help humanity. “SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and The Boring Company are philanthropy,” Musk said in an interview with Chris Anderson, head of TED Talks. “If you say philanthropy is love of humanity, they are philanthropy. Tesla is accelerating sustainable energy. This is philanthropy. SpaceX is trying to ensure the long-term survival of humanity with multi-planet species. This is love of humanity.”
Another reason wealthy people sometimes struggle to give away their money: their fortunes often grow faster than they can give it away. Many of the billionaires who signed the Giving Pledge, and pledged to give away most of their wealth found themselves even richer in the years that followed, thanks to the breakneck pace of wealth creation.
Tesla shares are up 39% since the start of this year, compared to a 1.4% gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and a 17% gain for the Nasdaq Composite Index and a 7.7% increase for the S&P 500 .
-Leslie Albrecht
This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
05-09-23 0907ET
Copyright (c) 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Credit:Source link
