Elon Musk: “What matters is not your net worth, but your usefulness to the economy.”

Elon Musk: What matters is not whether you have a high net worth, but whether you are useful to the economy.

“A lot of the push for higher government involvement and expropriation of assets by the government is really pushed by a bunch of politicians who are actually saying that resources shouldn't be in control of people, of private individuals, they should be in control of the government. They're basically saying they want control of the assets.

I think in terms of things that people should perhaps get upset about is excess consumption, if somebody's just wasting money on personal luxuries in a crazy way.

I'm not Warren Buffett's biggest fan, frankly, but he sits there and he reads all these annual reports which are super boring. Does anybody want that job? I think most people do not. I don't want that job. But he's not engaged in insane conspicuous consumption. So you have to say, okay, sure, he's got a high net worth, but he's doing a useful job for the economy, and he's very skilled at it and should probably keep doing it.”

TIME Person of the Year Interview, December 13, 2021