When you think of Elon Musk, the image of a tech titan, the world's richest man, likely comes to mind. But here's a little-known fact: Elon Musk wasn't always living in the lap of luxury. Before the SpaceX rockets, Tesla cars, and solar panels, a young man was scraping by on just $1 a day. Yes, you ...
The headline and article seems to be hugely misleading. According to this article, the $1 was only for food and he did it as a challenge, not out of necessity.
For how long though? Because I can survive for a week or so on zero dollars a day, by fasting and foraging for dandion greens and citrus fruit from trees in public places. Longer than 2 weeks and my body would start to fail, but Id survive, technically, for a while longer.
I too lived on a dollar or less a day before becoming the lower middle class person I am today. It's easy when your parents buy everything for you and you don't have expenses.
Came here to say this. It's also remarkably easy to mooch off extended family, friends, even strangers. People usually feed their couch-surfer guests as well, who knew?
Exactly. Didn't he come over for college? So he lived in a dorm (paid for by dad), had a full meal plan (paid for by dad), all his school, clothing, and insurance were taken care of... that just leaves the pack of chewing gum he bought every morning on his way to class. Pretty easy!
If this is a real writer and not AI generated content (with a fake public profile), it's a college student doing intern work writing articles on topics she is given.
Rent: 22¢ (couch split w/ 44 friends)
Breakfast: 11¢ (2 eggs)
.......... 1¢ (electricity borrowed from neighbor)
.......... Free (skillet found in street)
Gym membership: Free (lifting rocks)
Commute: 4¢ (walking in two used Kleenex boxes for shoes)
Lunch: 30¢ (cup filled with ketchup from Wendy's pump)
Commute home: 20¢ (walk on hands, use bandaid for blisters)
Clothes: 16¢ (Scotch tape for holding together discarded pizza boxes)
Who is his audience when he tells lies like this? Like, who is agreeing with him? Even beyond how bonkers it is to say out loud, it also doesn’t benefit him to further alienate himself from the world, does it?
I can only imagine it's rich people who use this argument to try to justify hoarding wealth. After all, minimum wage is $7/hour, so these lazy bums only have to work one hour a week to live and they're still complaining? They can easily save money every week. It's their problem, not the person with billions of dollars.
Crazy right wingers who go "Obviously we need to cut welfare so this genius doesn't have to pay taxes! Then one day I will be just as rich as him and be glad I didn't make people as rich as him and future-me pay taxes!"
"That'll show those poor!"
"Why are you cheering? You're not rich."
"True, but someday, I might be. And then people like me had better watch their step!"
the entire article is a litany of musk’s lies. even if the $1 a day part is a stretch (because it’s in reference to food), the words straight from the horses mouth are blatantly untrue.
where is the irony? do you believe everything he says in the article?
As long as you aren't sleeping in your bed when the police get the wrong address, or sleeping in an encampment when the police decide to steal all your belongings for living while poor, or kicked out of the library for not having access to a bathroom, or finding yourself in a grocer, mall, concert hall, theatre, school, etc on a day a shooter decides to show up.
Also you can't survive on $1 per day without someone caring for you. That will not keep you off the streets and fed, and it will most definitely not cover fees for access to self improvement resources or recovery.
I mean, this story is obviously bullshit and has been debunked over the years.
Not to mention even on its face, the headline is just wrong.
Elon states he had an apartment, but also implies he lived in his office, coding 24/7.
So... he had an apartment and is exaggerating about how often he stayed late.
How much did that apartment cost?
???
Did he just walk to work?
Was he working but not earning a wage?
This is a total bullshit article even by its own text.
Maybe his food budget was about a dollar a day for a while. Sure, ok, that's maybe possible.
This is like those stories that were going around a while ago with various corporations just displaying absolutely absurd budgets for how a person could afford to live on their full time minimum low income job...
By assuming rent is 40% lower than it is, that they don't have to pay for car insurance, never have health problems, never need new clothes, barely eat and don't have a phone or internet plan.
I get that it's nice to imagine, but no, he really fucking isn't, and not just because he never was on that income level, but because he is so obscenely rich, that even if all his current ventures fail spectacularly, he has enough to fall back on a few million times over.
You assume he'd act rationally and invest in even more ridiculous wasted of money...
He's not smart enough to keep a backup, because even if it's just a million, he'll think he can turn it into a billion.
As rich as he is, he'll live another 40 years. More than enough time to burn all his money. Don't forget everything is leveraged against each other, his money is built on stock prices, and he's picking a fight with Brazil while using a shit ton of drugs
If Space X loses it's governments contracts, literally everything would go up in smoke and he'd desperately try to make what he lost back.