{"id":236857,"date":"2026-01-09T23:22:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T23:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/236857\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T23:22:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T23:22:07","slug":"worlds-richest-man-says-dont-bother-saving-for-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/236857\/","title":{"rendered":"World’s Richest Man Says Don’t Bother Saving for Retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk, who just went to court to fight for a $139 billion compensation package<\/a> despite already being worth an estimated $700 billion<\/a>, says you shouldn\u2019t worry your pretty little head about saving your own money. In an appearance on the podcast Moonshots with Peter Diamandis, the world\u2019s richest man told listeners, \u201cOne side recommendation I have is: Don\u2019t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years. It won\u2019t matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s theory is basically that AI will become so capable that it\u2019ll drop the cost of everything so much that money won\u2019t really matter. Everyone will have \u201cuniversal high income.\u201d Diamandis, arguably best known in recent years as the guy who hosted a $30,000 per seat event in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic that resulted in the majority of attendees getting infected<\/a>, hopped on the hype train, too, explaining that he believes that AI will ultimately lead to \u201cbasically demonetizing everything\u201d because \u201cthe cost of labor has gone to nothing, the cost of intelligence has gone to nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diamandis, managing to at least keep a toe on the ground despite the amount of hot air filling his head, did acknowledge that this future of basically unlimited profitability for corporations only works if people still have money to buy things. So how does that money end up in people\u2019s pockets if we\u2019ve removed them from the labor pool?<\/p>\n

The host asked Musk, \u201cIs that [corporate profitability] then taxed by the government and redistributed as some level of income as [universal high income] or [universal basic income]?\u201d Musk hemmed and hawed for a moment, seemingly unwilling to acknowledge any role for the government in such a scenario. Instead, he pivoted to his pitch that you shouldn\u2019t bother saving for retirement.<\/p>\n

That response produced an uncomfortable pause in the conversation, presumably because Diamandis is less enthusiastic about telling his audience to YOLO all their money on the promise of discovering an infinite money glitch.\u00a0\u201cIf any of the things that we\u2019ve said are true, saving for retirement will be irrelevant,\u201d Musk said while Diamandis tried to wrap his mind around it.<\/p>\n

Once he finally processed Musk\u2019s \u201csaving your money is pointless\u201d pitch, Diamandis seemingly suggested Musk\u2019s vision could work because \u201cThe services will be there to support you. You\u2019ll have the home, you\u2019ll have the healthcare, you\u2019ll have the entertainment.\u201d He then asked Musk how far we are from the singularity, because that is what needs to be achieved to make this future a reality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re in the singularity,\u201d Musk said, before adding, \u201cWe\u2019re at the top of the roller coaster, and it\u2019s about to go down,\u201d apparently unaware of what that analogy actually suggests. \u201cI think we\u2019ll hit [artificial general intelligence] next year in \u201926,\u201d Musk said, \u201cI\u2019m confident by 2030, AI will exceed the intelligence of all humans combined.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk has been on this for a bit with AGI, the ill-defined idea best summarized as a hypothetical AI capable of matching and surpassing the cognitive abilities of humans. Last month, he started floating the idea that his company, xAI, will crack AGI in 2026<\/a>. Of course, in 2024, he claimed<\/a> that AGI would be achieved in 2025, and in 2023, he was calling for a pause<\/a> in the development of AI, so we wouldn\u2019t hit AGI because of the existential risks it would pose. So, you know, take his view of the whole thing with a grain of salt. Musk\u2019s predictions<\/a> are historically indicative of one thing, which is that he needs more money, and making an outlandish and unlikely claim will result in more people throwing cash at him for fear of missing out.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing with Musk\u2019s pitch not to save cash for when you\u2019re unable to work: other than theoretically shrinking your spending power in the present, there\u2019s really no harm to putting money away. If his prediction comes true, you\u2019ll have access to everything you need, including the luxuries you didn\u2019t buy before. If it doesn\u2019t, you\u2019ll have savings to draw from. There is active harm in listening to him if he\u2019s wrong. This is the same guy who called Social Security, a social insurance program that has kept more than two-thirds of our seniors out of poverty in retirement<\/a>, a Ponzi scheme, and pushed to cut it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So in Musk\u2019s ideal future, you have no savings, there is no social safety net, and he continues to be the world\u2019s richest man. And maybe he\u2019ll support some effort to give you some money so you can keep buying his stuff\u2014as long as it\u2019s not done by increasing taxes and redistributing wealth. Pretty sweet gig for him. Good luck to the rest of us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Elon Musk, who just went to court to fight for a $139 billion compensation package despite already being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[79951,218,72,605,176,61,60,174,175,1611,17706],"class_list":{"0":"post-236857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-abundance","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-elon-musk","12":"tag-finance","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-personal-finance","16":"tag-personalfinance","17":"tag-retirement","18":"tag-universal-basic-income"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}