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Capitalism
is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for-profit. In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investment are determined by the owners of the means of production in financial and capital markets, whereas prices and the distribution of goods and services are mainly determined by competition in goods and services markets.


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Capitalism including As Practiced In a Democracy
YouTube Video: "Stock market for beginners" - Advice by Warren Buffet
​Pictured: The New York Stock Exchange

Capitalism

 An economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit.

Characteristics central to capitalism include, 
In a capitalist market economy, decision-making and investment is determined by the owners of the factors of production in financial and capital markets, and prices and the distribution of goods are mainly determined by competition in the market.

Economists, political economists, and historians have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include,
Different forms of capitalism feature varying degrees of free markets, public ownership, obstacles to free competition, and state-sanctioned social policies.

The degree of competition in markets, the role of intervention and regulation, and the scope of state ownership vary across different models of capitalism; the extent to which different markets are free, as well as the rules defining private property, are matters of politics and of policy.

Most existing capitalist economies are mixed economies, which combine elements of free markets with state intervention, and in some cases, with economic planning.

Capitalism has existed under many forms of government, in many different times, places, and cultures. Following the decline of mercantilism, mixed capitalist systems became dominant in the Western world and continue to spread.


Democratic Capitalism:

It is also known as a capitalist democracy, is a political, economic and social ideology that involves the combination of a democratic political system with a capitalist economic system.

It is based on a tripartite arrangement of a private sector-driven market economy based predominantly on a democratic policy, economic incentives through free markets, fiscal responsibility and a liberal moral-cultural system which encourages pluralism. 

This ideology supports a capitalist economy subject to control by a democratic political system that is supported by the majority. It stands in contrast to authoritarian capitalism by limiting the influence of special interest groups, including corporate lobbyists, on politics.

It is argued that the coexistence of modern capitalism and democracy was the result of the creation of the modern welfare state in the post-war period, which enabled a relatively stable political atmosphere and widespread support for capitalism. This period of history is often referred to as the "Golden Age of Capitalism".

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Comparison of Free Trade vs. Fair Trade as Practiced in the United States and featuring The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
YouTube Video: Milton Friedman - Free Trade Vs Protectionism​
Pictured: Comparison of issues of Fair Trade vs. Free Trade ("Conventional Trade")

Free trade is a policy followed by some international markets in which countries' governments do not restrict imports from, or exports to, other countries. Free trade is exemplified by the European Economic Area and the North American Free Trade Agreement, which have established open markets.

Most nations are today members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) multilateral trade agreements. However, most governments still impose some protectionist policies that are intended to support local employment, such as applying tariffs to imports or subsidies to exports. Governments may also restrict free trade to limit exports of natural resources. Other barriers that may hinder trade include import quotas, taxes, and non-tariff barriers, such as regulatory legislation.

Free trade policies generally promote the following features:
  • Trade of goods without taxes (including tariffs) or other trade barriers (e.g., quotas on imports or subsidies for producers)
  • Trade in services without taxes or other trade barriers
  • The absence of "trade-distorting" policies (such as taxes, subsidies, regulations, or laws) that give some firms, households, or factors of production an advantage over others
  • Unregulated access to markets
  • Unregulated access to market information
  • Inability of firms to distort markets through government-imposed monopoly or oligopoly power
  • Trade agreements which encourage free trade.

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Fair trade is a social movement whose stated goal is to help producers in developing countries achieve better trading conditions and to promote sustainability. Members of the movement advocate the payment of higher prices to exporters, as well as improved social and environmental standards.

The movement focuses in particular on commodities, or products which are typically exported from developing countries to developed countries, but also consumed in domestic markets (e.g. Brazil, India and Bangladesh) most notably handicrafts, coffee, cocoa, wine, fresh fruit, chocolate, flowers and gold.

The movement seeks to promote greater equity in international trading partnerships through dialogue, transparency, and respect. It promotes sustainable development by offering better trading conditions to, and securing the rights of, marginalized producers and workers in developing countries. 

Fair trade is grounded in three core beliefs; first, producers have the power to express unity with consumers. Secondly, the world trade practices that currently exist promote the unequal distribution of wealth between nations. Lastly, buying products from producers in developing countries at a fair price is a more efficient way of promoting sustainable development than traditional charity and aid.

Fair trade labeling organizations most commonly use a definition of fair trade developed by FINE, an informal association of four international fair trade networks: 
Specifically, fair trade is a trading partnership, based on dialogue, transparency, and respect, that seeks greater equity in international trade. Fair trade organizations, backed by consumers, are engaged actively in supporting producers, awareness raising, and in campaigning for changes in the rules and practice of conventional international trade.

There are several recognized fair trade certifiers, including Fairtrade International (formerly called FLO, Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International), IMO, Make Trade Fair and Eco-Social.

Additionally, Fair Trade USA, formerly a licensing agency for the Fairtrade International label, broke from the system and is implementing its own fair trade labelling scheme, which has resulted in controversy due to its inclusion of independent smallholders and estates for all crops. In 2008, Fairtrade International certified approximately (€3.4B) of products.

The World Trade Organization publishes annual figures on the world trade of goods and services.

In 2011, over 1.2 million farmers and workers in more than 60 countries participated in Fairtrade International's fair trade system, which included €65 million in fairtrade premium paid to producers for use developing their communities. According to Fairtrade International, nearly six out of ten consumers have seen the Fairtrade mark and almost nine in ten of them trust it.

Some criticisms have been raised about fair trade systems. One 2015 study in a journal published by the MIT Press concluded that producer benefits were close to zero because there was an oversupply of certification, and only a fraction of produce classified as fair trade was actually sold on fair trade markets, just enough to recoup the costs of certification.

Some research indicates that the implementation of certain fair trade standards can cause greater inequalities in some markets where these rigid rules are inappropriate for the specific market. In the Fair trade debate there are complaints of failure to enforce the fair trade standards, with producers, cooperatives, importers and packers profiting by evading them.

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North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America.

The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. It superseded the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement between the U.S. and Canada.

NAFTA has two supplements: the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) and the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC).

Following diplomatic negotiations dating back to 1990 among the three nations, U.S. President George H. W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Mexican President Carlos Salinas, each responsible for spearheading and promoting the agreement, ceremonially signed the agreement in their respective capitals on December 17, 1992.The signed agreement then needed to be ratified by each nation's legislative or parliamentary branch.

In the U.S., Bush, who had worked to "fast track" the signing prior to the end of his term, ran out of time and had to pass the required ratification and signing of the implementation law to incoming president Bill Clinton. Prior to sending it to the United States Senate Clinton added two side agreements, The North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC) and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), to protect workers and the environment, plus allay the concerns of many House members. 

After much consideration and emotional discussion, the House of Representatives passed the North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act on November 17, 1993, 234-200. The agreement's supporters included 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats. The bill passed the Senate on November 20, 1993, 61-38. 

Senate supporters were 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats. Clinton signed it into law on December 8, 1993; the agreement went into effect on January 1, 1994. Clinton, while signing the NAFTA bill, stated that "NAFTA means jobs. American jobs, and good-paying American jobs. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't support this agreement."

Provisions:

The goal of NAFTA was to eliminate barriers to trade and investment between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The implementation of NAFTA on January 1, 1994 brought the immediate elimination of tariffs on more than one-half of Mexico's exports to the U.S. and more than one-third of U.S. exports to Mexico.

Within 10 years of the implementation of the agreement, all U.S.-Mexico tariffs would be eliminated except for some U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico that were to be phased out within 15 years. Most U.S.-Canada trade was already duty-free. NAFTA also sought to eliminate non-tariff trade barriers and to protect the intellectual property rights on traded products.

Chapter 52 provides a procedure for the international resolution of disputes over the application and interpretation of NAFTA. It was modelled after Chapter 69 of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement.


Intellectual property:

The North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act made some changes to the copyright law of the United States, foreshadowing the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994 by restoring copyright (within the NAFTA nations) on certain motion pictures which had entered the public domain.


Environment: 

Securing U.S. congressional approval for NAFTA would have been impossible without addressing public concerns about NAFTA’s environmental impact. 

The Clinton administration negotiated a side agreement on the environment with Canada and Mexico, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC), which led to the creation of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) in 1994.

To alleviate concerns that NAFTA, the first regional trade agreement between a developing country and two developed countries, would have negative environmental impacts, the CEC was given a mandate to conduct ongoing ex post environmental assessment of NAFTA.

In response to this mandate, the CEC created a framework for conducting environmental analysis of NAFTA, one of the first ex post frameworks for the environmental assessment of trade liberalization. The framework was designed to produce a focused and systematic body of evidence with respect to the initial hypotheses about NAFTA and the environment, such as the concern that NAFTA would create a "race to the bottom" in environmental regulation among the three countries, or the hope that NAFTA would pressure governments to increase their environmental protection mechanisms. 

The CEC has held four symposia using this framework to evaluate the environmental impacts of NAFTA and has commissioned 47 papers on this subject. In keeping with the CEC’s overall strategy of transparency and public involvement, the CEC commissioned these papers from leading independent experts.


Agriculture: 

From the earliest negotiation, agriculture was (and still remains) a controversial topic within NAFTA, as it has been with almost all free trade agreements that have been signed within the WTO framework.

Agriculture is the only section that was not negotiated trilaterally; instead, three separate agreements were signed between each pair of parties. The Canada–U.S. agreement contains significant restrictions and tariff quotas on agricultural products (mainly sugar, dairy, and poultry products), whereas the Mexico–U.S. pact allows for a wider liberalization within a framework of phase-out periods (it was the first North–South FTA on agriculture to be signed).


Transportation infrastructure: 

NAFTA established the CANAMEX Corridor for road transport between Canada and Mexico, also proposed for use by rail, pipeline, and fiber optic telecommunications infrastructure. This became a High Priority Corridor under the U.S. Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991.


Impact on the United States:

NAFTA's effects, both positive and negative, have been quantified by several economists, whose findings have been reported in publications such as the World Bank's Lessons from NAFTA for Latin America and the Caribbean, NAFTA's Impact on North America, and NAFTA Revisited by the Institute for International Economics.

In a 2012 survey of leading economists, 95% supported the notion that on average, U.S. citizens benefited on NAFTA. A 2001 Journal of Economic Perspectives review found that NAFTA was a net benefit to the United States. A 2015 study found that US welfare increased by 0.08% as a result of the NAFTA tariff reductions, and that US intra-bloc trade increased by 41%.

In 2015, the Congressional Research Service concluded that the "net overall effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest, primarily because trade with Canada and Mexico accounts for a small percentage of U.S. GDP. However, there were worker and firm adjustment costs as the three countries adjusted to more open trade and investment among their economies."
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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce credits NAFTA with increasing U.S. trade in goods and services with Canada and Mexico from $337 billion in 1993 to $1.2 trillion in 2011, while the AFL-CIO blames the agreement for sending 700,000 American manufacturing jobs to Mexico over that time.


Trade balances:

The U.S. had a trade surplus with NAFTA countries of $28.3 billion for services in 2009 and a trade deficit of $94.6 billion (36.4% annual increase) for goods in 2010. This trade deficit accounted for 26.8 percent of all U.S. goods trade deficit.

In a study published in the August 2008 issue of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, NAFTA has increased U.S. agricultural exports to Mexico and Canada even though most of this increase occurred a decade after its ratification.

The study focused on the effects that gradual "phase-in" periods in regional trade agreements, including NAFTA, have on trade flows. Most of the increase in members’ agricultural trade, which was only recently brought under the purview of the World Trade Organization, was due to very high trade barriers before NAFTA or other regional trade agreements.


Investment:

The U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) in NAFTA countries (stock) was $327.5 billion in 2009 (latest data available), up 8.8% from 2008. The U.S. direct investment in NAFTA countries is in non-bank holding companies, and in the manufacturing, finance/insurance, and mining sectors. The foreign direct investment of Canada and Mexico in the United States (stock) was $237.2 billion in 2009 (the latest data available), up 16.5% from 2008.


Jobs:

Many American small businesses depend on exporting their products to Canada or Mexico under NAFTA. According to the U.S. Trade Representative, this trade supports over 140,000 small- and medium-sized businesses in the US.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, California, Texas, Michigan and other states with high concentrations of manufacturing jobs were most affected by job loss due to NAFTA.  EPI economist Robert Scott estimates some 682,900 U.S. jobs have been "lost or displaced" as a result of the trade agreement.


Environment:

For more details on this topic, see NAFTA's Impact on the Environment.

​According to the Sierra Club, NAFTA contributed to large-scale, export-oriented farming, which led to the increased use of fossil fuels, pesticides and GMO. NAFTA also contributed to environmentally destructive mining practices in Mexico. It prevented Canada from effectively regulating its tar sands industry, and created new legal avenues for transnational corporations to fight environmental legislation.

In some cases, environmental policy was neglected in the wake of trade liberalization; in other cases, NAFTA's measures for investment protection, such as Chapter 11, and measures against non-tariff trade barriers threatened to discourage more vigorous environmental policy. 

​The most serious overall increases in pollution due to NAFTA were found in the base metals sector, the Mexican petroleum sector, and the transportation equipment sector in the United States and Mexico, but not in Canada.


Impact on Migration to and from the United States:

According to the Department of Homeland Security Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, during fiscal year 2006 (i.e., October 2005 through September 2006), 73,880 foreign professionals (64,633 Canadians and 9,247 Mexicans) were admitted into the United States for temporary employment under NAFTA (i.e., in the TN status).

Additionally, 17,321 of their family members (13,136 Canadians, 2,904 Mexicans, as well as a number of third-country nationals married to Canadians and Mexicans) entered the U.S. in the treaty national's dependent (TD) status.

Because DHS counts the number of the new I-94 arrival records filled at the border, and the TN-1 admission is valid for three years, the number of non-immigrants in TN status present in the U.S. at the end of the fiscal year is approximately equal to the number of admissions during the year. (A discrepancy may be caused by some TN entrants leaving the country or changing status before their three-year admission period has expired, while other immigrants admitted earlier may change their status to TN or TD, or extend TN status granted earlier).

Acording to the International Organization for Migration, deaths of migrants have been on the rise worldwide with 5,604 deaths in 2016.

Canadian authorities estimated that, as of December 1, 2006, a total of 24,830 U.S. citizens and 15,219 Mexican citizens were present in Canada as "foreign workers". These numbers include both entrants under the NAFTA agreement and those who have entered under other provisions of the Canadian immigration law.

New entries of foreign workers in 2006 were 16,841 (U.S. citizens) and 13,933 (Mexicans). Nevertheless, the institutional frameworks of the cross-border migrations are weak, so as the institutional roles and responsibilities at both in the national and international levels 

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Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder
Click on Video for Jeff Bezos on "What matters more than your talents" TED

​Jeffrey Preston Bezos (né Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American technology and retail entrepreneur, investor, electrical engineer, computer scientist, and philanthropist, best known as the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Amazon.com, the world's largest online shopping retailer.

The company began as an Internet merchant of books and expanded to a wide variety of products and services, most recently video and audio streaming. Amazon.com is currently the world's largest Internet sales company on the World Wide Web, as well as the world's largest provider of cloud infrastructure services, which is available through its Amazon Web Services arm.

Bezos' other diversified business interests include aerospace and newspapers. He is the founder and manufacturer of Blue Origin (founded in 2000) with test flights to space which started in 2015, and plans for commercial suborbital human spaceflight beginning in 2018.

In 2013, Bezos purchased The Washington Post newspaper. A number of other business investments are managed through Bezos Expeditions.

When the financial markets opened on July 27, 2017, Bezos briefly surpassed Bill Gates on the Forbes list of billionaires to become the world's richest person, with an estimated net worth of just over $90 billion. He lost the title later in the day when Amazon's stock dropped, returning him to second place with a net worth just below $90 billion. 

On October 27, 2017, Bezos again surpassed Gates on the Forbes list as the richest person in the world. Bezos's net worth surpassed $100 billion for the first time on November 24, 2017 after Amazon's share price increased by more than 2.5%.

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Warren Buffett
YouTube Video of Warren Buffett: Advice For Entrepreneurs (2018)

Warren Edward Buffett (born August 30, 1930) is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist who serves as the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is considered one of the most successful investors in the world and has a net worth of $87.5 billion as of February 17, 2018, making him the third wealthiest person in the United States and in the world.

Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He developed an interest in business and investing in his youth, eventually entering the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1947 before transferring and graduating from University of Nebraska at the age of 19. He went on to graduate from Columbia Business School, where he molded his investment philosophy around the concept of value investing that was pioneered by Benjamin Graham.

Buffett attended New York Institute of Finance to focus his economics background and soon after began various business partnerships, including one with Graham. He created the Buffett Partnership after meeting Charlie Munger, and his firm eventually acquired a textile manufacturing firm called Berkshire Hathaway and assumed its name to create a diversified holding company.

Buffett has been the chairman and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway since 1970, and he has been referred to as the "Wizard", "Oracle", or "Sage" of Omaha by global media outlets. He is noted for his adherence to value investing and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth.

Buffett is a notable philanthropist, having pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune to philanthropic causes, primarily via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He founded The Giving Pledge in 2009 with Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, whereby billionaires pledge to give away at least half of their fortunes.

Buffett is also active contributing to political causes, having endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election; he has publicly opposed the policies, actions, and statements of the current U.S. president, Donald Trump.

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​Oprah Winfrey
YouTube Video of Oprah Winfrey's inspirational Women's Empowerment Speech*
* -- Oprah Winfrey delivered a rallying cry to women and hope for "a new day" when receiving the Cecile B. DeMille Award at the 2018 Golden Globes.
"O" Magazine by Oprah Winfrey
Pictured: LEFT: Oprah had a chance to do a rare interview with Queen Of Rock N’ Roll, Tina Turner. The interview aired on OWN TV. Tina discusses being raped by Ike Turner, her legacy, love at first sight, and finally retiring. RIGHT: Tom Cruise jumping up-and-down on the couch during his interview on the Oprah Winfrey television show.

Oprah Gail Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954) is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist.

She is best known for her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was the highest-rated television program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011.

Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she has been ranked the richest African-American, the greatest black philanthropist in American history, and is currently North America's first and only multi-billionaire black person.

Several assessments rank her as the most influential woman in the world. In 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama and honorary doctorate degrees from Duke and Harvard.

Winfrey was born into poverty in rural Mississippi to a teenage single mother and later raised in an inner-city Milwaukee neighborhood. She has stated that she was molested during her childhood and early teens and became pregnant at 14; her son died in infancy.

Sent to live with the man she calls her father, a barber in Tennessee, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co-anchoring the local evening news at the age of 19.

Her emotional ad-lib delivery eventually got her transferred to the daytime-talk-show arena, and after boosting a third-rated local Chicago talk show to first place, she launched her own production company and became internationally syndicated.

Credited with creating a more intimate confessional form of media communication, she is thought to have popularized and revolutionized the tabloid talk show genre pioneered by Phil Donahue, which a Yale study says broke 20th-century taboos and allowed LGBT people to enter the mainstream.

By the mid-1990s, she had reinvented her show with a focus on literature, self-improvement, and spirituality. Though criticized for unleashing a confession culture, promoting controversial self-help ideas, and an emotion-centered approach, she is often praised for overcoming adversity to become a benefactor to others.

From 2006 to 2008, Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Barack Obama, by one estimate, delivered over a million votes in the close 2008 Democratic primary race.

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​Howard Hughes
YouTube Video: The Story of Howard Hughes - Documentary Films
Pictured: Howard Hughes financial empire

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. (December 24, 1905 – April 5, 1976) was an American business tycoon, entrepreneur, investor, aviator, aerospace engineer, inventor, filmmaker and philanthropist. During his life, he was known as one of the most financially successful individuals in the world.

As a maverick film tycoon, Hughes gained prominence in Hollywood from the late 1920s, making big-budget and often controversial films like The Racket (1928), Hell's Angels (1930), Scarface (1932), and The Outlaw (1943).

Hughes formed the Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932, hiring numerous engineers and designers. He spent the rest of the 1930s setting multiple world air speed records and building the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 Hercules (now better known as the "Spruce Goose").

He also acquired and expanded Trans World Airlines (TWA, subsequently acquired by and merged with American Airlines) and later acquired Air West, renaming it Hughes Airwest. Hughes Airwest was eventually acquired by and merged into Republic Airlines.

Hughes was included in Flying Magazine's list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation, ranking at No. 25. 

He is remembered for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle in later life, caused in part by a worsening obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) and chronic pain. His legacy is maintained through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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George Soros, Billionaire and Philantropist
YouTube Video by George Soros: "We Are Repeating 2008"

George Soros, Hon FBA (born György Schwartz; August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist. As of February 2018, he had a net worth of $8 billion, after donating $18 billion to his philanthropic agency, Open Society Foundations.
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Born in Budapest, Soros survived Nazi Germany-occupied Hungary and immigrated to England in 1947 after Hungary was occupied by Soviet troops. He attended the London School of Economics, graduating with a bachelor's and eventually a master's degree in philosophy.

Soros began his business career by taking various jobs at merchant banks in England and then the United States, before starting his first hedge fund, Double Eagle, in 1969. Profits from his first fund furnished the seed money to start Soros Fund Management, his second hedge fund, in 1970.

Double Eagle was renamed to Quantum Fund and was the principal firm Soros advised. At its founding, Quantum Fund had $12 million in assets under management, and as of 2011 it had $25 billion, the majority of Soros's overall net worth.

Soros is known as "The Man Who Broke the Bank of England" because of his short sale of US$10 billion worth of pounds sterling, which made him a profit of $1 billion during the 1992 Black Wednesday UK currency crisis. 

Based on his early studies of philosophy, Soros formulated an application of Karl Popper's General Theory of Reflexivity to capital markets, which he claims renders him a clear picture of asset bubbles and fundamental/market value of securities, as well as value discrepancies used for shorting and swapping stocks.

Soros is a well-known supporter of progressive and liberal political causes, to which he dispenses donations through his foundation, the Open Society Foundations. Between 1979 and 2011, he donated more than $11 billion to various philanthropic causes; by 2017, his donations "on civil initiatives to reduce poverty and increase transparency, and on scholarships and universities around the world" totaled $12 billion. 

Soros influenced the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and provided one of Europe's largest higher education endowments to the Central European University in his Hungarian hometown. His extensive funding of political causes has made him a "bugaboo of European nationalists".

Numerous American conservatives have promoted false claims that characterize Soros as a singularly dangerous "puppetmaster" behind a variety of alleged global plots, with The New York Times reporting that by 2018 these claims had "moved from the fringes to the mainstream" of Republican politics.

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Keynesian Theory of Economics
YouTube Video: What is The Keynesian Theory?
Pictured below: Understanding the Economics of John Maynard Keynes

Keynesian economics are the various macroeconomic theories about how in the short run – and especially during recessions – economic output is strongly influenced by aggregate demand (total demand in the economy).

In the Keynesian view, aggregate demand does not necessarily equal the productive capacity of the economy; instead, it is influenced by a host of factors and sometimes behaves erratically, affecting production, employment, and inflation.

Keynesian economics developed during and after the Great Depression, from the ideas presented by John Maynard Keynes in his 1936 book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

Keynes contrasted his approach to the aggregate supply-focused classical economics that preceded his book. The interpretations of Keynes that followed are contentious and several schools of economic thought claim his legacy.

Keynesian economists generally argue that, as aggregate demand is volatile and unstable, a market economy will often experience inefficient macroeconomic outcomes in the form of economic recessions (when demand is low) and inflation (when demand is high). These can be mitigated by economic policy responses, in particular, monetary policy actions by the central bank and fiscal policy actions by the government, which can help stabilize output over the business cycle.

Keynesian economists generally advocate a managed market economy – predominantly private sector, but with an active role for government intervention during recessions and depressions.

Keynesian economics served as the standard economic model in the developed nations during the later part of the Great Depression, World War II, and the post-war economic expansion (1945–1973), though it lost some influence following the oil shock and resulting stagflation of the 1970s. The advent of the financial crisis of 2007–08 caused a resurgence in Keynesian thought, which continues as new Keynesian economics.

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Laissez-faire Capitalism
YouTube Video: Laissez Faire Capitalism Does Not Work
Pictured below: The Destructive Component in Capitalism’s ‘Creative Destruction’ Is Very High

Laissez-faire is an economic system in which transactions between private parties are free from government intervention such as regulation, privileges, tariffs and subsidies. The phrase laissez-faire is part of a larger French phrase and translates to "let (it/them) do", but in this context usually means "let go".

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Criticism of Capitalism
YouTube Video of the 1987 Movie "Wall Street": "Greed is Good"
Pictured below: Capitalism Doesn’t Work

Criticism of capitalism ranges from expressing disagreement with the principles of capitalism in its entirety to expressing disagreement with particular outcomes of capitalism.

Criticism of capitalism comes from various political and philosophical approaches, including anarchist, socialist, religious and nationalist viewpoints.

Some believe that capitalism can only be overcome through revolution, and some believe that structural change can come slowly through political reforms.

Some critics believe there are merits in capitalism and wish to balance it with some form of social control, typically through government regulation (e.g. the social market movement).

Prominent among critiques of capitalism are accusations that capitalism is inherently exploitative, that it is unsustainable, that it creates economic inequality, that it is anti-democratic and leads to an erosion of human rights and that it incentivizes imperialist expansion and war.

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List of Largest Companies in the United States based on Total Revenues Pictured below: The 2019 Fortune 500 List: The Prize of Size
This list comprises the largest companies in the United States by consolidated revenue as of 2019, according to the Fortune 500 tally. Retail corporation Walmart has been the largest company in the US by revenue since 2014.

Only companies that publish financial data and report figures to a government agency are included. Therefore, this list is incomplete as it excludes large companies such as Cargill and Koch Industries.

Click here for a List of Companies by Revenues.

Click here for a List of Companies based on Reported Profits.

​See also:







​Business Magnates, including a List of the World's Billionaires Pictured: "Jeff Bezos still tops the world’s ultra rich" and L-R and by Overall Wealth: Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett
A business magnate or industrialist is an entrepreneur of great influence, importance, or standing in a particular enterprise or field of business.

The term characteristically refers to a wealthy entrepreneur or investor who controls, through personal business ownership or dominant shareholding position, a firm or industry whose goods or services are widely consumed. Such individuals may also be called: 
The word tycoon derives from the Japanese word taikun (大君), which means "great lord", used as a title for the shōgun. The word entered the English language in 1857 with the return of Commodore Perry to the United States. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was humorously referred to as the Tycoon by his aides John Nicolay and John Hay.

The term spread to the business community, where it has been used ever since.
The word mogul is an English corruption of mughal, Persian or Arabic for "Mongol". It alludes to emperors of the Mughal Empire in the Medieval India, who possessed great power and storied riches capable of producing wonders of opulence such as the Taj Mahal.

Modern business magnates are entrepreneurs that amass on their own or wield substantial family fortunes in the process of building or running their own businesses. Some are widely known in connection with these entrepreneurial activities, others through highly-visible secondary pursuits such as philanthropy, political fundraising and campaign financing, and sports team ownership or sponsorship.

The terms mogul, tycoon and baron were often applied to late 19th and early 20th century North American business magnates in: 
Their dominance was known as the Second Industrial Revolution, the Gilded Age, or the Robber Baron Era.

Examples of well-known business magnates in the western world include historical figures such as:
Contemporary industrial tycoons include:
See Also:






​
Elon Musk, Capitalist! Pictured Below:
  • Upper Left: Elon Musk is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and engineer.
  • Upper Right: NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, left, congratulates SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk in front of the historic Dragon capsule that returned to Earth on May 31 following the first successful mission by a private company to carry supplies to the International Space Station on June 13, 2012 at the SpaceX facility in McGregor, Texas. Bolden and Musk also thanked the more than 150 SpaceX employees working at the McGregor facility for their role in the historic mission.
  • Lower Left: Elon Musk, Tesla Factory, Fremont (CA, USA) in 2011
  • Lower Right: NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, left, and SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk, view the historic Dragon capsule that returned to Earth on May 31 following the first successful mission by a private company to carry supplies to the International Space Station on June 13, 2012 at the SpaceX facility in McGregor, Texas. Bolden and Musk also thanked the more than 150 SpaceX employees working at the McGregor facility for their role in the historic mission.
​Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) is
Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of US$207 billion as of October 2023, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and $231 billion according to Forbes, primarily from his ownership stakes in Tesla and SpaceX.

Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and briefly attended the University of Pretoria before immigrating to Canada at age 18, acquiring citizenship through his Canadian-born mother.

Two years later, he matriculated at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

Musk later transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, and received bachelor's degrees in economics and physics there.

He moved to California in 1995 to attend Stanford University. However, Musk dropped out after two days and, with his brother Kimbal, co-founded online city guide software company Zip2.

The startup was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999, and with $12 million of the money he made, that same year Musk co-founded X.com, a direct bank. X.com merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal.

In 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion, and that same year, with $100 million of the money he made, Musk founded SpaceX, a spaceflight services company. In 2004, he became an early investor in electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.). He became its chairman and product architect, assuming the position of CEO in 2008.

In 2006, Musk helped create SolarCity, a solar-energy company that was acquired by Tesla in 2016 and became Tesla Energy. In 2013, he proposed a hyperloop high-speed vactrain transportation system.

In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit artificial intelligence research company. The following year, Musk co-founded Neuralink—a neurotechnology company developing brain–computer interfaces—and the Boring Company, a tunnel construction company.

In 2022, he acquired Twitter for $44 billion. He subsequently merged the company into newly created X Corp. and rebranded the service as X the following year. In March 2023, he founded xAI, an artificial-intelligence company.

Musk has expressed views that have made him a polarizing figure. He has been criticized for making unscientific and misleading statements, including spreading COVID-19 misinformation and promoting conspiracy theories.

His Twitter ownership has been similarly controversial, including laying off a large number of employees, an increase in hate speech on the platform, and changes to Twitter Blue verification.

In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued him for falsely tweeting that he had secured funding for a private takeover of Tesla. To settle the case, Musk stepped down as the chairman of Tesla and paid a $20 million fine.


Early life and education:

Childhood and family
Further information: Musk family

Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa's administrative capital. He has British and Pennsylvania Dutch ancestry. 

His mother, Maye Musk (née Haldeman), is a model and dietitian born in Saskatchewan, Canada, and raised in South Africa. 

His father, Errol Musk, is a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, and property developer, who partly owned a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika, as well as a rental lodge at the Timbavati Private Nature Reserve. Musk has a younger brother, Kimbal, and a younger sister, Tosca.

Musk's family was wealthy during his youth. His father was elected to the Pretoria City Council as a representative of the anti-apartheid Progressive Party and has said that his children shared their father's dislike of apartheid. 

His maternal grandfather and namesake, Joshua Elon Haldeman, was an American-born Canadian who took his family on record-breaking journeys to Africa and Australia in a single-engine Bellanca airplane. 

Haldeman was a member of the Social Credit Party of Canada, possessed antisemitic beliefs, and supported the Technocracy movement. After his parents divorced in 1980, Musk chose to live primarily with his father. Musk later regretted his decision and became estranged from his father. 

He has a paternal half-sister and a half-brother.

Musk was often bullied. In one incident, after calling a boy whose father had committed suicide "stupid", Musk was severely beaten and thrown down concrete steps. 

At age ten, he developed an interest in computing and video games, teaching himself how to program from the VIC-20 user manual. 

At age twelve, he sold his BASIC-based game Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for approximately $500.

Education:

Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, from where he graduated. Musk was a good but not exceptional student, earning a 61 in Afrikaans and a B on his senior math certification. 

Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother, knowing that it would be easier to immigrate to the United States this way. While waiting for his application to be processed, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months.

Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year, working odd jobs at a farm and lumber mill. In 1990, he entered Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. 

Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), where he completed studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the Wharton School. 

Although Musk claims he earned the degrees in 1995, UPenn maintains it awarded them in 1997. He reportedly hosted large, ticketed house parties to help pay for tuition, and wrote a business plan for an electronic book-scanning service similar to Google Books.

In 1994, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley: one at energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which investigated electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and another at Palo Alto–based startup Rocket Science Games. In 1995, he was accepted to a PhD program in materials science at Stanford University. 

However, Musk decided to join the Internet boom, dropping out two days after being accepted and applied for a job at Netscape, to which he reportedly never received a response.


Business career:

Zip2
Main article: Zip2

External videos

Musk speaks of his early business experience during a 2014 commencement speech at USC on YouTube

In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded Zip2. Errol Musk provided them with $28,000 in funding. The company developed an Internet city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages, and marketed it to newspapers. 

They worked at a small rented office in Palo Alto, with Musk coding the website every night. Eventually, Zip2 obtained contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. 

The brothers persuaded the board of directors to abandon a merger with CitySearch; however, Musk's attempts to become CEO were thwarted. Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999, and Musk received $22 million for his 7-percent share.

X.com and PayPal:
Main articles: 
Later in 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company with $12 million of the money he made from the Compaq acquisition. X.com was one of the first federally insured online banks, and over 200,000 customers joined in its initial months of operation. Even though Musk founded the company, investors regarded him as inexperienced and replaced him with Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year.

In 2000, X.com merged with online bank Confinity to avoid competition, as the latter's money-transfer service PayPal was more popular than X.com's service. Musk then returned as CEO of the merged company.

His preference for Microsoft over Unix-based software caused a rift among the company's employees, and eventually led Confinity co-founder Peter Thiel to resign. 

With the company suffering from compounding technological issues and the lack of a cohesive business model, the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000. Under Thiel, the company focused on the money-transfer service and was renamed PayPal in 2001.

In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk—PayPal's largest shareholder with 11.72% of shares—received $175.8 million. In 2017, more than 15 years later, Musk purchased the X.com domain from PayPal for its "sentimental value". 

In 2022, Musk discussed a goal of creating "X, the everything app".

SpaceX:
Main article: SpaceX

​In early 2001, Musk became involved with the nonprofit Mars Society and discussed funding plans to place a growth-chamber for plants on Mars. 

In October of the same year, he traveled to Moscow with Jim Cantrell and Adeo Ressi to buy refurbished intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could send the greenhouse payloads into space.

He met with the companies NPO Lavochkin and Kosmotras; however, Musk was seen as a novice and the group returned to the United States empty-handed.

In February 2002, the group returned to Russia with Mike Griffin (president of In-Q-Tel) to look for three ICBMs. They had another meeting with Kosmotras and were offered one rocket for $8 million, which Musk rejected.

Musk instead decided to start a company that could build affordable rockets. With $100 million of his own money, Musk founded SpaceX in May 2002 and became the company's CEO and Chief Engineer.

SpaceX attempted its first launch of the Falcon 1 rocket in 2006. Though the rocket failed to reach Earth orbit, it was awarded a Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program contract from NASA Administrator (and former SpaceX consultant) Mike Griffin later that year. 

After two more failed attempts that nearly caused Musk and his companies to go bankrupt, SpaceX succeeded in launching the Falcon 1 into orbit in 2008. Later that year, SpaceX received a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract from NASA for 12 flights of its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after its 2011 retirement. 

In 2012, the Dragon vehicle docked with the ISS, a first for a commercial spacecraft

​Working towards its goal of reusable rockets, in 2015 SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of a Falcon 9 on an inland platform. Later landings were achieved on autonomous spaceport drone ships, an ocean-based recovery platform. 

In 2018, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy; the inaugural mission carried Musk's personal Tesla Roadster as a dummy payload. 

Since 2019, SpaceX has been developing Starship, a fully-reusable, super-heavy-lift launch vehicle intended to replace the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy. In 2020, SpaceX launched its first crewed flight, the Demo-2, becoming the first private company to place astronauts into orbit and dock a crewed spacecraft with the ISS.

Starlink
Main article: Starlink
See also: Starlink in the Russo-Ukrainian War

​In 2015, SpaceX began development of the Starlink constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to provide satellite Internet access, with the first two prototype satellites launched in February 2018.

A second set of test satellites, and the first large deployment of a piece of the constellation, occurred in May 2019, when the first 60 operational satellites were launched. The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build, and deploy the constellation is estimated by SpaceX to be about $10 billion. 

Some critics, including the International Astronomical Union, have alleged that Starlink blocks the view of the sky and poses a collision threat to spacecraft.

During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Musk sent Starlink terminals to Ukraine to provide Internet access and communication. However, Musk refused to block Russian state media on Starlink, declaring himself "a free speech absolutist".

In October 2022, Musk stated that about 20,000 satellite terminals had been donated to Ukraine, together with free data transfer subscriptions, which cost SpaceX $80 million. After asking the United States Department of Defense to pay for further units and future subscriptions on behalf of Ukraine, Musk publicly stated that SpaceX would continue to provide Starlink to Ukraine for free, at a yearly cost to itself of $400 million.

Tesla
Main article: Tesla, Inc.

Tesla, Inc., originally Tesla Motors, was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who financed the company until the Series A round of funding. Both men played active roles in the company's early development prior to Musk's involvement. 

Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004; he invested $6.5 million, became the majority shareholder, and joined Tesla's board of directors as chairman. Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design,but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.

Following a series of escalating conflicts in 2007, and the financial crisis of 2007–2008, Eberhard was ousted from the firm. Musk assumed leadership of the company as CEO and product architect in 2008. 

​A 2009 lawsuit settlement with Eberhard designated Musk as a Tesla co-founder, along with Tarpenning and two others. As of 2019, Musk was the longest-tenured CEO of any automotive manufacturer globally. In 2021, Musk nominally changed his title to "Technoking" while retaining his position as CEO.

​Tesla began delivery of an electric sports car, the Roadster, in 2008. With sales of about 2,500 vehicles, it was the first serial production all-electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells. 

Tesla began delivery of its four-door Model S sedan in 2012. A cross-over, the Model X was launched in 2015. A mass-market sedan, the Model 3, was released in 2017. The Model 3 is the all-time bestselling plug-in electric car worldwide, and in June 2021 it became the first electric car to sell 1 million units globally. 

A fifth vehicle, the Model Y crossover, was launched in 2020. The Cybertruck, an all-electric pickup truck, was unveiled in 2019. Under Musk, Tesla has also constructed multiple lithium-ion battery and electric vehicle factories, named Gigafactories.

Since its initial public offering in 2010, Tesla stock has risen significantly; it became the most valuable carmaker in summer 2020, and it entered the S&P 500 later that year. In October 2021, it reached a market capitalization of $1 trillion, the sixth company in U.S. history to do so. 

In November 2021, Musk proposed, on Twitter, to sell 10% of his Tesla stock, since "much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance". After more than 3.5 million Twitter accounts supported the sale, Musk sold $6.9 billion of Tesla stock within a week, and a total of $16.4 billion by year end, reaching the 10% target. 

In February 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that both Elon and Kimbal Musk were under investigation by the SEC for possible insider trading related to the sale. 

In 2022, Musk unveiled a robot developed by Tesla, Optimus. On June 20, 2023, Musk met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New York City, suggesting that he might be interested in investing in India "as soon as humanly possible".

SEC and shareholder lawsuits regarding tweets:

In 2018, Musk was sued by the SEC for a tweet claiming that funding had been secured for potentially taking Tesla private. The lawsuit characterized the tweet as false, misleading, and damaging to investors, and sought to bar Musk from serving as CEO of publicly traded companies. 

Two days later, Musk settled with the SEC, without admitting or denying the SEC's allegations. As a result, Musk and Tesla were fined $20 million each, and Musk was forced to step down for three years as Tesla chairman but was able to remain as CEO. Musk has stated in interviews that he does not regret posting the tweet that triggered the SEC investigation. 

In April 2022, the shareholder who sued Musk over the tweet, along with several Tesla shareholders, said that a federal judge had ruled that the tweet was false, although the ruling in question has not been unsealed. In February 2023, the jury found Musk and Tesla not liable.

In 2019, Musk stated in a tweet that Tesla would build half a million cars that year. The SEC reacted to Musk's tweet by filing in court, asking the court to hold him in contempt for violating the terms of a settlement agreement with such a tweet; the accusation was disputed by Musk.

This was eventually settled by a joint agreement between Musk and the SEC clarifying the previous agreement details. The agreement included a list of topics that Musk would need preclearance before tweeting about. In 2020, a judge prevented a lawsuit from proceeding that claimed a tweet by Musk regarding Tesla stock price ("too high imo") violated the agreement. 

FOIA-released records showed that the SEC itself concluded Musk has subsequently violated the agreement twice by tweeting regarding "Tesla's solar roof production volumes and its stock price".

SolarCity and Tesla Energy
Main articles: SolarCity and Tesla Energy

​Musk provided the initial concept and financial capital for SolarCity, which his cousins Lyndon and Peter Rive founded in 2006. By 2013, SolarCity was the second largest provider of solar power systems in the United States. 

In 2014, Musk promoted the idea of SolarCity building an advanced production facility in Buffalo, New York, triple the size of the largest solar plant in the United States. Construction of the factory started in 2014 and was completed in 2017. It operated as a joint venture with Panasonic until early 2020.

Tesla acquired SolarCity for over $2 billion in 2016 and merged it with its battery unit to create Tesla Energy. The deal's announcement resulted in a more than 10% drop in Tesla's stock price.

At the time, SolarCity was facing liquidity issues. Multiple shareholder groups filed a lawsuit against Musk and Tesla's directors, claiming that the purchase of SolarCity was done solely to benefit Musk and came at the expense of Tesla and its shareholders. 

Tesla directors settled the lawsuit in January 2020, leaving Musk the sole remaining defendant. Two years later, the court ruled in Musk's favor.

Neuralink:
Main article: Neuralink

​In 2016, Musk co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology startup company, with an investment of $100 million. Neuralink aims to integrate the human brain with artificial intelligence (AI) by creating devices that are embedded in the brain to facilitate its merging with machines. Such technology could enhance memory or allow the devices to communicate with software. The company also hopes to develop devices with which to treat neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and spinal cord injuries.

In 2019, Musk announced work on a device akin to a sewing machine that could embed threads into a human brain. He is listed as the sole author of an October 2019 paper that details some of Neuralink's research, although Musk's being listed as such rankled the Neuralink team's researchers. 

At a 2020 live demonstration, Musk described one of their early devices as "a Fitbit in your skull" that could soon cure paralysis, deafness, blindness, and other disabilities. Many neuroscientists and publications criticized these claims, with MIT Technology Review describing them as "highly speculative" and "neuroscience theater". 

During the demonstration, Musk revealed a pig with a Neuralink implant that tracked neural activity related to smell. In 2022, Neuralink announced that clinical trials would begin by the end of the year.

Neuralink has conducted further animal testing on macaque monkeys at the University of California, Davis' Primate Research Center. In 2021, the company released a video in which a Macaque played the video game Pong via a Neuralink implant.

The company's animal trials—which have caused the deaths of some monkeys—have led to claims of animal cruelty.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has alleged that Neuralink's animal trials have violated the Animal Welfare Act. Employees have complained that pressure from Musk to accelerate development has led to botched experiments and unnecessary animal deaths.

In 2022, a federal probe was launched into possible animal welfare violations by Neuralink.

In September 2023, the company was approved to intitiate human trials; the company will conduct a six-year study.

The Boring Company:
Main article: The Boring Company

​​In 2017, Musk founded the Boring Company to construct tunnels, and revealed plans for specialized, underground, high-occupancy vehicles that could travel up to 150 miles per hour (240 km/h) and thus circumvent above-ground traffic in major cities. 

Early in 2017, the company began discussions with regulatory bodies and initiated construction of a 30-foot (9.1 m) wide, 50-foot (15 m) long, and 15-foot (4.6 m) deep "test trench" on the premises of SpaceX's offices, as that required no permits. The Los Angeles tunnel, less than two miles (3.2 km) in length, debuted to journalists in 2018. It used Tesla Model Xs and was reported to be a rough ride while traveling at suboptimal speeds.

Two tunnel projects announced in 2018, in Chicago and West Los Angeles, have been canceled. However, a tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center was completed in early 2021. Local officials have approved further expansions of the tunnel system. 

In 2021, tunnel construction was approved for Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Twitter / X:
Further information: Acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk

​Musk expressed interest in buying Twitter as early as 2017, and had questioned the platform's commitment to freedom of speech. Additionally, his ex-wife Talulah Riley had urged him to buy Twitter to stop the "woke-ism". 

In January 2022, Musk started purchasing Twitter shares, reaching a 9.2% stake by April, making him the largest shareholder. When this was publicly disclosed, Twitter shares experienced the largest intraday price surge since the company's 2013 IPO.

On April 4, Musk agreed to a deal that would appoint him to Twitter's board of directors and prohibit him from acquiring more than 14.9% of the company. However, on April 13, Musk made a $43 billion offer to buy Twitter, launching a takeover bid to buy 100% of Twitter's stock at $54.20 per share. 

In response, Twitter's board adopted a "poison pill" shareholder rights plan to make it more expensive for any single investor to own more than 15% of the company without board approval. Nevertheless, by the end of the month Musk had successfully concluded his bid for approximately $44 billion. This included about $12.5 billion in loans against his Tesla stock and $21 billion in equity financing.

Tesla's stock market value sank by over $100 billion the next day in reaction to the deal. He subsequently tweeted criticism of Twitter executive Vijaya Gadde's policies to his 86 million followers, which led to some of them engaging in sexist and racist harassment against her. Exactly a month after announcing the takeover, Musk stated that the deal was "on hold" following a report that 5% of Twitter's daily active users were spam accounts. 

Although he initially affirmed his commitment to the acquisition, he sent notification of his termination of the deal in July; Twitter's Board of Directors responded that they were committed to holding him to the transaction. On July 12, 2022, Twitter formally sued Musk in the Chancery Court of Delaware for breaching a legally binding agreement to purchase Twitter. In October 2022, Musk reversed again, offering to purchase Twitter at $54.20 per share. The acquisition was officially completed on October 27.

Immediately after the acquisition, Musk fired several top Twitter executives including CEO Parag Agrawal; Musk became the CEO instead. He instituted a $7.99 monthly subscription for a "blue check", and laid off a significant portion of the company's staff. 

Musk lessened content moderation, including reinstating accounts like the Bee, and in December, Musk released internal documents relating to Twitter's moderation of Hunter Biden's laptop controversy in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election.

The Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Twitter has verified numerous extremists; hate speech also increased on the platform after his takeover.

In late 2022, Musk promised to step down as CEO after a Twitter poll posted by Musk found that majority of user wanted him to do so. Five months later, Musk stepped down from CEO and placed former NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino in the position and transitioned his role to executive chairman and chief technology officer.

Leadership style

​Musk is often described as a micromanager and has called himself a "nano-manager". The New York Times has characterized his approach as absolutist. Musk does not make formal business plans; instead, he says he prefers to approach engineering problems with an "iterative design methodology" and "tolerance for failures". 

He has forced employees to adopt the company's own jargon and launched ambitious, risky, and costly projects against his advisors' recommendations, such as removing front-facing radar from Tesla Autopilot. His insistence on vertical integration causes his companies to move most production in-house. While this resulted in saved costs for SpaceX's rocket, vertical integration has caused many usability problems for Tesla's software.

Musk's handling of employees—whom he communicates with directly through mass emails—has been characterized as "carrot and stick", rewarding those "who offer constructive criticism" while also being known to impulsively threaten, swear at, and fire his employees. 

Musk said he expects his employees to work for long hours, sometimes for 80 hours per week. He has his new employees sign strict non-disclosure agreements and often fires in sprees, such as during the Model 3 "production hell" in 2018. 

In 2022, Musk revealed plans to fire 10 percent of Tesla's workforce, due to his concerns about the economy. That same month, he suspended remote work at SpaceX and Tesla and threatened to fire employees who do not work 40 hours per week in the office.

Musk's leadership has been praised by some, who credit it with the success of Tesla and his other endeavors, and criticized by others, who see him as callous and his managerial decisions as "show[ing] a lack of human understanding." The 2021 book Power Play contains anecdotes of Musk berating employees. 

The Wall Street Journal reported that, after Musk insisted on branding his vehicles as "self-driving", he faced criticism from his engineers for putting customer "lives at risk", with some employees resigning in consequence.


Other activities:

Musk Foundation:

Musk is president of the Musk Foundation he founded in 2001, whose stated purposes are to:
  • provide solar-power energy systems in disaster areas;
  • support research, development, and advocacy (for interests including human space exploration, pediatrics, renewable energy and "safe artificial intelligence");
  • and support science and engineering educational efforts.

As of 2020, the foundation has made 350 donations. Around half of them were made to scientific research or education nonprofits. Notable beneficiaries include the Wikimedia Foundation, his alma mater the University of Pennsylvania, and his brother Kimbal's non-profit Big Green. 

From 2002 to 2018, the foundation gave $25 million directly to non-profit organizations, nearly half of which went to Musk's OpenAI, which was a non-profit at the time.

In 2012, Musk took the Giving Pledge, thereby committing to give the majority of his wealth to charitable causes either during his lifetime or in his will. He has endowed prizes at the X Prize Foundation, including $100 million to reward improved carbon capture technology.

Vox said "the Musk Foundation is almost entertaining in its simplicity and yet is strikingly opaque", noting that its website was only 33 words in plain-text. The foundation has been criticized for the relatively small amount of wealth donated. 

In 2020, Forbes gave Musk a philanthropy score of 1, because he had given away less than 1% of his net worth. In November 2021, Musk donated $5.7 billion of Tesla's shares to charity, according to regulatory filings. 

However, Bloomberg News noted that all of it went to his own foundation, bringing Musk Foundation's assets up to $9.4 billion at the end of 2021. The foundation disbursed $160 million to non-profits that year.

Hyperloop:
Main articles: Hyperloop and Hyperloop pod competition

​In 2013, Musk announced plans for a version of a vactrain—a vacuum tube train—and assigned a dozen engineers from SpaceX and Tesla to establish the conceptual foundations and create initial designs. Later that year, Musk unveiled the concept, which he dubbed the hyperloop. 

The alpha design for the system was published in a whitepaper posted to the Tesla and SpaceX blogs. The document scoped out the technology and outlined a notional route where such a transport system could be built between the Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area, at an estimated cost of $6 billion. 

The proposal, if technologically feasible at the costs cited, would make Hyperloop travel cheaper than any other mode of transport for such long distances.

In 2015, Musk announced a design competition for students and others to build Hyperloop pods, to operate on a SpaceX-sponsored mile-long track, for a 2015–2017 Hyperloop pod competition. The track was used in January 2017, and Musk also announced that the company had started a tunnel project, with Hawthorne Municipal Airport as its destination.

In July 2017, Musk claimed that he had received "verbal government approval" to build a hyperloop from New York City to Washington, D.C., with stops in both Philadelphia and Baltimore. Mention of the projected DC-to-Baltimore leg was removed from the Boring Company website in 2021. 

The tunnel project to Hawthorne was discontinued in 2022 and is cited to be converted into parking spots for SpaceX workers.

Biographer Ashlee Vance has noted that Musk hoped Hyperloop would "make the public and legislators rethink the high-speed train" proposal current in California at the time and consider more "creative" ideas.

OpenAI and xAI:
Main articles: OpenAI and xAI (company)

In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a not-for-profit artificial intelligence (AI) research company aiming to develop artificial general intelligence intended to be safe and beneficial to humanity. A particular focus of the company is to democratize artificial superintelligence systems, against governments and corporations. 

Musk pledged $1 billion of funding to OpenAI. In 2023, Musk tweeted that he had ended up giving a total of $100 million to OpenAI. TechCrunch later reported that, according to its own investigation of public records, "only $15 million" of OpenAI's funding could be definitively traced to Musk. Musk subsequently stated that he had donated about $50 million.

In 2018, Musk left the OpenAI board to avoid possible future conflicts with his role as CEO of Tesla as the latter company increasingly became involved in AI through Tesla Autopilot.

Since then, OpenAI has made significant advances in machine learning, producing neural networks such as: 
  • GPT-3 (producing human-like text), 
  • and DALL-E (generating digital images from natural language descriptions).

On July 12, 2023, Elon Musk launched an artificial intelligence company called xAI, which aims to develop a generative AI program that competes with existing offerings like ChatGPT.

The company has reportedly hired engineers from Google and OpenAI. The company, which is incorporated in Nevada, purchased 10,000 graphics processing units. Musk was reportedly obtaining funding from investors in SpaceX and Tesla.

Tham Luang cave rescue and defamation case:
Further information: Tham Luang cave rescue

In July 2018, Musk arranged for his employees to build a mini-submarine to assist the rescue of children trapped in a flooded cavern in Thailand. Richard Stanton, leader of the international rescue diving team, urged Musk to facilitate the construction of the vehicle as a back-up, in case flooding worsened. 

Engineers at SpaceX and the Boring Company built the mini-submarine from a Falcon 9 liquid oxygen transfer tube in eight hours and personally delivered it to Thailand. 

By this time, however, eight of the 12 children, had already been rescued, the rescuers employing full face masks, oxygen, and anesthesia; consequently, Thai authorities declined to use the submarine. 

In March 2019, Musk was later one of the 187 people who received various honors conferred by the King of Thailand for involvement in the rescue effort.

Soon after the rescue, Vernon Unsworth, a British recreational caver who had been exploring the cave for the previous six years and played a key advisory role in the operation, criticized the submarine on CNN as amounting to nothing more than a public relations effort with no chance of success, maintaining that Musk "had no conception of what the cave passage was like" and "can stick his submarine where it hurts".

Musk asserted on Twitter that the device would have worked and referred to Unsworth as a "pedo guy". He deleted the tweets, and apologized, and he deleted his responses to critical tweets from Cher Scarlett, a software engineer, which had caused his followers to harass her. 

In an email to BuzzFeed News, Musk later called Unsworth a "child rapist" and said that he had married a child.

In September, Unsworth filed a defamation suit in the District Court for the Central District of California. In his defense, Musk argued that "'pedo guy' was a common insult used in South Africa when I was growing up ... synonymous with 'creepy old man' and is used to insult a person's appearance and demeanor".

The defamation case began in December 2019, with Unsworth seeking $190 million in damages. During the trial Musk apologized to Unsworth again for the tweet. On December 6, the jury found in favor of Musk and ruled he was not liable.

2018 cannabis incident:

In 2018, Musk was interviewed on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, during which he sampled a cigar laced with cannabis. In 2022, Musk said that he and other Space-X employees had subsequently been required to undergo random drug tests for about a year following the incident, as required by the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 for Federal contractors. 

In a 2019 60 Minutes interview, Musk had said, "I do not smoke pot. As anybody who watched that podcast could tell, I have no idea how to smoke pot."

Music:

​In 2019, Musk, through Emo G Records, released a rap track, "RIP Harambe", on SoundCloud. The track, which refers to the killing of Harambe the gorilla and the subsequent Internet sensationalism surrounding the event, was performed by Yung Jake, written by Yung Jake and Caroline Polachek, and produced by BloodPop. 

The following year, Musk released an EDM track, "Don't Doubt Ur Vibe", featuring his own lyrics and vocals. While Guardian critic Alexi Petridis described it as "indistinguishable... from umpteen competent but unthrilling bits of bedroom electronica posted elsewhere on SoundCloud", TechCrunch said it was "not a bad representation of the genre".

Private jet:
Main articles: ElonJet and 2022 Twitter suspensions

In 2003, Musk said his favorite plane he owned was an L-39 Albatros. He uses a private jet owned by Falcon Landing LLC, a SpaceX-linked company, and acquired a second jet in August 2020. His heavy use of the jet—it flew over 150,000 miles in 2018—and the consequent fossil fuel usage has received criticism.

His flight usage is tracked on social media through ElonJet. The Twitter version of the account was blocked in December 2022, after Musk claimed that his son X AE A-XII had been harassed by a stalker after the account posted the airport at which his jet had landed.

This led to Musk banning the ElonJet account on Twitter, as well as the accounts of journalists that posted stories regarding the incident, including: 
Musk equated the reporting to doxxing. The police do not believe there is a link between the account and alleged stalker. Musk later took a Twitter poll on whether the journalists' accounts should be reinstated, which resulted in reinstating the accounts.


Wealth:

Net worth​:
Musk's net worth from 2013 to 2023 as estimated by Forbes magazine:
​Musk made $175.8 million when PayPal was sold to eBay in 2002. He was first listed on the Forbes Billionaires List in 2012, with a net worth of $2 billion.

At the start of 2020, Musk had a net worth of $27 billion. By the end of the year his net worth had increased by $150 billion, mostly driven by his ownership of around 20% of Tesla stock. 

During this period, Musk's net worth was often volatile. For example, it dropped $16.3 billion on September 8, the largest single-day plunge in Bloomberg Billionaires Index's history at the time.

In November of that year, Musk passed Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg to become the third-richest person in the world; a week later he passed Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to become the second-richest.

In January 2021, Musk, with a net worth of $185 billion, surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to become the richest person in the world. Bezos reclaimed the top spot the following month. 

On September 27, 2021, after Tesla stock surged, Forbes announced that Musk had a net worth of over $200 billion, and was the richest person in the world. In November 2021, Musk became the first person to have a net worth of more than $300 billion.

On December 30, 2022, it was reported that Musk had lost $200 billion from his net worth due to declining stock values in Tesla, becoming the first person in history to lose such a large sum of money. In January 2023, Musk was recognized by Guinness World Records for experiencing the "largest loss of personal fortune in history" with regards to his financial losses since November 2021, which Guinness quoted a Forbes estimate of $182 billion.

Musk's personal wealth is managed by his family office called Excession LLC, formed in 2016 and run by Jared Birchall.

Sources of wealth:

Around 75% of Musk's wealth was derived from Tesla stock in November 2020, a proportion that fell to about 37% as of December 2022, after selling nearly $40 billion in company shares since late 2021. 

Musk does not receive a salary from Tesla; he agreed with the board in 2018 to a compensation plan that ties his personal earnings to Tesla's valuation and revenue. The deal stipulated that Musk only received the compensation if Tesla reached certain market values. It was the largest such deal ever done between a CEO and a company board. 

In the first award, given in May 2020, he was eligible to purchase 1.69 million Tesla shares (about 1% of the company) at below-market prices, which was worth about $800 million.

Musk paid $455 million in taxes on $1.52 billion of income between 2014 and 2018. According to ProPublica, Musk paid no federal income taxes in 2018. He claimed his 2021 tax bill was estimated at $12 billion based on his sale of $14 billion worth of Tesla stock.

Musk has repeatedly described himself as "cash poor", and has "professed to have little interest in the material trappings of wealth". In May 2020, he pledged to sell almost all physical possessions. 

Musk has defended his wealth by saying he is accumulating resources for humanity's outward expansion to space.


Personal views and Twitter (later X) usage
Main article: Views of Elon Musk

Since joining Twitter (now known as X) in 2009, Musk has been an active user and has over 100 million followers as of June 2022. He posts memes, promotes business interests, and comments on contemporary political and cultural issues. 

Musk's statements have provoked controversy, such as for mocking preferred gender pronouns, and comparing Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau to Adolf Hitler.

The New York Times describes his contributions to international relations as "chaotic", and critics of Musk argue that there is a lack of separation between his opinions and his business interests. 

As CEO of Twitter, Musk emerged as a source of misinformation and right-wing conspiracy theories, for example by suggesting online details about mass murderer Mauricio Garcia's apparent interest in Nazism could have been planted as part of a psyop. 

Allegations of him being transphobic appeared as well in response to actions taken by Twitter under his guidance. The Israel government and several media outlets accused Musk of antisemitism due to him spreading George Soros conspiracy theories, although some Israeli officials defended Musk.

​Existential threats

​Musk has been described as believing in longtermism, emphasizing the needs of future populations. Accordingly, Musk has stated that artificial intelligence poses the greatest existential threat to humanity. 

He has warned of a "Terminator-like" AI apocalypse and suggested that the government should regulate its safe development. In 2015, Musk was a cosignatory, along with Stephen Hawking and hundreds of others, of the Open Letter on Artificial Intelligence, which called for the ban of autonomous weapons. 

Musk's AI stances have been called alarmist and sensationalist by critics such as computer scientist Yann LeCun and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and led the think tank Information Technology and Innovation Foundation to award Musk its Annual Luddite Award in 2016.

Musk has described climate change as the greatest threat to humanity after AI, and has advocated for a carbon tax. 

Musk was a critic of President Donald Trump's stance on climate change, and resigned from two presidential business advisory councils following Trump's 2017 decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement.

Musk has long promoted the colonization of Mars and argues that humanity should become a "multiplanetary species". He has suggested the use of nuclear weapons to terraform Mars. He envisioned establishing a direct democracy on Mars, with a system in which more votes would be required to create laws than remove them. 

Musk has also voiced concerns about human population decline, saying that "Mars has zero human population. We need a lot of people to become a multiplanet civilization."

Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council session in 2021, Musk stated that a declining birth rate, and consequent population decline, is one of the biggest risks to human civilization.

Politics

​While often described as libertarian, Musk has called himself "politically moderate" and was a registered independent voter when he lived in California. The New York Times wrote that Musk "expresses views that don't fit neatly into [the American] binary, left-right political framework". 

Historically, Musk has donated to both Democrats and Republicans, many of whom are in states in which he has a vested interest. Beginning in the late 2010s, Musk's political contributions have shifted almost entirely to supporting Republicans.

Musk voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries, Musk endorsed candidate Andrew Yang and expressed support for his proposed universal basic income. 

He also endorsed Kanye West's 2020 presidential campaign. Musk said he voted for Joe Biden in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. 

In 2022, Musk said that he could "no longer support" the Democrats because they are the "party of division & hate", and wrote a tweet encouraging "independent-minded voters" to vote Republican in the 2022 U.S. elections, which was an outlier among social media executives who typically avoid partisan political advocacy.

He has supported Republican Ron DeSantis for the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and Twitter hosted DeSantis's campaign announcement on a Twitter Spaces event.

​In August 2023, Musk hosted Vivek Ramaswamy on Twitter Spaces, and shared his support. As of May 2023, Musk was declining to endorse any specific candidate.

​Musk opposes a "billionaire's tax", and has argued on Twitter with more left-leaning Democratic politicians such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Elizabeth Warren. 

He has raised questions about the Black Lives Matter protests, partially based on the fact that the phrase "Hands up, don't shoot" was made up. Musk also promoted a baseless theory relating to the attack of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, but Musk deleted his tweet.

In May 2022, Musk traveled to Brazil to discuss projects to protect the Amazon rainforest with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Musk has praised China and has been described as having a close relationship with the Chinese government, allowing access to its markets for Tesla. After Gigafactory Shanghai produced its first batch of vehicles, Musk thanked the Chinese government and Chinese people while criticizing the United States and its people.  

In 2022, Musk wrote an article for China Cyberspace, the official publication of Cyberspace Administration of China, which enforces Internet censorship in China. His writing the article was described as conflicting with his advocacy for free speech. 

Musk later advocated for Taiwan to become a "special administrative zone" of China which drew cross-party criticism from Taiwanese lawmakers. 

In October 2022, Musk posted a Twitter poll and "peace plan" to resolve the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was reported that Musk allegedly spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin prior to the proposal, which Musk denied. 

Musk has repeatedly expressed concern that a protracted war between Russia and Ukraine could lead to the use of nuclear weapons and the outbreak of World War III. 

In October 2023, Musk said that "We are sleepwalking our way into World War III with one foolish decision after the other."

COVID-19
​
Musk was criticized for his public comments and conduct related to the COVID-19 pandemic. He spread misinformation about the virus, including promoting a widely discredited paper on the benefits of chloroquine and claiming that COVID-19 death statistics were inflated.

In March 2020, Musk stated, "The coronavirus panic is dumb." In an email to Tesla employees, Musk referred to COVID-19 as a "specific form of the common cold" and predicted that confirmed COVID-19 cases would not exceed 0.1% of the U.S. population. 

On March 19, 2020, Musk predicted that there would be "probably close to zero new cases in [the U.S.] by end of April". Politico labeled this statement one of "the most audacious, confident, and spectacularly incorrect prognostications [of 2020]". Musk also claimed falsely that children "are essentially immune" to COVID-19.

Musk condemned COVID-19 lockdowns and initially refused to close the Tesla Fremont Factory in March 2020, defying the local shelter-in-place order. 

In May 2020, he reopened the Tesla factory, defying the local stay-at-home order, and warned workers that they would be unpaid, and their unemployment benefits might be jeopardized, if they did not report to work. In December 2022, Musk called for prosecution of former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci.

In March 2020, Musk promised that Tesla would make ventilators for COVID-19 patients if there were a shortage. After figures like New York City mayor Bill de Blasio responded to Musk's offer, 

Musk offered to donate ventilators which Tesla would build or buy from a third party. However, Musk ended up buying and donating BiPAP and CPAP machines, which are devices that support respirations of someone able to breathe on their own, rather than the much more expensive and sought-after mechanical ventilator machines that are able to breathe for a patient entirely.

In September 2020, Musk stated that he would not get the COVID-19 vaccine, because he and his children were "not at risk for COVID". Two months later, Musk contracted COVID-19 but suggested his COVID-19 rapid antigen test results were dubious, as he had been tested four times on the same device with the same nurse but had received equal numbers of positive and negative results. 

Following this, a postdoctoral fellow at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto explained in a Tweet why this result does not undermine the value of the test, referring to Musk as "Space Karen," which then trended on Twitter. 

In December 2021, Musk revealed that he and his eligible children had received the vaccine, saying that the science behind the COVID vaccines was "unequivocal" but expressing his opposition to COVID vaccine mandates.

Finance:

Musk said that the U.S. government should not provide subsidies to companies, but impose a carbon tax to discourage poor behavior. The free market, in his view, would achieve the best solution, and producing environmentally unfriendly vehicles should have consequences. 

Tesla has received billions of dollars in subsidies. In addition, Tesla made large sums from government-initiated systems of zero-emissions credits offered in California and at the United States federal level, which facilitated initial consumer adoption of Tesla vehicles, as the tax credits given by governments enabled Tesla's battery electric vehicles to be price-competitive, in comparison with existing lower-priced internal combustion engine vehicles. 

Notably, Tesla generates some of its revenue from its sales of carbon credits granted to the company, by both the European Union Emissions Trading System and the Chinese national carbon trading scheme.

Musk, a longtime opponent of short-selling, has repeatedly criticized the practice and argued it should be illegal. Wired magazine speculated that Musk's opposition to short-selling stems from how short sellers have an incentive to find and promote unfavorable information about his companies. In early 2021, he encouraged the GameStop short squeeze.

In December 2022, Musk sold $3.6 billion of his stock in Tesla, equal to 22 million shares in the company, despite pledging earlier in the year that he would not sell any additional shares.

Technology:

Musk has promoted cryptocurrencies and supports them over traditional government-issued fiat currencies. Given the influence of Musk's tweets in moving cryptocurrency markets, his statements about cryptocurrencies have been viewed as market manipulation by some, such as economist Nouriel Roubini. 

Musk's social media praising of Bitcoin and Dogecoin was credited for increasing their prices. Consequently, Tesla's 2021 announcement, against the backdrop of Musk's social media behavior, that it bought $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, raised questions. Tesla's announcement that it would accept Bitcoin for payment was criticized by environmentalists and investors, due to the environmental impact of cryptocurrency mining.

A few months later, in response to the criticism, Musk announced on Twitter that Tesla would no longer accept payments in Bitcoin and would not engage in any Bitcoin transactions until the environmental issues are solved.

Despite the Boring Company's involvement in building mass transit infrastructure, Musk has criticized public transport and promoted individualized transport (private vehicles). 

His comments have been called "elitist" and have sparked widespread criticism from both transportation and urban planning experts, who have pointed out that public transportation in dense urban areas is more economical, more energy efficient, and requires much less space than private cars.


Personal life:

From the early 2000s until late 2020, Musk resided in California, where both Tesla and SpaceX were founded. He then relocated to Texas, saying that California had become "complacent" about its economic success. 

While hosting Saturday Night Live in 2021, Musk stated that he has Asperger syndrome, although he has never been medically diagnosed. Musk trained in Brazilian jiu-jitsu while preparing for the proposed fight between himself and Mark Zuckerberg.

Relationships and children:

Musk has 10 surviving children. He met his first wife, Canadian author Justine Wilson, while attending Queen's University in Ontario, Canada; they married in 2000. In 2002, their first child died of sudden infant death syndrome at the age of 10 weeks. After his death, the couple used IVF to continue their family; they had twins in 2004 followed by triplets in 2006. 

The couple divorced in 2008 and shared custody. In 2022, one of the twins (his eldest) officially changed her name to reflect her gender identity as a trans woman and to use Wilson as her last name because she no longer wished to be associated with Musk.

Musk blamed the estrangement of his daughter on what the Financial Times characterized as "the supposed takeover of elite schools and universities by neo-Marxists."

In 2008, Musk began dating English actress Talulah Riley. They married two years later at Dornoch Cathedral in Scotland. In 2012, the couple divorced, before remarrying the following year. After briefly filing for divorce in 2014, Musk finalized a second divorce from Riley in 2016. Musk then dated Amber Heard for several months in 2017; he had reportedly been pursuing her since 2012.

In 2018, Musk and Canadian musician Grimes revealed that they were dating. Grimes gave birth to their son in May 2020. According to Musk and Grimes, his name was "X Æ A-12" (/ɛks æʃ eɪ ˈtwɛlv/); however, the name would have violated California regulations as it contained characters that are not in the modern English alphabet, and was then changed to "X Æ A-Xii".

This drew more confusion, as Æ is not a letter in the modern English alphabet. The child was eventually named X AE A-XII Musk, with "X" as a first name, "AE A-XII" as a middle name, and "Musk" as surname. 

In December 2021, Grimes and Musk had a second child, a daughter named Exa Dark Sideræl Musk (nicknamed "Y"), born via surrogacy. Despite the pregnancy, Musk confirmed reports that the couple were "semi-separated" in September 2021; in an interview with Time in December 2021, he said he was single.

In March 2022, Grimes said of her relationship with Musk: "I would probably refer to him as my boyfriend, but we're very fluid." Later that month, Grimes tweeted that she and Musk had broken up again. In September 2023 it was revealed that the pair had a third child, a son named Techno Mechanicus "Tau" Musk.

In July 2022, Insider published court documents revealing that Musk had had twins with Shivon Zilis, director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, in November 2021. They were born weeks before Musk and Grimes had their second child via surrogate in December.

The news "raised questions about workplace ethics", given that Zilis directly reported to Musk. Also in July 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk allegedly had an affair with Nicole Shanahan, the wife of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in 2021, leading to their divorce the following year. Musk denied the report.

Musk has also had a relationship with actress Natasha Bassett, who has been described as “an occasional girlfriend.”

Legal matters:
Main articles:  ​
In May 2022, Business Insider cited an anonymous friend of an unnamed SpaceX contract flight attendant, alleging that Musk engaged in sexual misconduct in 2016. The source stated that in November 2018, Musk, SpaceX, and the former flight attendant entered into a severance agreement granting the attendant a $250,000 payment in exchange for a promise not to sue over the claims. 

Musk responded, "If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light". He accused the article from Business Insider of being a "politically motivated hit piece". 

After the release of the Business Insider article, Tesla's stock fell by more than 6%, decreasing Musk's net worth by $10 billion. Barron's wrote "...some investors considered key-man risk – the danger that a company could be badly hurt by the loss of one individual."

In April 2023, the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands sought to subpoena Musk for documents in a lawsuit alleging that JPMorgan Chase profited from Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking operation. 

In May, a judge granted the U.S. Virgin Islands' request to serve Musk electronically through Tesla after the U.S. territory had difficulty locating him. The efforts to subpoena Musk for documents do not implicate him in any wrongdoing and do not seek to have Musk testify under oath.

Musk's former girlfriend Grimes filed a parental relationship petition in late September 2023 as part of a custody dispute. The petition came a month after Grimes openly accused him in a social media post of blocking her access to the youngest of their three children.

Ben Brody, a 22-year-old Los Angeles-based college graduate, initiated a lawsuit in October 2023 against Musk for over $1 million. He alleged Musk had falsely identified him as a participant "in a violent street brawl on behalf of a neo-Nazi extremist group" near Portland, Oregon. 

According to Brody's complaint, one of Musk's X posts promoted conspiracy theories that "Ben Brody's alleged participation in the extremist brawl meant the incident was probably a 'false flag' operation to deceive the American public". The complaint also alleged that Musk's accusations led to Brody and his family being subjected to harassment and threats.

In October 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Musk, alleging that he was refusing to testify in an investigation into whether he violated federal law by purchasing Twitter stock in 2022. According to the lawsuit, Musk testified twice in 2022 but refused to testify a third time in 2023, claiming the SEC was harassing him.


Public perception
See also: 
​Though his ventures were influential within their own industries in the 2000s, Musk only became a public figure in the early 2010s. He has been described as an eccentric who makes spontaneous and controversial statements, contrary to other billionaires who prefer reclusiveness to protect their businesses.

Vance described people's opinions of Musk as polarized due to his "part philosopher, part troll" role on Twitter.

Musk was partly inspiration for the characterization of Tony Stark in the Marvel film Iron Man (2008). Musk also had a cameo appearance in the film's 2010 sequel, Iron Man 2. 

Musk has made cameos and appearances in other films such as: 
Television series in which he has appeared include: 
He contributed interviews to the documentaries Racing Extinction (2015) and the Werner Herzog-directed Lo and Behold (2016).

Musk was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2018. In 2015, he received an honorary doctorate in engineering and technology from Yale University and IEEE Honorary Membership. 

Awards for his contributions to the development of the Falcon rockets include:
Time has listed Musk as one of the most influential people in the world on four occasions in 2010, 2013, 2018, and 2021.

Musk was selected as Time's "Person of the Year" for 2021. Time editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal wrote that "Person of the Year is a marker of influence, and few individuals have had more influence than Musk on life on Earth, and potentially life off Earth too". 

In February 2022, Musk was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.








WealthPictured below: World map of median wealth per adult by country in US dollars. Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook. 2021 publication. See reference info at List of countries by wealth per adult. (Image courtesy of Rouen DS - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107031379)
​Wealth

​Wealth is the abundance of valuable financial assets or physical possessions which can be converted into a form that can be used for transactions. This includes the core meaning as held in the originating Old English word weal, which is from an Indo-European word stem. 

The modern concept of wealth is of significance in all areas of economics, and clearly so for growth economics and development economics, yet the meaning of wealth is context-dependent. A person possessing a substantial net worth is known as wealthy. Net worth is defined as the current value of one's assets less liabilities (excluding the principal in trust accounts).

At the most general level, economists may define wealth as "the total of anything of value" that captures both the subjective nature of the idea and the idea that it is not a fixed or static concept. Various definitions and concepts of wealth have been asserted by various people in different contexts. 

Defining wealth can be a normative process with various ethical implications, since often wealth maximization is seen as a goal or is thought to be a normative principle of its own.

A community, region or country that possesses an abundance of such possessions or resources to the benefit of the common good is known as wealthy.

The United Nations definition of inclusive wealth is a monetary measure which includes the sum of natural, human, and physical assets. 
  • Natural capital includes land, forests, energy resources, and minerals.
  • Human capital is the population's education and skills.
  • Physical (or "manufactured") capital includes such things as machinery, buildings, and infrastructure.


History:
​
Around 35,000 years ago Homo sapiens groups began to adopt a more settled lifestyle, as evidenced by cave drawings, burial sites, and decorative objects. Around this time, humans began trading burial-site tools and developed trade networks, resulting in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. 

Those who had gathered abundant burial-site tools, weapons, baskets, and food, were considered part of the wealthy.

Adam Smith, in his seminal work The Wealth of Nations, described wealth as "the annual produce of the land and labor of the society". This "produce" is, at its simplest, a good or service which satisfies human needs, and wants of utility.

In popular usage, wealth can be described as an abundance of items of economic value, or the state of controlling or possessing such items, usually in the form of money, real estate and personal property. A person considered wealthy, affluent, or rich is someone who has accumulated substantial wealth relative to others in their society or reference group.

In economics, net worth refers to the value of assets owned minus the value of liabilities owed at a point in time. Wealth can be categorized into three principal categories: personal property, including:
  1. homes or automobiles;
  2. monetary savings, such as the accumulation of past income;
  3. and the capital wealth of income producing assets, including real estate, stocks, bonds, and businesses.

All these delineations make wealth an especially important part of social stratification. Wealth provides some people "safety nets" of protection against unforeseen declines in their living standard in the event of emergency and can be transformed into home ownership, business ownership, or college education by its expenditure.

Wealth has been defined as a collection of things limited in supply, transferable, and useful in satisfying human desires. Scarcity is a fundamental factor for wealth. When a desirable or valuable commodity (transferable good or skill) is abundantly available to everyone, the owner of the commodity will possess no potential for wealth. When a valuable or desirable commodity is in scarce supply, the owner of the commodity will possess great potential for wealth.

'Wealth' refers to some accumulation of resources (net asset value), whether abundant or not. 'Richness' refers to an abundance of such resources (income or flow). A wealthy person, group, or nation thus has more accumulated resources (capital) than a poor one. The opposite of wealth is destitution. The opposite of richness is poverty.

The term implies a social contract on establishing and maintaining ownership in relation to such items which can be invoked with little or no effort and expense on the part of the owner.

The concept of wealth is relative and not only varies between societies, but varies between different sections or regions in the same society. A personal net worth of US$10,000 in most parts of the United States would certainly not place a person among the wealthiest citizens of that locale. Such an amount would constitute an extraordinary amount of wealth in impoverished developing countries.

Concepts of wealth also vary across time. Modern labor-saving inventions and the development of the sciences have vastly improved the standard of living in modern societies for even the poorest of people. This comparative wealth across time is also applicable to the future; given this trend of human advancement, it is possible that the standard of living that the wealthiest enjoy today will be considered impoverished by future generations.

Industrialization emphasized the role of technology. Many jobs were automated. Machines replaced some workers while other workers became more specialized. Labour specialization became critical to economic success. Physical capital, as it came to be known, consisting of both the natural capital and the infrastructural capital, became the focus of the analysis of wealth.

Adam Smith saw wealth creation as the combination of materials, labour, land, and technology. The theories of David Ricardo, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, in the 18th century and 19th century built on these views of wealth that we now call classical economics.

Marxian economics (see labor theory of value) distinguishes in the Grundrisse between material wealth and human wealth, defining human wealth as "wealth in human relations"; land and labour were the source of all material wealth. The German cultural historian Silvio Vietta links wealth/poverty to rationality. Having a leading position in the development of rational sciences, in new technologies and in economic production leads to wealth, while the opposite can be correlated with poverty.


Global amount:
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The wealth of households worldwide amounts to US$280 trillion (2017). According to the eighth edition of the Global Wealth Report, in the year to mid-2017, total global wealth rose at a rate of 6.4%, the fastest pace since 2012 and reached US$280 trillion, a gain of US$16.7 trillion.

This reflected widespread gains in equity markets matched by similar rises in non-financial assets, which moved above the pre-crisis year 2007's level for the first time this year. Wealth growth also outpaced population growth, so that global mean wealth per adult grew by 4.9% and reached a new record high of US$56,540 per adult. 

Tim Harford has asserted that a small child has greater wealth than the 2 billion poorest people in the world combined, since a small child has no debt.

According to the 2021 global wealth report by McKinsey & Company, the worldwide total net worth is currently at US$514 trillion in 2020, with China being the wealthiest nation with net worth of US$120 trillion. 

Another report, by Credit Suisse in 2021, suggests the total wealth of the US exceeded that of China, US$126.3 trillion to US$74.9 trillion.


Philosophical analysis:

In Western civilization, wealth is connected with a quantitative type of thought, invented in the ancient Greek "revolution of rationality", involving for instance the quantitative analysis of nature, the rationalization of warfare, and measurement in economics. 

The invention of coined money and banking was particularly important. Aristotle describes the basic function of money as a universal instrument of quantitative measurement – "for it measures all things [...]" – making things alike and comparable due to a social "agreement" of acceptance. In that way, money also enables a new type of economic society and the definition of wealth in measurable quantities, such as gold and money.

Modern philosophers like Nietzsche criticized the fixation on measurable wealth: "Unsere 'Reichen' – das sind die Ärmsten! Der eigentliche Zweck alles Reichtums ist vergessen!" ("Our 'rich people' – those are the poorest! The real purpose of all wealth has been forgotten!")


Economic analysis:
  • "Savings" redirects here. For the concept of non-expenditure of income per unit of time, see Saving. For savings as a business objective, see Procurement § Performance.

In economics, wealth (in a commonly applied accounting sense, sometimes savings) is the net worth of a person, household, or nation – that is, the value of all assets owned net of all liabilities owed at a point in time. For national wealth as measured in the national accounts, the net liabilities are those owed to the rest of the world. 

The term may also be used more broadly as referring to the productive capacity of a society or as a contrast to poverty. Analytical emphasis may be on its determinants or distribution.

Economic terminology distinguishes between wealth and income. Wealth or savings is a stock variable – that is, it is measurable at a date in time, for example the value of an orchard on December 31 minus debt owed on the orchard. For a given amount of wealth, say at the beginning of the year, income from that wealth, as measurable over say a year is a flow variable. What marks the income as a flow is its measurement per unit of time, such as the value of apples yielded from the orchard per year.

In macroeconomic theory the 'wealth effect' may refer to the increase in aggregate consumption from an increase in national wealth. One feature of its effect on economic behavior is the wealth elasticity of demand, which is the percentage change in the amount of consumption goods demanded for each one-percent change in wealth.

There are several historical developmental economics points of view on the basis of wealth, such as from:
Over the history, some of the key underlying factors in wealth creation and the measurement of the wealth include the scalable innovation and application of human knowledge in the form of institutional structure and political/ideological "superstructure", the scarce resources (both natural and man-made), and the saving of monetary assets.

Wealth may be measured in nominal or real values – that is, in money value as of a given date or adjusted to net out price changes. The assets include those that are tangible (land and capital) and financial (money, bonds, etc.).

Measurable wealth typically excludes intangible or nonmarketable assets such as human capital and social capital. In economics, 'wealth' corresponds to the accounting term 'net worth', but is measured differently. Accounting measures net worth in terms of the historical cost of assets while economics measures wealth in terms of current values.

But analysis may adapt typical accounting conventions for economic purposes in social accounting (such as in national accounts). An example of the latter is generational accounting of social security systems to include the present value projected future outlays considered to be liabilities. 

Macroeconomic questions include whether the issuance of government bonds affects investment and consumption through the wealth effect.

Environmental assets are not usually counted in measuring wealth, in part due to the difficulty of valuation for a non-market good. Environmental or green accounting is a method of social accounting for formulating and deriving such measures on the argument that an educated valuation is superior to a value of zero (as the implied valuation of environmental assets).


Versus social class:
​Social class is not identical to wealth, but the two concepts are related (particularly in Marxist theory), leading to the concept of socioeconomic status. Wealth at the individual or household level refers to value of everything a person or family owns, including personal property and financial assets.

In both Marxist and Weberian theory, class is divided into upper, middle, and lower, with each further subdivided (e.g., upper middle class).

The upper class are schooled to maintain their wealth and pass it to future generations.

The middle class views wealth as something for emergencies and it is seen as more of a cushion. This class comprises people that were raised with families that typically owned their own home, planned ahead and stressed the importance of education and achievement. They earn a significant income and consume many things, typically limiting their savings and investments to retirement pensions and home ownership. 

Below the middle class, the working class and poor have the least amount of wealth, with circumstances discouraging accumulation of assets.
​

​Distribution:
Main article: Distribution of wealth
Although precise data are not available, the total household wealth in the world, excluding the value of human capital, has been estimated at $418.3 trillion (US$418.3×1012) at the end of the year 2020. 

For 2018, the World Bank estimated the value of the world's produced capital, natural capital, and human capital to be $1,152 trillion. According to the Kuznets curve, inequality of wealth and income increases during the early phases of economic development, stabilizes and then becomes more equitable.

As of 2008, about 90% of global wealth is distributed in North America, Europe, and "rich Asia-Pacific" countries, and in 2008, 1% of adults were estimated to hold 40% of world wealth, a number which falls to 32% when adjusted for purchasing power parity.

According to Richard H Ropers, the concentration of wealth in the United States is "inequitably distributed".

​In 2013, 1% of adults were estimated to hold 46% of world wealth and around $18.5 trillion was estimated to be stored in tax havens worldwide.


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Wealth Management Pictured below: List of Top 5 Careers in Wealth Management
​Wealth management (WM) or wealth management advisory (WMA) is an investment advisory service that provides financial management and wealth advisory services to a wide array of clients ranging from affluent to high-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) individuals and families.

It is a discipline which incorporates structuring and planning wealth to assist in growing, preserving, and protecting wealth, whilst passing it onto the family in a tax-efficient manner and in accordance with their wishes. Wealth management brings together tax planning, wealth protection, estate planning, succession planning, and family governance.


Private wealth management:

Private wealth management is sought by high-net-worth investors. Generally, this includes advice on the use of various estate planning vehicles, business-succession or stock-option planning, and the occasional use of hedging derivatives for large blocks of stock.

​Traditionally, the wealthiest retail clients of investment firms demanded a greater level of service, product offering and sales personnel than that received by average clients. With an increase in the number of affluent investors in recent years, there has been an increasing demand for sophisticated financial solutions and expertise throughout the world.

The CFA Institute curriculum on private-wealth management indicates that two primary factors distinguish the issues facing individual investors from those facing institutions:
  1. Time horizons differ. Individuals face a finite life as compared to the theoretically/potentially infinite life of institutions. This fact requires strategies for transferring assets at the end of an individual's life. These transfers are subject to laws and regulations that vary by locality and therefore the strategies available to address this situation vary. This is commonly known as accumulation and decumulation.
  2. Individuals are more likely to face a variety of taxes on investment returns that vary by locality. Portfolio investment techniques that provide individuals with after tax returns that meet their objectives must address such taxes.

The term "wealth management" occurs at least as early as 1933. It came into more general use in the elite retail (or "Private Client") divisions of firms such as Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley (before the Dean Witter Reynolds merger of 1997), to distinguish those divisions' services from mass-market offerings, but has since spread throughout the financial-services industry. 

Family offices that had formerly served just one family opened their doors to other families, and the term Multi-family office was coined. Accounting firms and investment advisory boutiques created multi-family offices as well.

Certain larger firms (UBS, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch) have "tiered" their platforms – with separate branch systems and advisor-training programs, distinguishing "Private Wealth Management" from "Wealth Management", with the latter term denoting the same type of services but with a lower degree of customization and delivered to mass affluent clients.

At Morgan Stanley, the "Private Wealth Management" retail division focuses on serving clients with greater than $20 million in investment assets while "Global Wealth Management" focuses on accounts smaller than $10 million.

In the late 1980s, private banks and brokerage firms began to offer seminars and client events designed to showcase the expertise and capabilities of the sponsoring firm. Within a few years a new business model emerged – Family Office Exchange in 1990, the Institute for Private Investors in 1991, and CCC Alliance in 1995.

These companies aimed to offer an online community as well as a network of peers for ultra high-net-worth individuals and their families. These entities have grown since the 1990s, with total IT spending (for example) by the global wealth management industry predicted to reach $35bn by 2016, including heavy investment in digital channels.

Wealth management can be provided by large corporate entities, independent financial advisers or multi-licensed portfolio managers who design services to focus on high-net-worth clients.

Large banks and large brokerage houses create segmentation marketing-strategies to sell both proprietary and non-proprietary products and services to investors designated as potential high-net-worth clients. Independent wealth-managers use their experience in estate planning, risk management, and their affiliations with tax and legal specialists, to manage the diverse holdings of high-net-worth clients.

Banks and brokerage firms use advisory talent-pools to aggregate these same services.
The Great Recession of the late 2000s caused investors to address concerns within their portfolios. For this reason wealth managers have been advised that clients have a greater need to understand, access, and communicate with advisers about their situation.


Life goals:

As awareness of wealth management has become more common, some companies have shifted towards a model which asks clients about life goals, working environments, and spending patterns as a way to increase communication. The industry-recognized wealth management was more than an investment advisory discipline. 

In 2015, United Capital rebranded their wealth management services using the term "financial life management", which, according to the company, was intended to more clearly define the difference between wealth management companies and more affordable brokerage firms. 

The same year Merrill Lynch began a program, Merrill Lynch Clear, which asks investors to describe life goals, and includes an educational program for clients' children. For clients looking to leverage their wealth for the sake of achieving philanthropical and charitable goals, social finance investments may be included.


Private banking and wealth management rankings:

According to Euromoney's annual Private banking and wealth management ranking 2013, which consider (amongst other factors) assets under management, net income and net new assets, global private banking assets under management grew just 10.8%YoY (compared with 16.7% ten years ago)

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