People used to revere billionaires and put them on pedestals. Some saw them as inspirations to work harder for a better life, so much so that they became media darlings who enjoyed a celebrity kind of lifestyle. However, their status and personal lives have recently come under close examination, particularly since American politicians such as Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez have popularized the socialist slogan “Tax the Rich” in the United States.
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) stated that billionaires should not exist as most of them use the working class to their advantage. AOC’s stands about the billionaire club set her apart from the rest of the officials. Her ideologies have also attracted some fans who criticized billionaires and their tax avoidance. Billionaires like Elon Musk are known to be doing part of these scandals for which many people currently criticize billionaires are.
Because of these recent events, the tides have turned for billionaires as more individuals are becoming more aware of the disadvantages of capitalism, with Elon Musk and other billionaires as the people behind them. But America’s fascination with billionaires was not going to shift overnight. As a result, the public’s polarized views on billionaires like Elon Musk are still prevalent. But who is he? How did the richest man in the world become so well-known and suddenly reviled?
A Brief History Of Elon Musk’s Life
Besides owning houses and lands everywhere and billions of dollars, billionaires also benefit from a semi-celebrity status. Elon Musk is proof of how much this has become a trend. This celebrity status is mostly because he is one of the world’s wealthiest people in the world. But how did he get there?
Elon Musk’s mother is Canadian, and his father is South African. What most people don’t know is that he wasn’t born into a wealthy family. When he grew up, he moved to Canada to study. He eventually had to work in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa. After that, he traveled to the United States after a few years and attended the University of Pennsylvania, earning a degree in Economics and Physics. While that may be an inspirational story, unfortunately, it doesn’t end there.
After graduating, Elon Musk founded SpaceX. This was when his career and celebrity status began to take shape as he launched several businesses and companies that attracted the attention of many people. Musk’s SpaceX, which aims to revolutionize space technology, has made him a household figure. When he became the chairman, product architect, and CEO of Tesla Motors, Inc. (renamed Tesla, Inc.), his career finally took off in many unpredictable directions.
Elon Musk’s Image Through His Actions and Business Ventures
As a company with its mission and vision on paper, Tesla sounds like it can give hope and a promising future for everyone. The company aims to help the world transition to more sustainable energy. It seeks to achieve this with its electric automobiles. So far, it sounds good. But this is not where Elon Musk’s legacy ends.
While Elon Musk is attempting to improve the world, his actions, tweets, and other ventures prove he isn’t Tony Stark who wants to save the planet. And with these controversies, he has earned a massive number of people criticizing him, and he often responds immaturely.
One of the biggest scandals related to him recently shows how several investigations revealed that his fortune had increased during the first few months of the COVID-19 outbreak. These issues and scandals have prompted people like David Attenborough and Bernie Sanders to criticize him. In typical fashion, Elon Musk struck back, as expected.
Even if Elon Musk is doing the world a favor, some people still see him as the bad guy. He has continuously tarnished his image with his claims of making the world a better place while his actions reflect otherwise. The divisive opinions about his persona were made more apparent after appearing in several films and TV shows. Tweets and viewers’ comments about his persona mainly were not in his favor.
Musk’s polarizing persona has proven to be hit and miss across different people. And it appears that it will take some time for anyone to forget what Elon Musk has been up to during the last few years, as everything is on Twitter. He or Twitter officials might delete some of his tweets, but everyone has screenshots of them. Hopefully, it will cause more people to realize that most billionaires aren’t the superheroes they claim they are and that they should be paying their taxes.
