Individuals go to nice lengths to make sure they’re financially set for his or her later years. However in case you’re asking Elon Musk, you actually needn’t hassle. In response to the world’s richest man, whose internet value is estimated at effectively over $700 billion, saving for retirement will quickly be out of date.
Musk aired this view on a current episode of the Moonshots With Peter Diamandis podcast. Musk let listeners in on his imaginative and prescient of our monetary future, a world the place know-how, particularly artificial intelligence, creates such an abundance of sources that anybody should buy something they need.
The entrepreneur mentioned that inside just some years, we’ll stay in a world marked by a fantastic surplus, the place “higher medical care than anybody has in the present day” can be “obtainable for everybody inside 5 years.” He additionally mentioned that there can be “no shortage of products and providers” and also you’ll have the ability to study something you need.
Musk continued, explaining that there can be such a surplus that life will now not require folks to save lots of with a purpose to guarantee they’re taken care of in a while. “One facet advice I’ve is: Don’t fear about squirreling cash away for retirement in 10 or 20 years. It received’t matter,” he mentioned, including that he believes “saving for retirement can be irrelevant” and that the longer term will deliver abundance.”
General, Musk’s view of the longer term appears decidedly optimistic about AI. He talked concerning the energy of AI to interrupt limitations and utilizing it to harness the solar’s vitality. And he mentioned he believes the “way forward for foreign money” can be measured not in cash, however in “wattage.” However he additionally acknowledged that in what are sure to be years stuffed with change, the highway to the longer term he envisions can be “bumpy” and crammed with obstacles.
Musk mentioned he doesn’t simply foresee “common excessive revenue,” but additionally main “social unrest” as the results of a lot change in a brief time period.
The prediction appears eerily much like one made by John Maynard Keynes, generally known as the founder of recent macroeconomics, in 1930. In his essay, “Financial Prospects for Our Grandchildren,” the economist wrote that by 2030, know-how would allow employees to undertake a 15-hour workweek.
On the time, the workweek was estimated to be about 50 hours. In a single sense, Keynes was right: The typical variety of hours fell within the years following the prediction, because the 40-hour workweek was established soon after. Nevertheless, in the present day full-time work hours hover at about 8.4 hours a day or 42.5 hours per week, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Whereas lots of Keynes’s predictions about know-how proved to be right, corresponding to how vastly know-how has reshaped sure industries, working hours have but to fall as drastically as he predicted.
In the intervening time, Musk’s feedback are arduous to swallow, on condition that many Individuals battle with basic expenses like childcare, not to mention saving for retirement. In response to a 2025 report from the Nationwide Council on Ageing, most older adults don’t manage to pay for to financially survive “a monetary shock” triggered by a loss of life, the necessity for long-term care, or sickness. “Eighty % of these 60 and older have little to no property and wouldn’t have the ability to climate a monetary shock with out falling into poverty,” the report mentioned.
Researchers added: “The way forward for growing old in America will doubtless be outlined by an ever-widening inequality in each monetary standing and mortality, deepening the divide between nearly all of older Individuals (the 80%) and the highest 20%.”
Musk did say there could be bumps alongside the highway to utopia.
