OPEN LETTER|MONEY
Dear Elon Musk,
The other day I read that at least 350,000 children under 5 years old are likely to die from malnutrition in Somalia this summer.
"Humanitarian agencies say there is a huge funding crisis. They have just 3% of what is needed to intervene in the country."
You are the richest person in the world with a net worth of $273.6 billion.
You have 7 children that might one day ask you, "Why didn't you do more (anything?) to help?"
Would it make a difference if the children were white?
You're willing to drop $43 billion overnight to buy Twitter, but not contribute to children who are dying from lack of food and clean water.
Poverty is the leading cause of hunger, but poverty also results from hunger, in a cyclical relationship. In spite of the importance of childhood nutrition and significant progress in the last 25 years, global childhood hunger is still rampant.
Overall, 5.6 million children under age five died in 2016, nearly 15,000 daily (World Health Organization [WHO], 2016). The risk of a child dying before five years of age is highest in Africa (76.5 per 1000 live births), about 8 times higher than in Europe (9.6 per 1000 live births) (WHO, 2016).
Approximately 3.1 million children die from undernutrition each year (UNICEF, 2018a). Hunger and undernutrition contribute to more than half of global child deaths, as undernutrition can make children more vulnerable to illness and exacerbate disease (UNICEF, 2018a).
I know I'll never be extremely rich because there is no way I could make much more money than I need without giving and investing a great deal of it into people and communities who lack basics like food, water, shelter, clothing and so on.
Apparently, you didn't get to where you are all by yourself…
"I'm happy to celebrate success, but let's remember, Elon Musk didn't make it on his own. He got huge investments from the government, from taxpayers, from those public school teachers and those minimum wage workers who've been paying their taxes all along to get that business up and running and help see it through rough times," Warren said on "Squawk Box."
The Massachusetts Democrat was referring to the billions of dollars in U.S. government grant funding, subsidies and incentives that for years have helped two of Musk's companies — Tesla and SpaceX.
Electric cars and commercial space travel were anything but sure bets in their early years. But now, Tesla has a stock market value of more than $1 trillion and SpaceX is one of the most valuable private companies in the world.
"When you make it big … let's also ask that you pay a fair share in taxes. The 99% pay about 7.2% of their total wealth in taxes every year.
That top one-tenth of 1% pays less than half as much. That's not right.
You CAN do a MUCH better job at helping those who are less fortunate, so DO it.
Please and thank you.
Sincerely,
KL Simmons
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