Elon Musk, currently the wealthiest person on the planet, recently suggested that ordinary people shouldn’t bother putting money aside for retirement. This advice comes from a man who is reportedly worth around $700 billion and who has just gone to court to defend a proposed $139 billion compensation package for himself.
Speaking on the Moonshots podcast hosted by Peter Diamandis, Musk told listeners not to stress about saving money for the long term. According to him, setting aside cash for 10 or 20 years in the future will be unnecessary because, in his view, money itself will eventually lose its importance.
Musk’s reasoning rests on his belief that artificial intelligence will become so advanced that it will dramatically reduce the cost of nearly everything. In this future, he claims, society will experience something like “universal high income,” where abundance replaces scarcity. Diamandis eagerly agreed, arguing that AI will effectively strip monetary value from goods and services because both labor and intelligence will become nearly free.
To his credit, Diamandis briefly acknowledged a major problem with this vision: corporations can only remain profitable if people still have money to spend. If humans are pushed out of the workforce, where does that money come from? He asked Musk whether governments would tax corporate profits and redistribute the wealth through universal basic income or a similar system.
Musk hesitated and avoided endorsing any meaningful role for government redistribution. Instead, he circled back to his core message: saving for retirement is unnecessary. That answer led to an awkward pause, likely because Diamandis seemed uncomfortable encouraging listeners to spend freely based on a speculative technological future.
Musk doubled down, saying that if even some of his predictions come true, retirement savings would be irrelevant. Diamandis then attempted to rationalize this idea by suggesting that essential services—housing, healthcare, entertainment—would simply be available to everyone. He followed up by asking how close we are to reaching the technological “singularity,” which would be required to make such a society possible.
Musk confidently declared that humanity is already in the singularity, likening the moment to reaching the peak of a roller coaster just before the drop. He claimed artificial general intelligence would arrive as soon as 2026 and predicted that by 2030, AI would surpass the combined intelligence of all humans.
This is far from the first time Musk has made bold claims about AGI. In recent years, he has repeatedly shifted his timeline—warning of existential dangers one year, calling for pauses in AI development the next, and then promising imminent breakthroughs shortly after. Historically, these dramatic predictions tend to coincide with Musk seeking more investment and attention, making skepticism warranted.
The practical issue with Musk’s advice is simple: saving money carries little downside. If his vision of a post-scarcity world actually materializes, personal savings won’t limit anyone’s access to goods or services. But if he’s wrong, failing to save could leave people financially vulnerable. The risk only exists in following his advice, not in ignoring it.
This is also the same billionaire who has dismissed Social Security—a program that has kept millions of elderly people out of poverty—as a “Ponzi scheme” and advocated cutting it. In Musk’s ideal future, individuals have no savings, public safety nets are weakened or eliminated, and he remains extraordinarily wealthy.
Perhaps he would support some mechanism to ensure people can still afford to buy products—especially his own—as long as it doesn’t involve higher taxes or redistributing wealth. It’s a comfortable vision for him. For everyone else, it’s a gamble with very real consequences.
