According to The Street, Elon Musk has set himself apart from other CEOs this year. He broke down barriers that many bosses couldn’t even pass the test. In doing so, the serial entrepreneur has made a long list of enemies. Sometimes he gave the impression that he was trying to make enemies.
Sometimes I think my enemies list is too short, was more or less ironic or kidding last June but several months later the list has gotten much longer because of everything Musk has done for it. He hasn’t stopped attacking progressives in the Democratic Party and those pushing ESG.
He didn’t hesitate to attack the detractors because any criticism he has for the techno king is personal. And so he retaliates by targeting the individual. That’s what he did with Robert Reich, the former secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. The current UC Berkeley professor said last September that there are no self-made billionaires.
To him, today’s billionaires, whoever they are, have all had financial help to get started. Therefore, one must stop with myth or legend. “Elon Musk came from a family that owned an emerald mine in apartheid South Africa,” Reich wrote on Twitter on September 20. Bill Gates’ mother helped Microsoft seal the deal with IBM. A quarter million dollar investment from his parents. The ‘self-made billionaire’ is a myth,” Reich tweeted.
Reich also recorded a video, which has been viewed by over a million people as of the time of this writing. In the video, Reich seeks to denounce social inequalities and accuses the wealthy of not paying their “fair share of taxes”. He debunks the myth of self-made billionaires who, according to him, have become successful through their “courage,” their “grit” and “original idea.”
He claims that most billionaires have financial incentives or benefit from family connections. He also accused the billionaires of profiting from the labor of their employees, who are paid low wages and subjected to “abusive” working conditions. Elon Musk took this criticism very badly and did not hesitate to insult Reich.