They are the two richest men in the world, rarely agree on issues, and seem to function as opposites. Elon Busk is the richest man in the world and has an estimated worth of $213 billion as of May 16, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index.
The number two spot for the richest person from around the globe goes to Jeff Bezos, who only has a fortune estimated at $135 billion.
Money is not the only thing they have in common, they are both going after space, as in the final frontier. Musk has established SpaceX and Bezos has followed suit with Blue Origin.
Musk has climbed to the top of Bloomberg’s list by being a street fighter that enjoys provoking controversies. He does his fighting publicly usually and loves the social media platform Twitter. He’s in the process of buying that platform as long as it’s not filled with spam accounts.
Bezos got to his place on the list with discretion and kept his mouth shut when asked about his opinions. The Amazon mogul has not retaliated when he has been attacked by politicians and the like. He did not even return jabs with former President Donald Trump when he made Amazon one of his favorite targets.
With a history of the competition, the two powerful men seem to be coming together for some issues they see as important. About a month ago, Musk and Bezos agreed on a solution to solve the homeless problem in San Francisco.
Bezos tweeted on April 9, ”Convert Twitter SF HQ to homeless shelter since no one shows up anyway.” This is a solution Amazon was able to implement in Seattle.
“Great idea,” Musk responded.
This seems to have wet the beak of Bezos. The discreet mogul is coming alive now on Twitter, just like Musk. For the last few days, he has been regularly interacting with his 4.3 million followers and he is engaging on issues that matter to him. The real shift seems to be the jabs he is willing to take against politicians, even the president. Joe Biden has been his target in recent days and Bezos has not held back his words about Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board.
“The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead,” Bezos said after Biden blamed the wealthiest corporations for inflation. The president said that they should “pay their fare share,” to bring inflation down.
Bezos went further, ”Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection.”
A few days later, Bezos was still hot under the collar, especially when Biden tried to take credit for deficit reduction when in fact he was pumping stimulus money into the economy to meet surging prices.
“In fact, the administration tried hard to inject even more stimulus into an already over-heated, inflationary economy and only Manchin saved them from themselves. Inflation is a regressive tax that most hurts the least affluent. Misdirection doesn’t help the country,” Bezos wrote this week.
Musk and Bezos both agree that it was the stimulus given through the pandemic that caused soaring inflation. Bezos tweeted this summary of his opinion and hours later, Musk agreed with it.
“Remember the Administration tried their best to add another $3.5 TRILLION to federal spending. They failed, but if they had succeeded, inflation would be even higher than it is today, and inflation today is at a 40 year high.”
Maybe number one and number two are going to join forces. That is a nightmare for Joe Biden.