Kerby Anderson

Two weeks ago, I used the wealth of Elon Musk to illustrate the size of the national debt. If you took all his money and assets and used them to try to pay down the debt, the impact would be negligible.

Apparently, the UN has a better idea. David Beasley is the director of the UN’s World Food Program. He said that if Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos gave up two percent of their personal wealth, they could solve world hunger. That would work out to be $6 billion to help 42 million people.

One observer noted that the UN program had already raised more than $8 billion and yet didn’t solve world hunger. If money were the only factor, they should be well on their way to eliminating hunger.

Most billionaires would ignore the statement by David Beasley or feel shamed about their untold billions. But Elon Musk is not your typical billionaire. He said that if this UN organization could describe on Twitter how $6 billion will solve world hunger, he would be ready to sell Tesla stock. “But it must be open-source accounting, so the public sees precisely how the money is spent.”

Beasley offered to provide a plan if they could meet privately. We shouldn’t be surprised at the response. The UN has been notorious for wasting vast sums of money. Feel free to do an Internet search on the various investigative reports on how the United Nations spends the money it collects from member nations.

As I have discussed in previous commentaries, world hunger arises from many other factors such as regional politics, civil war, limited roads, and infrastructure, along with weather patterns and the environment. Merely writing a check to the UN won’t solve those problems.