In today's money it's the equivalent of about $150,000, and funded by selling a plane that sold for twice that amount. I would classify having enough disposable income to own a $300,000 plane & a net worth of a few million to be wealthy.
I should note that my working definition of "wealthy" doesn't mean they never have to work again, or don't have to work to maintain their desired lifestyle. Other people may have different benchmarks. As you said, abstract measures aren't easily quantified, and someone else's benchmark for wealthy may be higher.
While average is more informal, it is the same as the mean, mathematically speaking. Some people may use it, well, informally, to represent other concepts, but the mathematical definition is quite clear.
You’re right, I edited the comment shortly after posting it. Most boomers don’t have 3M in housing. But many do and owning a house on the coast is not considered remarkable.
Imagine arguing that somebody didn’t have financial backing because his dad sold plane and bought emerald mine for half of profit (in country then known for black worker exploitation) for $40.000, and is worth couple millions at best.
This is how every discussion on Errol Musk's wealth goes.
Someone makes an implication that they were fabulously wealthy, using abstract measures like emerald mines, or small planes as a substitute for a concrete measure of wealth.
Someone points out the value of both those things was actually quite low.
Then the goal posts shift to how much more money the Musk family had than the average family, which is true enough.
But they were still decidedly middle class. They all had to work for a living. And in American terms, there are tens of millions of households with similar wealth. Upper middle class, to be sure, but nothing unusual.
And the emerald mine, such as it was, is said to have been in Zambia, not South Africa.
> Then the goal posts shift to how much more money the Musk family had than the average family, which is true enough.
There's hardly a move of goalpost here. People merely argue that showing Elon as self-made "in parent's garage" is bullshit. He had family with capabilities to enable him to participate in ecoms bubble.
> Zambia, not South Africa
"You are wrong, that labour camp wasn't in USSR but in North Korea." I've haven't named the country BTW.
As someone pointed out in another comment, "wealthy" does not mean "never having to work again". My life growing up would have been dramatically different if my parents had been worth even a low amount of millions, and the opportunities available to me would have been drastically higher.
A million dollars in 1970-1980 is worth around 3 to 7 million dollars now. 3 millions in that period is worth at least 10 millions right now. And there is decidedly not tens of millions of households in the US with that networth, let alone a single person.
When we're discussing total net worth, a couple million dollars is decidedly middle class.
In the US, there are 13.6 million households with a net worth over $1 million when excluding their primary residence, out of a total of 126 million households.
Over 10% of households in the US, even when excluding the value of their home, have over a million dollars in assets.
like anyone in developing countries and especially wealthy white South Africans do fit this bill rather well would hoard their actual private wealth in other jurisdictions. just because the company itself is worth nothing on paper doesn't mean they haven't pillaged the country resources for private gain like all the other wanna-be crooks and aspiring kleptocrats. [1][2]
There is a good reason why the family left SA the moment apartheid was abolished and why Elon Musk never went back since the end of apartheid.
Every entitled chuckle-duck born with a silver spoon in their mouth likes to launder their past to make them look self-made. Elon is no different.
Besides that, Elon didn't inherit that wealth. He moved to Canada with little money, worked blue collar jobs and had student debt. That's what he started with. At Zip2 he couldn't afford a second computer.
People WANT to believe a mythology that Elon started off rich to feel better about not accomplishing anything with their own equally or more privileged life. People that started with little themselves don't have this level of cognitive dissonance and see it more as an immigrant success story and inspiration.
He got a $28,000 loan from his father when starting Zip2.
The biggest privilege is having your family's security net, even if you don't use it. Musk has also had luck, being in the right time and place for the dot-com boom. Unlike a lot of people who grew up privileged, he's been a hustler with great business instincts. Unlike a lot of hustlers with great business instincts, he grew up privileged.
I looked for a source other than a tweet from Musk, who like many entrepreneurs is known to stretch the truth. Couldn’t find a definitive source, but it’s mentioned going as far back as the 90s according to Google, with not enough detail to say the exact timing but suggesting that it was crucial at the time. Of course, that’s also a hallmark of startup stories.
The loan came later and he was no more privileged than the average Canadian or American at the time. People who dismiss it as privilege are projecting envy, full stop.
And what are people who feel the need to defend the world’s richest person projecting?
Could the average American in 1995 give a $28,000 loan to his kid? Median net worth was ~$100,000 in today’s dollars. If ‘privilege’ has negative connotations for you, use ‘luck’ instead. I don’t think there’s any question that Musk made some of his own luck through hard work and intelligence, but we often observe the rich with survivorship bias because it would upset the social order if we stopped believing that hard work and intelligence are enough to become rich.
We have a pretty good idea what Errol's net worth is, and it's a couple million bucks.
The emerald mine in question was purchased for the equivalent of $40,000.