Why I admire Elon Musk – the Times Person of the Year 2021
We all know who Elon Musk is; he requires no introduction. It is almost impossible to keep him off your mind sometimes. He’s known for his massive success in Tesla and SpaceX much before, but 2021 has been a remarkable year for him. So much so, that he got the Times Person of the Year 2021 on December 13th. So, what was so special about him that gave him the edge over others?
Who is Elon Musk?
Elon Musk needs no introduction at all. From electric cars to launching rockets into space, he is by far one of the most successful people on Earth. He is also the richest person alive with a net worth of around 300 billion! Most of his revenue revolves around Tesla and its stock as he is its highest stockholder. He often uses this to buy bitcoin and sell it at a profit. He then re-invests into Tesla with this money and repeats the process. Tesla has almost no competition and has been up top throughout. It is worth over 1 trillion dollars. Their closest competitors, Ford and Rivian combined, are worth less than 200 billion dollars. Although Tesla is ahead of many companies in a recent interview with Times, Elon Musk states that his goal was never to be in the lead, it was always to set an example for other companies to follow the renewable path of building cars. He has high hopes for Tesla’s future but also wishes companies do well to make sure Earth is a safer place for future generations. Elon Musk is a great guy who just wants to take humanity to another level, so why would anyone think negatively about him?
Why is he a debated figure?
Throughout Elon’s success, has had to prove a lot of sceptics wrong. Almost anything that he does, has a negative reaction to it. Elon Musk is very informal on his social media, especially Twitter. He uses it as a place where he discusses his future plans and asks for feedback using polls, or just joking around. Many, including myself, admire Elon for this, that even though he is the richest man on Earth, instead of being formal, he has a good sense of humour and knows how to have fun. Unfortunately, when you have nearly 70 million followers, someone’s ought to get offended. Some people take it very seriously and try attacking Elon from all directions and even connect these jokes with politics. Elon also freely talks about the stock market and some say his comments cause fluctuation in stocks!
Recently, in his interview with the Times, he denies such claims and states that the stock market fluctuates on its own, “It’s not like the market drops by half “, he says. Finally, like many other rich Entrepreneurs, he too pays little to no taxes. Times studies show that the top 25 entrepreneurs pay only 3% of their net worth in taxes. This has created a huge outrage, with people saying “The least they can do is pay taxes, they have so much money!”. In his defence, although he has a lot of money, he doesn’t really spend it on himself. He does a lot of charity and reinvests into his companies.
2021 for Elon Musk
2021 has been an exceptional year for Elon Musk. SpaceX has been extremely successful and has seen massive advancements in the Falcone 9’s. The Falcon 9 is a two-stage rocket made specially to transport humans to outer space. Even now, in January 2022, they are still ongoing tests. In total, SpaceX has made 135 total Falcon 9 launches, out of which 95 have been successful first time.
Furthermore, Tesla became the 6th company in American history to be worth over a trillion US dollars. PayPal also reached its goal finishing 2021 with around 392 million active users and over 800 billion dollars transacted. This is why Times awarded the Person of The Year award to Elon Musk. Elon, despite all the brickbats, continues to blow our minds and people say this award might be the end to the negativity showered upon him.
Why I admire Elon Musk
I believe Elon is well-deserving of this award. He has a very likeable personality in my opinion as he is very open and has a good sense of humour. His only direction in life is forward. He works very hard and unlike other entrepreneurs, he runs multiple companies at the same time and is able to thrive in each industry. Tesla in automobiles, SpaceX in Aerospace, PayPal in finances, The Boring Company in construction, Neuralink in Neurology, Open AI in AI research and development and Cybercity in solar power. All of these except Open AI is owned and run by Elon Musk; he stepped down from Open AI but still founded it with others. To top it all off, he also just became the richest man on Earth, beating Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon. I truly believe no one other than him deserves this award.
Contributor: Aarush Mohan
About our Writing Program Student
A teenager with a love for football and gaming, Aarush Mohan is a budding pianist and also plays the violin. He is currently teaching piano to an 8-year-old in his neighbourhood. This 8th Grader from Greenwood High International School, Bangalore has lived in Indonesia, Hong Kong and Japan.
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