Wagner: On This One, Let’s Ignore Elon Musk

Right up front, please allow me to state, as I have done before, that I am a huge fan of Elon Musk; he is, in my view, the Michael Jordan of the applied science world. It is necessary, I suppose, in these nitpicky days, to state that my fandom of anyone does not equate to approval of everything they ever do or say; only Christ has my full approval at all times in everything.

That said, I generally do appreciate Mr. Musk. It is kind of hard not to like a guy who could be sitting on a yacht in the Mediterranean sipping champagne and eating caviar for the rest of his life, but is instead working like a dog for the betterment of humanity.

The man launches rockets, then safely catches them with giant metal chopsticks so they can be reused. He helped to secure free speech for everyone with his purchase of Twitter. He is helping to relieve traffic congestion through the efforts of The Boring Company (and kudos on that to the hilarious name). The entire world, or pretty close to it, now has access to high-speed internet through Starlink. His Tesla company is the world’s most valuable car company, with a market value exceeding one trillion dollars. Neuralink is creating brain-computer interface chips that will likely change everything for paralytics and a host of other hurting people. The moon will likely have a permanent functioning city on it soon through the efforts of SpaceX, with Mars to follow.

Busy dude.

For all of that, though, I want to strenuously object to a recent bit of advice he gave on a recent Moonshots with Peter Diamandis podcast. On it, he said, “Don’t worry about squirreling money away for retirement in like ten or twenty years. It won’t matter.” He followed up with “If any of the things that we’ve said are true, savings for retirement will be irrelevant.” His view is that AI and robotics will produce a coming age of abundance that leads to a universal high income and a post-labor world. In short, no one will have to work, and we will all be filthy rich.

What, you ask, does this have to do with a small-town pastor, faith, or Scripture? More than you may realize. First of all, the Bible is absolutely loaded with perfect financial counsel, all of which says the opposite of Mr. Musk on this one. Second, as a shepherd of sheep, I am largely responsible for their well-being; if I see a danger, any danger, I am responsible to warn them. And this notion of no longer saving and simply “trusting the robots to take care of us” is both dangerous and hilariously I-Robotesque all at once.

So let’s jump in and set things straight on this one. To begin with, until the end of the age and the creation of the new Heaven and Earth, there will never, ever be universal prosperity, no matter how highly technology evolves. I know this because Jesus said so in the words “For ye have the poor always with you.” That is recorded three times in the gospels. It was true for the four thousand years that preceded his day, it has been true for the two thousand years that have come after His day, and it will always be true. Technology may change, but people will not. They will still come in all varieties, including hard-working/lazy, careful/wasteful, studious/willfully ignorant, and even (from our perspective) lucky/unlucky. Thus, outcomes will never and can never be equal, and there will always be some measure of poverty. Furthermore, trusting to promises of the future rather than preparations of the present has a bad way of not working out at all.

Because of all that, the guidance to forget about savings and just trust the robots is really bad guidance.

Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, put it this way in Proverbs 6:6-8: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.” This was an admonition to work hard and save diligently in the early years for the coming winter of our later years. I tell every young person that they are currently taking care of an older person, they just don’t realize it yet. That old person is them. Somewhere out there in the future is a geezer them looking into the past and saying, “Hey kid, don’t let me starve!”

Young people should start investing for the future the very moment they get their first job. They should have a savings account for short-term savings (vacations, Christmas, stuff they want to buy), something like a money market account for mid-range savings (college, down payment on a home, buying a car), and long-range savings for retirement. Compounding interest is the most powerful financial tool on earth. A Simple or 401(k) retirement account will provide both an upfront benefit and long-term compounding interest; a Roth will flip that around and offer compounding interest and a back-end benefit. I recommend both, and as soon as possible. A financial advisor can help with more details on those. But simply put, just by making sensible, regular contributions from the moment you start work, you should easily retire with enough to be comfortable till the day you die, with or without the robots.

You should also strive to live a debt-free life as soon as possible. If you want to work when you are old and gray (I likely will; I am weird like that), fine and dandy. If you have to work because you have a mortgage and will end up homeless if you don’t, not fine, not dandy. If you are still struggling with car payments and credit card bills, not fine, not dandy. Proverbs 22:7 says, “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”

I like Mr. Musk and wish him all the success in the world. But on this one, please listen to me rather than him.