Elon Musk

Elon Musk is the wealthiest man in the world; his worth is about $430 billion. He is presently playing an important role in politics, as a good friend of President-elect Donald Trump.

He was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1971, but moved to Canada at the age of 18, and became a Canadian citizen due to the fact that his mother was Canadian. Later, he attended the University of Pennsylvania, moved to California, and started various companies, eventually changing his citizenship to American.

One of his early companies became PayPal, and through selling that, he had enough money to start SpaceX, which has as its goal the development of private space travel. But he is most famous probably for his involvement in Tesla, which makes electric cars, and is probably the most successful company to do so. He also bought Twitter, and rebranded it as X, which put him in the heart of an argument concerning freedom of speech and misinformation in social media. He is known to use X and dominate it with his own views, but it's a huge open market for all kinds of viewpoints and some have criticized its use for bullying and hate speech.

He became one of the largest contributors in Donald Trump's 2024 election campaign; Trump won the election, which has rocketed him to prominence in daily news. He is now leading a government department called DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), tasked to saving money by making things more efficient. He is likely to make some enemies doing this, but as a CEO and founder of companies he is probably qualified to do that.


___ 1. Which best describes Musk's mother?
a. a Canadian citizen living in Canada
b. a Canadian living in South Africa
c. a South African living in Canada
d. an American living in Canada

___ 2. Why would he make enemies running DOGE?
a. because he will probably have to fire many employees
b. because many people don't believe in governnment efficiency
c. because many other people wanted that job
d. because he will make a lot of money, and not have to do anything

___ 3. What can we infer about the source of his wealth?
a. he makes most of his money working for the government
b. he makes most of his money from running successful companies like Tesla
c. he makes most of his money from X (Twitter)
d. he makes most of his money from private space travel