Elon Musk could put his $1 trillion to a good use

Elon Musk attends the finals for the NCAA wrestling championship, March 22, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

By Larry Persily

Elon Musk is the richest person in the world, probably the universe, though it’s always possible some unknown form of life has blasted to stratospheric economic heights in an unknown galaxy — if they even have an atmosphere or stratosphere — and reaped untold personal wealth in whatever currency they may use.

No matter, Musk is rich in dollars on Earth, where his companies sell their goods and services of electric cars, satellite internet links, rocket launches, artificial intelligence and data center services.

And he got even richer last week when SpaceX, his rocket launch and AI and satellite company, went public, joining earthly companies on the stock exchange. No matter that most of his businesses lose money — investors are eager to ride the rocket and see how high it can go.

Musk, according to numbers from respected financial news services Bloomberg, Forbes and the Associated Press, is now worth an estimated $1.1 trillion to $1.2 trillion. Close enough, since I doubt the guy needs to balance a checkbook or look over a credit card statement.

But millions of Americans do just that every month, and for good reason. They’re in debt, particularly on their credit cards. The balance owed on credit cards held by Americans reached $1.25 trillion in the first quarter of this year, according to the New York Federal Reserve Bank, up from $1.18 trillion a year ago. The $1.25 trillion is the highest first-quarter balance since the bank began measuring the data in 1999. 

No problem for those who pay their balance in full every month, but more than one in eight cards, or 13.12%, the highest level in 15 years, were at least 90 days delinquent in the first quarter of this year, according to data released last month by the New York Fed.

The Alaska Department of Labor also looked at debt and delinquencies last month, reporting the numbers in the June issue of Alaska Economic Trends, the department’s monthly magazine. “Alaska credit card debt delinquency (in 2025) has risen to its highest level in more than 20 years,” close to 10%, the department reported.

Though below the national average of 12.4% last year, Alaska’s nearly 10% delinquency rate is not comforting to the tens of thousands of people who can’t keep up with payments.

Considering the rural nature of much of the state, the remoteness of many homes and the coverage gaps in internet services, no doubt a lot of people who are behind in their credit card bills pay Elon Musk’s Starlink for satellite internet service. Ironic that Starlink raised its rates in the same month that Musk became a trillionaire.

The Wall Street Journal wanted to illustrate for readers just how far a trillion dollars would go. If you could find and stack enough pennies — remember, the U.S. Mint stopped making pennies last year because they lost money on every coin — a trillion dollars would cover the distance between Earth and the moon four times.

That got me thinking: Musk has long promoted colonizing the moon, aboard his rockets, of course. But if he really wanted to help people on Earth, as he claims he does with all of the technology and products he sells, he could use his trillion-dollar wealth to pay off the credit card delinquencies of millions of people. He’d still be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. More than enough to get him to the moon, where he would easily claim the title as the richest person there.

• Larry Persily is the publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel, which first published this column.