Most executives routinely say things that are defensible or forgettable. Every once in a while, however, someone says something that requires an immediate response.
So while rare, some interviews produce a moment where the journalist stops mid-conversation and challenges what the person just said.
Elon Musk sat down with Zanny Minton Beddoes, editor-in-chief of The Economist, at his Texas Gigafactory in late July 2026. The Economist interview was part of the magazine’s Insider series.
One prediction from that conversation has been circulating ever since, because what Musk said about the future of money is either the most important economic forecast of the year or one of the most unusual things a major CEO has said in a long time.
What Musk told The Economist about money, AI, and 2036
“Money won’t matter in 2036,” Musk told Beddoes during the interview. He said robots and AI will produce more goods and services than any person could consume. At that point, in his view, currency stops being useful.
“You want money for food, housing, transport, entertainment,” he said. “If that is so abundant, what do you need money for in that case?”
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He also said he expects deflation, not inflation. If machines keep increasing output while the money supply stays relatively steady, prices will fall, and a dollar will buy more over time. He sees that process going far enough to make the dollar itself matter less.
Musk also raised the idea of governments issuing checks to citizens once goods are cheap enough. He previously described this as “universal high income” in conversations with entrepreneur Peter Diamandis.
He said the transition would be “bumpy” and flagged income transfers as the next major policy fight, Bitcoin.com reported. Musk did not specify who would fund those transfers or how governments currently running deficits would manage that while also absorbing the job losses that arrive first.
Where economists say Musk gets it wrong on scarcity and money
Several economists have pushed back on the core of Musk’s argument. Their point is that cheap manufactured goods don’t eliminate scarcity. Scarcity moves to different things, Forbes reported.
A house with a view of the ocean, a slot at a top university, the time of someone in high demand: none of those get cheaper when robots build cars faster. People still need something to allocate access to them.
Economists Tyler Cowen and Noah Smith have both made this point. The American Institute for Economic Research has, too. Their argument is that Musk’s post-scarcity vision only applies to manufactured physical goods.
Status goods, desirable locations, and the attention of people everyone wants to know stay scarce. Money is still what rations access to all of them.
Critics have also raised the question of who owns the robots. A small number of companies control the machines and the energy systems powering them. Even if those machines generate enormous output, the distribution of that output is a political decision, not an automatic one.
Nvidia, Microsoft, and Meta are spending hundreds of billions of dollars building the infrastructure Musk is describing. None of them plans to give the output away.
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How The Economist’s editor pushed back on the prediction
Beddoes challenged Musk on the political path between now and 2036. She pointed out that job losses from AI tend to arrive before any abundance does.
Workers who lose their jobs to machines don’t sit around waiting for prices to fall. They put pressure on governments. And governments respond, typically by protecting the displaced rather than accelerating the disruption.
She said the political backlash could include demands for nationalization of AI companies, higher taxes on tech profits, and regulatory interventions that slow the buildout Musk is describing, Storyboard18 reported.
Musk acknowledged the transition would be bumpy. He said income transfers were likely the next big political battle. Then he moved on.
What Musk’s prediction means for Tesla and SpaceX investors
Tesla’s current stock price rests heavily on expectations for Optimus, the company’s humanoid robot. Investors expect to collect returns on that bet. Those returns would be paid in dollars. Musk said dollars won’t matter much in 2036.
SpaceX went public at a $1.77 trillion valuation, also priced in dollars. The investors who bought shares at that price are betting on a company whose founder just predicted the currency of their payout will lose relevance right around when they’d expect to get paid.
Musk also said during the interview that China has a strong chance of leading AI once it expands its computing capacity. He sees the geopolitical competition as unresolved, even as he treats the economic destination as settled.
Certain outcome, uncertain winner: that is a specific kind of bet, and it has Musk’s own companies right at the center of it.
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