Elon Musk: “Money won’t matter in 2036” — AI, robots and the deflation bet

“Money won't matter in 2036.” That is Elon Musk's claim on the latest episode of The Insider, The Economist's interview programme, where he sat down with editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes to talk through what happens to work, wages and prices once AI and humanoid robots can do every job.

The core claim

Musk's argument runs in three steps:

1. AI plus robots eventually do every job. Not just white-collar work that large language models already touch, but physical labour too, as humanoid robots like Tesla's Optimus scale into mass production.
2. The cost of goods and services collapses. When labour is no longer the limiting input, Musk argues, the price of almost everything falls toward the cost of energy and raw materials.
3. Deflation, not inflation. Contrary to the common fear that money-printing for universal income would send prices soaring, Musk expects the opposite: abundance drives prices down so far that money stops being the thing that decides who gets what.

By 2036 — roughly a decade out — he claims the transition will be far enough along that money simply “won't matter” for most of what people need.

Universal high income

This is a sharper version of a position Musk has pushed for years. He has long dismissed universal basic income as too timid, arguing instead for what he calls universal high income: in a world where AI and robots produce nearly everything, output per person rises so much that everyone can live well without working.

The interesting move in the Economist interview is the deflation argument. Most economists who model an AI-driven economy worry about how to fund redistribution. Musk's answer is that the funding question fades if production costs keep falling — the challenge becomes meaning and purpose, not scarcity.

The obvious counterarguments

Minton Beddoes pushed on the gaps, and they are real:

• Timelines. Musk has a long record of aggressive predictions — full self-driving, Mars — arriving late or not yet at all. A decade to “every job” is far beyond most serious forecasts.
• Who owns the robots? Abundance in aggregate says nothing about distribution. If the machines belong to a handful of firms, prices can fall while inequality widens.
• Land, energy and status goods do not deflate the way manufactured goods do. Money can stop mattering for food and gadgets long before it stops mattering for a house in a good neighbourhood.

Why it matters here

For Zimbabwe and the wider region the claim cuts both ways. Cheap AI labour could compress the cost of services that are expensive here — diagnostics, tutoring, engineering. But economies built on exporting labour and commodities have the most to lose if machines undercut both. Either way, the debate about what people do when machines can do everything is no longer science fiction talk — it is now the editor of The Economist asking the world's richest man to defend a date.

Watch the full interview on The Economist's site.