Elon Musk Reacts to Bernie Sanders' Tweet About Wealth Tax: 'I Keep Forgetting That You're Still Alive'

The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX founder also wrote to the Vermont lawmaker: "I keep forgetting that you're still alive"

Bernie Sanders (left), Elon Musk. Photo: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty; Maja Hitij/Getty

Billionaire Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk is lashing out at Sen. Bernie Sanders after the Vermont lawmaker took to Twitter to demand that the country's wealthiest individuals "pay their fair share. Period."

The 50-year-old Musk, currently the world's richest person, wrote in response to the 80-year-old Sanders' tweet: "I keep forgetting that you're still alive."

In a second tweet, Musk wrote to Sanders: "Want me to sell more stock, Bernie? Just say the word …"

Musks's tweets come after his trust sold more than $5 billion in Tesla stock last week — sales that came after he polled his Twitter followers asking whether he should sell 10 percent of his shares in the company (though CNBC reports that some of those sales were slated to happen regardless of the poll results).

In yet another tweet directed at Sanders, Musk wrote, "Bernie is a taker, not a maker."

Back in January, Musk overtook Jeff Bezos to become the world's richest person, only to briefly lose the title back to the Amazon billionaire the following month. Musk went on to reclaim his spot days later, following the completion of a SpaceX funding round, Fortune reported.

Analysts at Morgan Stanley recently predicted that Musk could become the world's first trillionaire — largely thanks to his aerospace company SpaceX.

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Sanders, meanwhile, is among the chorus of voices on the left demanding higher tax rates for the wealthiest people in the country.

In March, the Independent lawmaker — along with Democrat Elizabeth Warren — proposed a 3 percent total annual tax on those whose wealth exceeds $1 billion. The proposal also included a 2 percent annual wealth tax on the net worth of households and trusts worth $50 million to $1 billion.

Sanders has previously said that a tax on billionaires would "substantially reduce wealth inequality in America and stop our democracy from turning into a corrupt oligarchy."

Musk has been critical of such tax hikes in the past, writing to one of his Twitter followers last month: "Eventually, they run out of other people's money and then they come for you."