"She called me a grifter and a free-loader who doesn't pay taxes basically and I'm literally paying the most tax that any individual in history has ever paid this year, ever. And she doesn't pay taxes basically at all. She gets paid by people that pay taxes… she gets paid by me. The irony.”
Musk is one lucky sucker he should be bringing flowers to Warren and to congress because without the FED and their private mandate of funding government deficits, TSLA is nothing of what it is today.
Tesla does not make money from operations, Solar City is a money loser bailout for his brother. Both TSLA and Solar City make money from government freebies, from carbon offsets and solar subsidies the businesses on their own are not functioning as a stand alone. If it were not for the FED and their decade of free corporate debt TSLA likely would not have made it.
Ive followed TSLA from the first day they started trading and for a LONG period of time they had to throw out some Trump style garbage junk debt terms to secure money for operations, they were doing awful convert debt and the stock was slogging along. When the FED chopped rates and thus corporate bond rates then it made marginal companies like TSLA (some call them zombie companies) able to keep going and GREATLY reduce their finance rates and open the cash burn market they needed to survive.
Warren is right, Musk has made a personal fortune off the backs of federal subsidies and the FED interest rate mandate, he personally has made a huge fortune and the company has massive loss carryforwards (shocking) that make it so they not only get most of their profits FROM the government they also due to the tax code are not paying corporate taxes.
Musk is a smug jerk who is lucky TSLA survived and his big media mouth puts him in the cross hairs of being a target. If the government were to pull back on the credits for EV and for solar, TSLA would drop in value likely 75%, they are unable to sell vehicles at a profit and will continue to do so, he should be kissing the feet of congress every single one as his personal fortune is paid for by the US taxpayer and generations to follow.
Progressives support all of the programs you just bad mouthed.
Isn’t Biden spending $7.5 billion on charging stations for electric cars?
Seems to me like Democrats support the work that Elon Musk is doing they just don’t like that they can’t control what he says.
As usual, Democrats don’t make any sense.
This was your thread about Musk vs Warren and how he is a smug jerk, which he is. Warren isnt wrong but she is shading the story to look better for her political ambitions.
I also did not bad mouth the programs, I think guys like Musk are massively gaming the system for his personal wealth. All of his wealth is due to the stock price of TSLA, the stock price of TSLA is higher because of government subsidies and the Federal Reserve and that is a fact. Without government freebies and ultra low rates I firmly believe TSLA would be at levels which represent that risk. Musk should keep his mouth shut and be thankful for the programs which have turned his marginal company into a trillion dollar enterprise. And Solar City deserved to go BK and without his bailout they for sure would be long finished.
Quote about the article online:
Senator Warren has never given Americans anything except stupid comments that help no-one and do nothing. It she were to disappear from the earth tomorrow, no one would miss her for five minutes. On the other hand, Mr. Musk has helped to develop businesses and technical marvels that will improve the way people live for a thousand years and he is still a young man. Tens of thousands of Americans and people all around the world have challenging, high paying positions that allow them to pay taxes so Warren can waste the money and more importantly can care for their families in the way they only dreamed of before they went to work for Musk. He is one of the most important people on the earth today.
One more comment...I respect when someone acknowledges the lucky breaks they have which benefitted them versus acting as if they earned it on their own right.
I was watching Shark Tank the other day and Mark Cuban who is one of the luckiest suckers to ever live made a comment which was quite telling of him as a person. He commented that he is a big example of exiting at the right time. He was referencing some pitch person to take a deal which was offered on the show episode. He said he got out at the peak of the .com bubble and he for sure understands that if he had not taken the Yahoo buyout that within a year his company Broadcast.com would have gone under. Its ok to accept that you got lucky and to appreciate the benefit you receive. Musk instead does the opposite, he is a smug self serving idiot who lacks the ability to be humble and acknowledge how he personally benefitted from the government and thus the taxpayer and without it he would be struggling with a money losing car company and very highly likely they might not have survived this long.
Without subsidies and interest rates he is NONE of what that article suggests. He needs to learn to shut up and appreciate how things have gone for his company due to nothing about him personally. Without debt funding TSLA does little of all he is credited for because subsidies and low rates spawned this industry, and ONLY due to that are we at this point in the evolution of the EV industry. So progressives blah blah blah without the credits this does not happen.
Part of the article:
On Sunday night, Musk waded into the discussion again, tweeting that he “will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year.”
Should Musk — who reportedly paid no federal income taxes in 2018 — be paying more in taxes? Maybe. But most Americans care far less about his IRS bill than about their own growing gas prices, the surging cost of groceries, a supply chain crisis, and their businesses struggling to recover from Democrat-mandated closures.
These struggles have been caused or exacerbated by the same reckless spending and policies that Democrats want to finance more of by raising taxes on people like Musk (and also you). Warren and her pals just don’t want you connecting the dots; instead, they’d much rather blame the billionaires for their own poor money management.
Don’t be fooled by the smoke-and-mirrors attacks on Musk, whose companies have received millions in government subsidies. Democrats’ recklessly unconstitutional spending dreams will hurt Musk far less than they will hurt you.
She is correct about Warren and her ilk. They will always try to play the 'regular folks' against the 'elite rich' because of the agenda they want to push.
Reasonable folks see through this. But it is very disingenuous to fool the other folks this way. They are always trying to stir up people by saying companies and the rich are not 'paying their fair share' of taxes. This is not -- and has never been -- the problem. It is deflection at best and stupidity at worst.
Why don’t you ever tell any of the loudmouth imbeciles on the left that they need to shut up?
I know why, do you?
Progressives put incentives in place to save our planet from global warming.
Do you care about global warming?
Do you think the progressive strategy is a waste of tax dollars?
No. You think one of the best minds we’ll see in our lifetime is the idiot.
As usual, Democrats make no sense.
I read an article from the LA Times that Musk received a total of $5.7 billion total including all of his companies.
And he’s going to pay $11 billion in taxes this year.
Seems like it was a pretty good investment for the taxpayers. No?
And Democrats think he should kiss the feet of politicians for the opportunity and shut his mouth.
Yes, we need to hear more from people like Warren, AOC, Tlaib, Pressley, Omar and Lebron James and less from people like Elon Musk.
They honestly believe this.
Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times.
Elon will pay $11,000,000,000 in taxes for tax year 2021.
Yeah, what a waste.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html%3f_amp=true
Of course luck and happenstance play a part in it. But very, very easily you can show it plays a bigger part for some more than others. No doubt about it that Cuban and Musk have both been lucky. But some folks are just better and more outside the box than others. It is hard to not see Cuban as more lucky and almost a one trick pony. Musk just simply has too much going on and too much of a creative thinker to have been just a one trick pony. He would have been successful, no matter what.
The problem is that too many not-as-successful people will always say folks are lucky, benefited unfairly, or took unfair advantage of the system. They never want to admit some folks are going to be winners while others are not going to be as successful.
People need to stop thinking that all corporations and all rich folks are bad and the reason they are not successful in life. Taxing corporations and the rich are not the answer to any questions.
For example, because of his 'attitude' folks like Cuban and do not like Musk. Some of these folks even liked Trump while he was a reality TV star.
Then there are some people who just do not like people that are successful and businesses and try to say they are successful because of luck and plying loopholes, etc. -- they never want to give creative people and hard workers credit.
Some people will just succeed, no matter what in life; some will not do so well, no matter what help you give them.
This is your thread about Warren vs Musk not anything else, so why do you feel the need to drift into left vs right? To me this isnt left vs right or dems progressives conservatives it is not the discussion. The discussion is Musk being a crybaby about someone calling out how he pays little in tax.
What you are missing Detox is that the subsidies are paid for by the taxpayer and our future generations on the debt so his personal wealth is paid for by the taxpayer. The wealth comes from Tesla share price because without the Tesla windfall there is no way SpaceX is this if anything and SolarCity goes bye bye it was teetering and Musk bailed it out due to his brother being an exec there...it was meant for BK just the same way Evergreen did and others in the space. So due to Tesla share price both Solar City and SpaceX exist where they would likely not otherwise and Musk's personal wealth is a fraction a small fraction of what it is.
The BIGGEST reason as I keep saying that Tesla exists is due to the FED and the way these ultra low rates directly bailout corporate companies by suppressing rates and keeping zombie companies on life support. You wont do this but go look up Tesla share price history and look at when it was in the 20's and 30's pre split and see what the FED funds rate was, then overlay FED funds rate and corporate benchmarks to Tesla share price and voila you see a DIRECT correlation. Without ZIRP it is highly highly likely Tesla doesnt survive.
The issue with gas price and Tesla is what exactly? Gas prices are not a function of the EV market especially at its current percentage of the total vehicle market. Gas prices being higher are due to supply vs demand, when oil tanked it crushed marginal frackers and it completely decimated R&D for oil and gas companies, they stopped exploring completely and the deep water rig industry pretty much went belly up, most names didnt make it. So to survive every single oil company pulled way way back and we are seeing a ripple effect of that impact. Without new supply and without the marginal supply which came from the frackers then global supply is declining and until that reverses prices wont come down. People complaining about gas prices thinking Musk has anything to do with that are watching too much social media and news tv shows.
I disagree very much. This is very, very much Left vs Right. Y'all want to tax the 'rich and corporations' even more than you do already. Then spend it on things we do not want to spend it on.
This is almost entirely why Warren brings this up about Musk. She knows how you guys feel about the rich already. So, why not pile on and keep this ginned up?
This attitude she has about Musk is very, very political. Anyone can see this.
It’s a net win for the US taxpayer. Please try explaining how this is a net loss for the tax payer.
His personal wealth isn’t paid for by the taxpayer. He went down this avenue because this avenue was available. If it wasn’t available he would have found another way. He took advantage of opportunities — opportunities that were mostly created by progressives like Warren.
The US has a lower carbon footprint because of Tesla — do you consider that a win for the US tax payer or do you not care about the almighty Global Warming? Please answer this.
The US made policies and he took advantage of them. In simplified terms he got $5.7 — and he will have paid back far more in taxes AND he helped global warming. A far better result than the progressives could have ever imagined — yet the progressives are still upset.
Democrats don’t make any sense.
$11 Billion is a lot of money -- no matter how you look at it.
Also, even if you agree that Musk took advantage of these things -- you also have to agree he has been more successful than anyone else that had the same chances to do this!
Why is he so successful and others not as much? It is not just the subsidies. He is just a smart and successful person, period. People do not like that and some are flat out jealous. People are never this jealous of a lottery winner. But someone that does it with hard work and creative thinking they do not like.
I think this is psychology. I think they all feel they could hit the lottery -- if they were to play, because it is all luck. But the hard working, successful person they are jealous of and I think it is because they know deep down they could never do what those people do.
There are many others who have benefitted from the government freebies, a guy like Heinrich Fiskar would NEVER have been able to go again if it werent for the FED, most every single EV maker would never have come to market or if they did they would have gone under already..include NIO in that and most any other. The difference is the way Musk is such a condescending jerk, he attracts attention and in this case it is bad attention so this isnt left vs right it is about loud annoying takers getting on the wrong side of a politician.
His net worth IS Tesla, that is his origin, the other stuff is a function of Tesla surviving and the market cap going up. Its like saying Mark Cuban is more than Broadcast.com, well really he isnt. Without that yahoo buyout there is no wealth there is no Dallas Mav purchase it completely changes everything. So Musk's complete net worth and fortune is directly due to Tesla surviving and growing and THAT is because of subsidies (still) and the FED. Without that Musk would either be grinding away trying to keep Tesla going or he would be on to something else.
Gotcha. Sure his attitude is what it is. And a lot of folks don’t like the ego, or whatever you want to call it, with CEOs or even great sports stars. For example, Jobs, Welch, or even Ford. But those folks have to have a certain type of attitude. I haven’t noticed him being a jerk or condescending in some of his interviews. I have actually met and talked with him a couple of times. Not enough to ‘know’ him. But mostly just in some of the stuff I do. I have only seen him in interviews like on the Rogan show. He seems to be a hard interview until he gets going. He is too deliberate in his answers. Like he is trying to really say the right thing or get his thoughts right.
But to use this bit he did toward Warren as an example —- I can’t use this one. Because she deserves it — as I explained above.
I would say this isn’t more defensive than anything else.
If you took this thread as just he wasn’t nice to Warren — okay then. Maybe she shouldn’t have used him as her example. Because she is a politician and she is pointing it out for a political reason NOT because SHE thinks HE is a ‘condescending jerk’. Trust me it is very political with her.
You are the one trying to say he should have better attitude AND at the same time YOU are being political about it by bringing up the ‘reasons’ you think he is so successful.
Those ‘reasons’ are political issues — no way around it.
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