Do you read / know much, think critically?
RE: “But there is a strange deep seated dislike on this forum for Elon Musk and anything he does”
Here’s some 5 Billion shrinking working class dollars of reality for you:
“In a particularly glorious, damning bit of investigative reporting, the Los Angeles Times recently determined that Musk’s empire had been built on almost $5 billion in government subsidies. This includes:
$750 million from New York State to build a solar panel factor in Buffalo.
A 10 year property tax exemption from New York worth an estimated $260 million.
$500 million in direct solar power grants from the Treasury Department.
$1.3 billion in incentives from Nevada to build a battery factory near Reno.
$517 million in California’s emissions tax credits from competing automakers (so that kind of makes Musk an environmentalist bookie, of sorts).
Whenever it’s reported that General Electric pays no taxes, we grumble at the thought. But Musk doesn’t do just that, he takes taxes. The taxpayer’s “investment” in his financial empire has certainly been a boon to Musk’s Tesla, which has seen its stock price soar over the years:
Right now, Musk is asking for yet more taxpayer money, this time to fund his pet project SpaceX, which he hopes will take him to Mars. The organization recently asked the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness for an (ahem) “public-private partnership” to advance missions outside of Earth’s orbit.
Of the hearing, Wired Magazine wrote, “the future of space will continue in that good ol’ fashioned American spirit of free markets with a heaping side of government help.”
Like a reverse Robin Hood, Musk isn’t robbing from the rich and giving to the poor: He’s robbing from the working class and keeping it for himself. As the Wall Street Journal astutely wrote last year, “Tesla looks more like a classic of the reverse income redistribution of green crony capitalism, in which the middle-class taxpayers subsidize billionaires who make products to satisfy the anti-fossil-fuel indulgences of the upper classes.”
But now that Musk has risen to the top, he has started to condemn government subsidies. This is symptomatic of Silicon Valley’s schizophrenic Ayn Randian attitude that the believe they created the world through their genius alone, and not without loads of government support. (News flash, Bay Area liberals: Silicon Valley was created by the DOD.)
On this contradiction, columnist Jim Motavalli said, “Elon is now looking at it from the point of view of a winner, and he doesn’t want to see other people win because they get government money. I do think there is a tendency of people, once they have succeeded, to want to pull the ladder up after them.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/elon-musk-wants-to-end-government-subsidies/article/2009014
You can't name a billionaire who doesn't play the tax capture game to the hilt. Yes, ... even him!
I am having an argument about this type of stuff in my city right now.
Giving a tax exemption to a business DOES NOT add to the value of the business.
In our city, due to the GRT structure, businesses generate revenue directly to the city. If a business is looking to relocate to your city or another, and your city wants to charge it $250,000 in "infrastructure fees" and the other city won't, where do you think they will go, all else being equal?
If giving a business tax credits generates long term income for the city that far outstrips the credits given, why wouldn't you do it?
“But Musk doesn’t do just that, he takes taxes.”
No, he doesn’t.
Not paying taxes is NOT the same as getting taxpayer money.
Keeping your own earned money vs being given money taken from others.
Big difference.
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