Why are you calling BS? I explained the circumstances and why I did what I did... I'm not claiming it's a ministry, just that we decided to grow the company to give others an opportunity. Why is that so hard to believe?

This company has one (very) limiting factor.

Me.

I cannot hire anyone to do the part that I do.

And, there's no way that I can work enough hours to provide jobs for even ten people, much less 100.

Oddly figured this quote has a place here.

Since asking his Twitter followers if should sell 10% of his stake Musk is down $50b in his paper net worth. Let's say he had paid the billionaire tax last year and he ends up down $50b this year. Government is stroking a check?

Exactly on what date does the government assess your net worth?

Say Dec 31st.

Dec 30th Musk tweets he is selling. Stock tanks. Net worth goes down. Pay less taxes.

Jan 1st Musk says, no, keeping his stock. Stock rises. Net worth goes up. Musk wins.

Basically, taxing net worth is taxing stock market prices.

If this gets put in for billionaires, it will make it down to thousandaires at some point.

Mike C.

Exactly on what date does the government assess your net worth?

Say Dec 31st.

Dec 30th Musk tweets he is selling. Stock tanks. Net worth goes down. Pay less taxes.

Jan 1st Musk says, no, keeping his stock. Stock rises. Net worth goes up. Musk wins.

Basically, taxing net worth is taxing stock market prices.

If this gets put in for billionaires, it will make it down to thousandaires at some point.

Mike C.

“ What we have here is a spending problem...not a revenue problem” - MH

One of the most accurate, and insightful statements I have ever seen on BT !!

Completely agree with Mike C's comment above about how you implement a wealth tax. The prospects for gaming the system don't go away with such a tax; they are enhanced by multiples. Talk about market manipulation and increased volatility! What a disaster that would be. And you can be sure that no refunds will be forthcoming if the asset depreciates th following year; your wealth tax would still be due, albeit calculated on a smaller denominator.

Having said all of that, there are issues with creating what amounts to dynastic wealth of unprecedented proportions. It does resemble the Gilded Age in some respects. Not so much because wealth is inherently bad (it isn't), but because of the consolidation of it in family structures to an unprecedented degree. This does pose potential issues for society in my view.

I don't have answers. But I don't think its fair to say that it doesn't have the potential to create issues if some huge percentage of our economic wealth as a country is tied up in a few thousand families for generations ...

Excluding my family, of course. We will be responsible!

Yep. Meanwhile we have record tax revenue being generated. What we have here is a spending problem...not a revenue problem.

Carry on

Problem with gov't spending is that there is no market to refuse the goods. When companies in a free market product stuff that no one wants, or cannot produce at a price people are willing to pay, they run out of funds and go kaput.

Gov't, once it runs amok, is a cancer, with no market forces on its behavior. To the contrary, as the bureaucracy grows, its interest is its own survival and growth. Productivity and economic good be damned. It takes on a life of itself. It has the coercive power of taxation which is, by definition, involuntary on the part of the taxed. Additionally, the bureaucracy realizes that it requires allies. Therefore it creates, and grows, classes of people who are dependent upon taxpayer largesse for all or part of their sustenance. Finally, as the bureaucracy grows, becomes more involved in regulating the economy, those at the top of the economic food chain realize that they, at times, have more to gain through lobbying and influencing regulation, than they do by competing in the open market.

A perfect storm of the unproductive bureaucrats, those dependent upon gov't programs and those who can influence gov't regulation. The folks that get screwed are in the middle to upper middle, to prosperous.

But it is a cancer... it is a spreading....err spending problem, not a revenue problem,

I'd say given the conversation, saying aircraft inventory levels are critically low is fake news.

Even a blind pig finds a truffle every now and then

Doesn't matter, got almost 60 pages out of it

News today:

"Elon Musk has sold his first block of Tesla shares since 2016, exercising some stock options and then selling a portion of that to raise the cash he'll need to pay taxes on the shares he acquired.

The options he exercised were about 9% of those he will need to exercise by August of 2022, or the option to purchase them will expire. But exercising those shares will result in a $1 billion federal tax bill, under the top federal income tax rate of 37%, with another 3.8% net investment tax on top of that.

He also will face an unknown amount of state income taxes in California, even though he has relocated to Texas, where there is no state income tax. California has a top state income tax rate of 13.3%."

Somebody paid money to Musk to buy his shares, and then he pays about half of the proceeds in taxes to federal and state governments. That's over $1B in taxes.

The "rich people don't pay taxes" thing is just false. Anytime they actual get cash, they pay taxes.

An, oh, congrats on CREW 3 which just lifted off today. The USA is back to routine maned space flight. And SpaceX did it for $2 B LESS than Boeing. That's saving the US taxpayer $2 B in addition to his taxes and delivering a top notch product for it. Boeing has yet to fly one astronaut and SpaceX has flown 16 for NASA (4 more privately).

Maybe there are other billionaires out there not doing their part for society, but Musk isn't one of them. Is there someone else more deserving of being the richest person on Earth? I'm happy it isn't some banker, finance guy, doing money shuffling, but the wealth comes from actual and real things that can change the world.

Mike C.

Musk and his companies have also taken a pile of taxpayer funds, both directly and indirectly through subsidies, at both the Federal and State level. There is some more crony capitalism at work here, but probably no worse than many others.

Where would Tesla be and demand for their product be, absent the subsidies, both direct and indirect? Asking a genuine question here.

$1B in taxes. I don't think people realize just how much that is even when written out as zeros, $1,000,000,000. That still doesn't even paint the right picture of just how big of a number we are talking. If we converted dollars to seconds:
1,000,0000 seconds = 11 days
1,000,000,000 seconds = 31 years

The average American will pay ~$500,000 in taxes in their lifetime, Musk just paid 2,000x that on one transaction.

Crazy times,

Chip-