The Elon Musk Thread

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R8Z
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Re: The Elon Musk Thread

Post by R8Z »

To use words of the current generation: Musk is both based and slightly cringe.

As a tech innovator I think he deserves the amount of wealth and prestige he has accumulated (e.g. I don't see him as a fraud in any way). As a "anti-government bully" I think he deserves even more flak, as he has surfed quite well the money incentives and partnerships he has done with the government and now is portraying himself as a freedom fighter.
And, as always, bye bye.
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Cyber_Rebel
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Re: The Elon Musk Thread

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"It can easily turn many people against spaceflight who see this stuff from the outside."

Oh, there's a solution to that, too.

Nationalize Space X

Not only would the public begin to benefit from their own taxes/investment for a change, but it might even inspire more general interest in spaceflight, scientific advancement, NASA funding etc... when it's viewed as a national treasure or identity. The idea that "we can go to the moon" is just more attractive than, Elon Musk can do it!
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caltrek
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Re: The Elon Musk Thread

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JPMorgan Files $162 Million Lawsuit Against Tesla
by Rebecca Falconer
November 16, 2021

https://www.axios.com/jpmorgan-tesla-la ... 93d53.html

Introduction:
(Axios) JPMorgan Chase filed a lawsuit against Tesla Monday, accusing the electric car firm of "breach of contract action" over stock warrants following CEO Elon Musk's 2018 tweet that he might take his firm private.

Why it matters: JPMorgan alleges the bank and Tesla "entered a series of warrant transactions, which required Tesla to deliver either shares of its stocks or cash to JPMorgan" if the car company's share price was above the contractual "strike price" when the warrants expired.
  • The warrants "substantially decreased" in value after Musk tweeted that Tesla had "funding secured" to take Tesla private at $420.
  • They expired in June and July of this year "with Tesla's share price above that strike price," JPMorgan alleges.
Of note: "JPMorgan demanded the due shares or cash, but Tesla has flagrantly ignored its clear contractual obligation to pay JPMorgan in full," the bank said in the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
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wjfox
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Re: The Elon Musk Thread

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Yuli Ban
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Re: The Elon Musk Thread

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Elon Musk tells SpaceX employees that Starship engine crisis is creating a ‘risk of bankruptcy’
  • Elon Musk described a dire situation with SpaceX’s development of Raptor rocket engines the day after Thanksgiving in a companywide email, a copy of which was obtained by CNBC.
  • “The Raptor production crisis is much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago,” Musk wrote.
  • Raptor engines power the company’s Starship rocket, with Musk adding that SpaceX faces “genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year.”
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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erowind
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Re: The Elon Musk Thread

Post by erowind »

Edit: Not directed at wjfox, responding to the twitter poster and talking about the topic in general.
wjfox wrote: Thu Nov 18, 2021 7:40 am
The hyper rich don't pay their taxes in the United States generally because when the IRS audits them they fight back with multi-million dollar court cases that bog the agency down and it generally gives up. The IRS gives up because despite constant complaints about how ruthless of an organization it is, it is only ruthless to the working class generally. The IRS audits the working class more frequently than it does the rich because it knows it can generally win an audit on lower income people who can't afford multi-million dollar legal fees whereas auditing higher income brackets poses financial risk to the agency.

https://www.propublica.org/article/the- ... income-tax
In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.
https://www.propublica.org/article/irs- ... t-the-poor
The IRS audits the working poor at about the same rate as the wealthiest 1%. Now, in response to questions from a U.S. senator, the IRS has acknowledged that’s true but professes it can’t change anything unless it is given more money.
Corporations as institutions are even worse offenders than individuals. Microsoft literally rewrote the law to favor them during their ongoing legal battle with the IRS and will likely win as a result.

https://www.propublica.org/article/the- ... ot-tougher
Microsoft had shifted at least $39 billion in U.S. profits to Puerto Rico, where the company’s tax consultants, KPMG, had persuaded the territory’s government to give Microsoft a tax rate of nearly 0%. Microsoft had justified this transfer with a ludicrous-sounding deal: It had sold its most valuable possession — its intellectual property — to an 85-person factory it owned in a small Puerto Rican city.

Microsoft fought back with every tool it could muster. Business organizations, ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to tech trade groups, rallied, hiring attorneys to jump into the fray on Microsoft’s side in court and making their case to IRS leadership and lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Soon, members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, were decrying the IRS’ tactics and introducing legislation to stop the IRS from ever taking similar steps again.

The outcome of the audit remains to be seen — the Microsoft case grinds on — but the blowback was effective. Last year, the company’s allies succeeded in changing the law, removing or limiting tools the IRS team had used against the company. The IRS, meanwhile, has become notably less bold. Drained of resources by years of punishing budget cuts, the agency has largely retreated from challenging the largest corporations. The IRS declined to comment for this article.
In conclusion, the rich generally write the laws and generally only follow the law themselves when they feel like it or it aligns with their interests. Barring the most egregious offenses they generally get away with it too. This is all obvious as America is an oligarchy, not a democracy.

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/def ... cs.doc.pdf

The interlocking relationship between political lobbying (legal corruption,) government grants, government development tax credits and laws passed to favor monopolies increasingly presents a case where it is hard to even tell where private business ends and public government begins. The revolving door is so great that I'd dare to posit that Tesla, Amazon, Walmart, Lockheed Martin, and the United States Government are all functionally the same institution even when some "internal" power struggles manifest from time-to-time. (This excludes some local governments and select institutions that are still publicly controlled.)

Americans, and citizens of other ostensibly "liberal democracies" around the world need to examine their true political moment more critically. The public discourse needs to shift from, "how the government benefits from Tesla share appreciation," to "how can the public renationalize the government and seize the 'private' industry it has already payed for."

Because dear readers, we must look at what will actually happen, not what general discourse would like to present is happening. What will really happen, as it has already happened before, and is happening as we speak; is that our tax dollars will fund the R&D of a given monopolistic private corporation--say Tesla--then said corporation will cover much of their operating costs with more public funds, then said corporation will reap the profit of the public dollar, than said corporation will evade taxes on said profit, then even if some meager taxes are collected successfully they will revolve predominately right back into some other monopoly engaging in the same private-public cartel that enabled the original theft to begin with!

And so what words are their of socialism even? A true return to mere liberal democracy would necessitate massive national seizures of corporate property at this point by virtue that so much of the countries wealth, and the world's wealth for that matter on the international stage, has been siphoned into the hands of monopolies through the use of ostensibly public funds. At what point do we stop calling taxes taxation in this political moment? The character of the flow of funds in many countries today more resembles that of feudal tributes and or tithes than it does the functioning of a public government for the benefit of all citizens within the society.
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Re: The Elon Musk Thread

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caltrek
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Re: The Elon Musk Thread

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Elon Musk Loses Another Round with Tesla Critic
by Mario Dinzeo
December 20, 2021

https://www.courthousenews.com/elon-mus ... la-critic/

Introduction:
(Courthouse News) — A California appeals court ruled Tesla founder Elon Musk’s public statements that a critic of his company “harassed” and “almost killed” Tesla employees are not protected by state free speech laws.

The court ruled in favor of Randeep Hothi, the man behind the Twitter account @skabooshka where he expressed skepticism about Tesla's autonomous driving claims.

Hothi fact-checked Tesla’s production rate claims regarding its Model 3 vehicles, which were advertised as hyperautomated and could largely function without human input — a process Musk called “alien dreadnought.” Hothi was doubtful that Tesla could meet the production goals publicly touted by Musk.

On April 16, 2019, Hothi spotted a Tesla-owned vehicle with roof-mounted cameras on the road. The vehicle appeared to be recording audio, video and data, so he followed it, photographed it and posted the photos on Twitter.

A few days later, Tesla filed a civil restraining order against Hothi claiming he trespassed, stalked, harassed and endangered Tesla employees, hit a Tesla security guard with his vehicle and swerved his car toward the Tesla-owned Model 3 vehicle he encountered on the road.
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caltrek
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Re: The Elon Musk Thread

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Elon Musk Paid $11 Billion in Taxes Only Because He Had No Other Rational Choice
by Bob Lord
December 30, 2021

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021 ... nal-choice

Introduction:
(Common Dreams) Elon Musk has had a field day trolling advocates for a fairer tax system on Twitter. They've been attacking him for not paying much at all in taxes over recent years. But Musk knew what they didn't: that in 2021 he was going to be paying plenty in taxes.

So when Senator Elizabeth Warren took the bait and tweeted, "Let's change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else," Musk could respond faux nobly: "And if you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year." Youch!

Musk had won the Twitter war. On paper, he will pay over $11 billion in tax this year, just as he said.

But Musk's tax situation hardly rates as "super simple," as he also says. Musk isn't paying his $11 billion in tax voluntarily or at the behest of his Twitter. He's paying this tax only because he had no other rational choice. Let's explore why. (See article linked above quote box).
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funkervogt
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Re: The Elon Musk Thread

Post by funkervogt »

In December 2020, Elon Musk said Telsa cars would have fully autonomous driving abilities by the end of 2021.
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