Comments by "dixon pinfold" (@dixonpinfold2582) on "TIME"
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@sweetleaf9668 You're profoundly misinformed. You should care about that.
He always files a tax return and always pays his taxes. In the US, income taxes are payable on income, whether salary or employer stock options exercised. Hence the name 'income tax.'
As he collects no salary and has exercised no stock options (or an extremely small number) for years, he has been assessed a very small tax bill over that time.
Since five weeks ago he has been in the process of realizing income by selling shares, doing it in full public view. This creates a tax liability which will run to the several billions of dollars.
He is aware of this and is expressly doing it largely in order to make a tax payment. Depending on at what point he wraps it up, the bill will come to perhaps $10bn, maybe even $15bn according to some.
The cash proceeds of the share sales will be applied to the tax bill. He will owe it. It is the law, which he has never been accused of evading or breaking, even by his red-faced enemies.
He will be taxed at the highest possible rate, 53%. The payment will be the greatest amount of tax ever paid by anyone, anywhere, at any time in history.
In fact, by delaying all this for some time, he has created a multi-billion-dollar bonanza for US and California tax coffers. If he had done it when the shares were a small fraction of what they are now, the tax proceeds would have been similarly scanty in comparison.
(And who deserves the credit for that meteoric rise in Tesla's value? Musk himself and the employees he hires and manages. The government helped somewhat, by giving customers rebates in some cases—other automakers enjoyed the same arrangement—and by forcing Telsa's legacy competition to make cash payments to it as punishment for making no or few EVs. But as far as I'm aware, no taxpayer money ever went to Tesla itself. In fact the government is now in effect slapping a huge tax on Teslas alone, by denying its customers the same rebates they can get if they buy an EV from any other US maker.)
Despite all that, Sen. Warren decided to take a cheap shot at him a couple of days ago by calling him a freeloader on Twitter and exhorting him to do what he is already very much doing. Grandstanding in its purest form.
So sit down, and breathe. Just breathe.
And in the future, look into things to determine the truth, not to have your opinions confirmed, your feelings assuaged or to open up opportunities for sanctimony. Develop some greater respect for the facts.
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@cowmath77 His dad was a hard-working engineer who had the energy to also be a businessman. He was supposedly bad to his family, but also supposedly earned his money fairly. Most of us know at least at second-hand of that sort of thing, someone good at what they do, who succeeds. It's not ugly.
Much is made of him "owning" an emerald mine, but it was just some shares in the thing (maybe quite a few, but a minority stake anyway). They were given him as pay from a client instead of cash, for work he did.
I see nothing wrong with having parents who earned a lot of money. But maybe you do, and it is your right.
(Btw, what is "extremely wealthy"? And how exactly do you know that about someone else? As a rule it is something you never know about anyone for sure. His family had a nice house and paid for private schooling. Were there yachts or something? Are there gory details you should share?)
Anyway, it resulted in him having a childhood in a family able to afford what people want. I see nothing wrong with that either.
As a teenager he ceased to further benefit from the family's resources, as I understand it, and moved to Canada with $2,000 in his pocket. He worked as a manual labourer at first, on a farm and at a sawmill in Saskatchewan. He lived a frugal and bare-bones existence for several more years as a university student in Canada and Pennsylvania until he made some money in his 20s. He had racked up $100k in student loans.
This is what I've gathered from my reading. It is necessarily incomplete, as is yours no doubt, but even if he did get money from his family—I've heard that he did ($40k from his mother) and I've heard that he didn't—I don't think that counts against him.
If you lent or gave some money to your child, would you then think less of them, or think it right if others thought less of them? I doubt it, but if you did, let's hear why.
I confess your reply smacks strongly of envy.
As for Tesla batteries, you should look into their recyclability. I take it you have not.
Let's also hear your ideas for transportation. Aside from fossil fuels and batteries, where can we turn except to the bicycle? We can't propel cars like Fred Flintstone did.
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Yeah, charlatan. Where's all these rockets, spaceships, and satellites he promised? What about the NASA astronauts he was supposed to send up? Oh, yeah, he did all that stuff.
But it all cost the taxpayers so many billions! Oh, yeah, he did it so much cheaper than before that he still saved NASA and the taxpayers billions.
But he's still a charlatan! Where's all those cars he said he was going to make? Oh, yeah, Tesla makes 50% more cars every year and will reach 1 million deliveries this year.
Charlatan! His company makes no money! Oh, yeah, it'll make around $6 billion this year and more than twice as much next year.
And so on.
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