Yeah, yeah, mega-rich corporation dudes are evil and all, but, seriously, how can we not be entertained by Daddy Elon? Sure, Tesla sucks, but SpaceX has done more for space travel in just the last few years than NASA has done in decades. Not only has SpaceX slashed the cost of getting a payload into orbit, when government-run agencies had been stuck at the same cost since the late 60s, but its spacecraft interiors look like a Bugatti Veyron compared to the Vauxhall Victor that is NASA’s “next generation” Orion.
And the Dragon is actually flying, while the Orion is still just a prototype in a NASA lab.
But where Daddy Elon really delivers the entertainment value is in his frequent spats with the Democrat’s Boomer socialists. When he’s not trying to recall if Bernie Sanders is still alive or not, he’s delivering the smackdown to Fauxcahontas.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) claimed during an interview last week that billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk did not pay any money in taxes, which elicited a response from the world’s richest man.
Of course, Crockagewa, who’s amassed a multi-million-dollar fortune by bilking Ivy League students out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition fees and dudding actual Native Americans out of affirmative action placements, sneering at anyone else for being rich, is, well… rich.
But “billionaires iz bad” is all the Democrats have got, so they’re going to flog it for all they’re worth (while hoping no-one notices their own ill-gotten fortunes).
Warren said during the CNN interview that “for example, Elon Musk, 2018, we’ve actually seen his tax returns.”
“You know how much he paid in taxes? One of the richest people in the world? Zero,” Warren said. “And he’s not the only one. Jeff Bezos, right, another one of the richest people in the world, he pays less in taxes than a public schoolteacher or a firefighter. And they do this because they’re only being taxed on income. They very cleverly make sure they have no official income. They just have all this stock that keeps building in value, building in value. They borrow against it. It’s just not right.”
For someone who claims to be an economics scholar, arguing that people pay no tax on stocks is a bit odd, but, then, that’s a socialist for you.
But telling big, fat porkies is… also a socialist for you.
Media reports claim that Musk paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2018, but did pay $455 million in taxes between 2014 and 2018. Musk tweeted in late December that he would “pay over $11 billion in taxes this year.”
Musk responded to the comments from Warren by writing on Twitter: “Will visit IRS next time I’m in DC just to say hi, since I paid the most taxes ever in history for an individual last year. Maybe I can have a cookie or something …”
What’s even more telling is this exchange with Warren on CNN:
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: I am curious, though, Elon Musk just donated billions of dollars to charity […] What do you say to that?
WARREN: Good. I’m delighted that he did this. I also believe, however, that billionaires ought to be paying taxes.
The Daily Wire
Implicit in that exchange is the basic mindset that nothing is worthwhile unless it’s done by the state — with other peoples’ money.
That Elizabeth Warren, like Bernie Sanders, owes her entire fortune to other peoples’ tax money is surely just by the by.
