Comment Re:Tesla Is Good For All (Score 1) 356
I can't believe that I haven't seen a single comment pointing out Elon Musk's hypocrisy and denial that his success was largely based (or at least enabled) by public support.
One of many available articles on the topic: http://www.motherjones.com/pol...
A few gems:
1. as soon at Tesla paid off their $465M loan, he stated that he thought the government should no longer loan money to companies like that. How convenient...
2. SolarCity basically lives or dies off of tax credits - *income* tax credits. But he has come out against income tax and in favor of use taxes - a very regressive tax policy that overly burdens the poor while letting the rich keep building their fortunes at an ever increasing rate.
3. he claimed he "got rich" from his earlier companies (Zip2 and Paypal) and "got zero government anything" to do so. He did make a total of ~$180M (before taxes) from those companies , but is worth $13B now - due mostly to Tesla and SolarCity IPOs. He seems good at math, so he really doesn't notice that almost 99% of his fortune was from his highly-government subsidized ventures?
Honestly I really want to like Musk, but the most I hear from him the more he is giving off a real Steve Jobs vibe - business genius, douchebag human. If he'd just drop some of the hypocritical libertarian "self made billionaire" attitude I might change my mind.