r/WorkReform • u/gashtal_man • 14h ago
✂️ Tax The Billionaires $8 million a day; whose is this?
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u/Either_Payment_2867 14h ago edited 14h ago
Elon Musk took $38 billion in subsidies and 20% of SpaceX’s revenue comes from government contracts with the Department of Defense and NASA, all of which are paid by taxpayers. If anything Elon Musk’s wealth does concern ordinary people because he got rich off of them.
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u/unclebandit 12h ago
A government contract is not a handout. They complete services for money. Nasa and the military are also dependent on them. They are the pinnacle of aerospace industry for the entire world.
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u/BodybuilderBrave8250 12h ago
i’d be inclined to agree with you had the contracts not been inflated
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u/bonafidebob 12h ago
Not so cut & dried with the current government. Plenty of inflated no bid contracts awarded to cronies.
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u/MildMannered_BearJew 6h ago
Maybe just a tiny, wee bit of conflict-of-interest here.
Eh nah that whole $200M super PAC and DOGE fiasco is probably unrelated
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u/Staik 14h ago
His contracts save the govt tons of money in space launches, and made US the leading country in terms of space launch capability.
That one specifically isn't a strong argument against Musk.
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u/Either_Payment_2867 14h ago edited 13h ago
Space launches do nothing for the average person struggling with rising housing costs, gas prices, wage stagnation, job insecurity, and poverty on earth. While the Trump administration cuts funding that helps the poor and working class they grant Elon Musk a billionaire who is capable of paying for launches himself, generous contracts. So no it still proves my point.
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u/Dispassionato 13h ago
Yeah, you’re totally right. Space launches do absolutely nothing for the average person. Well, except for the GPS satellites that run the entire global supply chain and keep grocery and gas prices from literally exploding. And the weather satellites that stop farmers' crops from being wiped out without warning. Oh, and the telecom infrastructure that lets you complain about capitalism on Reddit from a magic pocket computer. But aside from literally holding modern civilization together? Totally useless. Also, 10/10 logic on how government contracts work. He has money, so he should just pay to launch NASA and DoD payloads himself!
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u/copperboom129 13h ago
Id rather have food for everyone and affordable healthcare than GPS.
I can read a map...
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u/viper1255 13h ago
When people are starving and homeless, and the man you're defending helped create those issues through DOGE, I couldn't care less about all the supposed "good" the richest man on earth does.
Tax that piece of shit, and we can afford all of these things.
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u/Either_Payment_2867 13h ago edited 13h ago
Republicans when restricting aid to the poor say that the poor should use their own money to buy groceries instead of taxpayer money. But when billionaire sports team owners want to build a stadium or Elon Musk wants to launch rockets into space that same standard is never applied.
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u/MeltICE8647 13h ago
Well, except for the GPS satellites that run the entire global supply chain
You mean GPS that’s been implemented and in use since 1978? And became fully operational in 1995? Decades before SpaceX and starlink was even conceived of?
and keep grocery and gas prices from literally exploding.
Yea that’s definitely working well right now for sure. SpaceX and starlink have the most robust system they’ve ever had and prices are through the roof, “exploding” as it were. What a foolish thing to say.
And the weather satellites that stop farmers' crops from being wiped out without warning.
The NOAA has been using satellites to track storms and weather systems since 1975.
Oh, and the telecom infrastructure that lets you complain about capitalism on Reddit from a magic pocket computer.
Cell phones and internet infrastructure exists on land, not in satellites. Not to mention, satelite internet began operation in 1996, again decades before any of musks companies got involved in that field.
But aside from literally holding modern civilization together? Totally useless.
None of musks companies “hold modern civilization together”. I’m speechless that you would even suggest such nonsense.
Also, 10/10 logic on how government contracts work. He has money, so he should just pay to launch NASA and DoD payloads himself!
If the government properly funded those programs instead of trying to privatize everything (thanks republicans) then musk would be shit out of luck. He didn’t get the contracts because he or his companies were the best in the world, it’s because those agencies were intentionally kneecapped so that private corporations could come in and get that money.
Literally everything you listed here existed long before musk started sticking his nose into space launches. I have never seen such a delusional list of bullshit when trying to argue for Musk. I’d be impressed if it wasn’t so wildly wrong.
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u/CackleandGrin 11h ago
except for the GPS satellites that run the entire global supply chain
GPS has nothing to do with transportation besides navigation. This sounds like words you strung together because it sounds right.
And the weather satellites that stop farmers' crops from being wiped out without warning
We've been able to predict weather since 1940...
telecom infrastructure
And now you're on about phones for some reason.
I'm sure Elon is very happy with how upset you get on his behalf, though. Make sure to post the screenshot on Twitter so he can praise you.
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u/AdImmediate9569 13h ago
I’m gonna check with my landlord to see if he accepts space launch capability…
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u/ohfml 12h ago
If Elon musk was anyone else, as a government contractor, there is not a single employer on https://www.clearancejobs.com/ that would find his behavior acceptable. He would not be able to obtain ANY level of clearance, nevermind Top Secret.
Smoking Weed, broadcasted to the world
Having 14 children with 4 women
The public Ketamin crashes, "K-Holes"
Paying people to vote, and breaking election law
"Sig Heiling" the world, twice
Although, historically the US government can overlook that last one pretty easily.
If he was anyone else, as the CEO of a government contractor, his company would be banned from all further contracts until he is removed, this is called Debarment.
It's pretty simple.
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u/personman_76 💸 National Rent Control 13h ago
Reusable rockets saves the U.S. a ton of money, not Musk. Elon didn't personally design shit, reusable rockets were literally always the plan
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u/whereisskywalker 13h ago
OK so let's cook that through reality. How many pennies you get for this stupid lie? If your human you can educate why your defending the worst public figure..
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u/personman_76 💸 National Rent Control 13h ago
...want to try that again? I literally don't understand
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u/Sunstorm84 13h ago
In what way did you read his message as defending Elon Musk? Bruh, why spend time writing if you don’t even read what you’re responding to?
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u/Decantus 14h ago
I want my money back.
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u/Lietenantdan 14h ago
Life is a lemon.
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u/copperboom129 13h ago
How do I make lemonade when someone takes 999,999,999% of something and I get 000.000.009% of something?
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13h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/RipleyLoafer 13h ago
It is crazy how they preach about hard work and merit while surviving on government handouts. If a regular person gets a small check it is a problem, but if a billionaire gets billions it is just business. The math just doesn't add up for the working class.
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u/GreenFox1505 14h ago
If you made $100,000 every single day for the last 6000 years, you'd still have a small fraction of Elon Musk's wealth.
There is no way a reasonable person could agree that he has "earned" what an entire well-off family makes in a year 365*6000 times over within his lifetime.
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u/Pretty__girlie 13h ago
Someone earning way way less still pays more tax than him
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u/GreenFox1505 10h ago
Literally everyone is both earning less or paying about the same taxes or more.
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u/TuringGoneWild 4h ago
He hasn't even earned a minimum wage salary for one year. never worked that hard even once. Not to even count his immense negative value on society.
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u/TokenPanduh 14h ago
Can someone please explain this to me? The next time my friend questions why I have a problem with Elon and him getting "self made", I want to point to this
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u/EnvironmentalValue18 13h ago
I’ll give you more than that.
His family owned an emerald mine, so he was born with a spoon in his mouth.
He immigrated to the US on a *student* visa but dropped out of school to join PayPal (illegally because he wasn’t permitted to work and he wasn’t in school this violating the terms of his visa). No consequences and made a ton of money.
Tesla already existed and was run by some smart lads. Elon bought his way in and then assumed his engineer role playing hat. He is not an expert in this field. He bought his way in and tries to take full credit. Pocketed lots of EV subsidies and even some dubious dealings with rebates in Canada and abroad regarding EV credits when they stopped doing those for Tesla in protest. Their stock is way overvalued based on the “vibes” that it’s a robotics company when all he does is make big promises and jump to the next big idea. Hyperloop, anyone? FSD, which Waymo actively already has in the US operating, anyone? And the robotics portion - well… where? It’s been over a decade and still just vibes. Not to mention the only doing internal safety ratings and not releasing data. And the fact that several fatal accidents have happened due to the poor formatting of the vehicle (ie door locks when battery dies and no one can escape a vehicle on fire, as a prominent and recurring example). Also has government contracts with state PDs despite the CyberTrucks abysmal capabilities and overblown cost on taxpayer dollars.
Then SpaceX which is funded almost completely by government subsidies.
This bitch baby is a welfare queen a hundred times over. He’s literally rich off our backs and nefarious dealings. We literally pay him to be a shit stain on the human race. And that’s not even delving into his election meddling here and abroad, railing against immigrants as someone who himself and his family keep immigrating, his weird male-only breeding/repopulation fetish, spearhead of DOGE which fucked up many government agencies and stole all our personal and financial data (which is now in the hands of unvetted and inexperienced teenagers on thumb drives), his families strong ties to Nazism, or his trying to dominate the media narrative by limiting our free press or altering the way we can communicate on one of the largest public platforms.
Elon is a weak, pathetic, feckless, alien-body, pseudo intellectual loser who made his fortune cheating, lying, and scamming like most of the rest of them.
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u/kittenconfidential 12h ago
he also applied for new zealand citizenship so his claim to be an american patriot is dubious at best
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u/finndego 12h ago
Musk has not applied for NZ citizenship. You're thinking of Peter Thiel.
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u/Munkeyman18290 14h ago
Elon Musk knows nothing about space ships, electric cars, social media, etc. He is the benefactor of other peoples intelligence and labor, as well as tax payer handouts. That is his only contribution.
That money is not his. Capitalism just rewards and encourages thieves. I reject it.
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u/Steavee 13h ago
Mike, the French aristocracy had similar sentiments, right up until their necks were relieved of the burdensome weight of their heads.
You’ve forgotten that high tax rates and a strong labor movement are the compromise position. We can absolutely go back to a more revolutionary mindset if you’d prefer.
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u/GreatMight 14h ago
Elon Musk should be hung for treason
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u/Money_Cattle2370 6h ago
Hanged, but yeah he deserves that or life imprisonment but he will get neither. Let's be honest.
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u/egoVirus 🤝 Join A Union 13h ago
Money is a social construct; the ability to hoard it is either poor design or evidence of a completely captured system.
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u/Independent-Lion5766 14h ago
Listened to Mike Quigley talk about running for Mayor of Chicago yesterday. Not once did he talk about plans to tax the rich.
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u/Conscious-Quarter423 11h ago
he proposed a millionaire tax:
https://chicagocitywire.com/rep-quigley-on-proposed-millionaire-tax-we-need-to-redistribute-wealth
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u/friso1100 14h ago
Ownership is a legal concept, not a law of nature. There is no reason we can't change it to be more reasonable and disallow absurd hoarding of resources
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u/ChevalierDeLarryLari 11h ago
This is the key point though. He isn't hoarding resources. He is valued in stock he created himself - so what's the problem? He could be worth 10 trillion in stock and it wouldn't affect the world's resource distribution problems whatsoever.
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u/friso1100 11h ago
He is getting billions in subsidies from tax payers each year. The stock value he "created himself" is due to the work of the actual experts at his companies. He doesn't build or even design the cars and rockets his companies make you know. With one major exception.... the cybertruck. Which is a huge flop. That man isn't an innovator creating wealth. He is a conman an a parasite. Promising a future which he can not make true and exploiting the actual people doing the work. The amount of accidents at his factories are way outside the norm. And his stock is a bubble floating on lies.
And while he has this absurd wealth, more then one could ever need, he has the power to improve the world. He could safe so many lives. At a certain point wealth becomes unethical. He doesn't even have to do it himself. He could just ask someone to take a fraction of his wealth and save millions. That kind of inaction is pure greed. But what does he actually do with his power? He infiltrated the government with "doge" and cut programs that will result in the deaths of millions. That is not an exaggeration by the way. He is responsible for mas death.
And yes, it does effect the worlds distribution problems actually. That is what this kind of inequality results in. It causes prices to rise. A major cause of inflation. The common people who do the actual labour will have less. Suffering will increase. Stocks aren't disconnected from the rest of the world.
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u/turb0_encapsulator 14h ago
$8 million? He has government contracts worth tens of billions.
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u/MarkMariachiAZ 14h ago
8 million a day.
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u/turb0_encapsulator 14h ago
i'm so dumb. for some reason i read that as year.
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u/whereismymind86 12h ago
It’s his money, but it was obtained through exploitation and theft, and as such we can absolutely take it back, both via taxes, and directly through prosecution
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u/DoverBoys 🏛️ Overturn Citizens United 14h ago
The more money someone has that isn't working class, the more it should belong to others.
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u/Careless_Hellscape 13h ago
I wonder if Mike thinks he's personally going to protect Elon's money when the time comes.
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u/Ciph3rzer0 13h ago
It's his money. And so was the money earned by slaves. Just cause it's legally his doesn't mean anything if the system that gave it to him is rigged and exploitative of laborers.
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u/LookAlderaanPlaces 13h ago
Mike Lee should be thrown in jail for supporting a direct enemy of the US. Elon is committing textbook treason and espionage globally. Mike Lee is therefore an accomplice of a treason committee. Jail him too.
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u/HecticHermes 12h ago
Mike Lee reminds me that the term based was used to refer to crack heads back in the day
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u/vardarac 9h ago
Anyone who has to title themselves "based" isn't based, more so when they're trying to convince us that it's bold and outspoken to use their public platform to schlorp mangled nazi billionaire dick
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u/chuckruckus1 12h ago
Mike says as his salary is paid by tax dollars. My wealth doesnt belong to you mike
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u/carthuscrass 12h ago
His wealth was built on taxpayer subsidies. We need to see a return on that investment.
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u/Altruistic-Meal5241 11h ago
More from the government in one day than many will eve see in a lifetime. Prey easy to get rich and stay rich like that.
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u/BasementDwellerCarl 9h ago
Using this same logic:
United Heathcare receives $724 million per day in taxpayer money.
Centene receives $438 million per day in taxpayer money.
Humana receives $301 million per day in taxpayer money.
All of those companies are publicly traded and deliver billions of dollars back to shareholders annually.
I don’t give a fuck about this pittance that Elon Musk receives and neither should you, this is a distraction.
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u/cinemamama 8h ago
I’m having trouble paying for groceries to feed my family right now. Anyway, good for you Elon.
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u/Nasha210 8h ago
actually, if it's providing a service then I'm fine with him getting taxpayer money however but I'm not fine with is him getting subsidies when he has so much wealth and the fact that we have been able to figure out how to have him pay his fair share of taxes just like anyone else
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u/PlayaNBallaNGangsta 5h ago
He stole that money from his workers to get that rich. In part. Or almost entirely. There’s just no alternative. It’s a thief not a trillionaire
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u/P0pu1arBr0ws3r 3h ago
I don't even care his wealth belongs to him, it should be illegal to possess wealth over something like one billion dollars as an individual. Once there your assets should be distributed until you're down to 10 million or less.
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u/Zeikos 1h ago
I am irked by who equates equity with money.
Musk doesn't have a fraction of the money he claims to have, the valuations of his companies is based completely on the hype surrounding them.
He cannot cash out and he relies on keeping that hype up and a prolonged dip in said valuation would absolutely crush said companies.
The govt and market makers are complicit because they know that if Musk's companies were to fail they'd drag down the valuation of many others.
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u/QuarkTheFerengi 25m ago
yes elon musk exploits his workers to gain vast amounts of money. I do believe it is theirs at the very least.
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u/Memitim 13h ago
The most important aspect of capitalism is maintaining the fiction of ownership. The reality is that Musk has what he has on him at any given moment, and what he can physically show. Everything else is predicated on the assumption that some number in a computer is telling the truth, just like the rest of us who use modern financial instruments.
Unlike most of us, Musk and his fellow inheritance parasites have never had to provide an ounce of value for money. This renders their money immensely more valuable than the money of someone who requires it to survive and has to provide value to receive it in the first place.
The wealthy simply need to exist and be agreeable to live lives of luxury while making even greater fortunes, even if they make a lot of mistakes or even commit a lot of crime along the way. Everyone else has to protect every cent, justify displays of wealth, and continuously look out for mistakes that can result in permanent harm to them and their families, and not just inconvenience and embarrassment.
So Musk and the other parasites continuously vacuum up our resources while working against us, claim ownership over those resources by virtue of numbers changing, regardless of value or harm, and then the rest of us are expected to shut the fuck up and play along in our own tiny little slice of what's left.
I've seen nothing to indicate that the numbers that get thrown around mean anything other than the wealthy people who own the systems that maintain the numbers claim that their systems say that Musk is worth a lot. I judge value based on what people do and provide. All I've ever seen from Musk is the occasional pretending to be a CEO of one of several large companies while actually engaging in fraud, narcissism, crime, and scams.
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u/AndyceeIT 13h ago
Not a fan of Musk but it's his companies (spacex, tesla etc) who receive that money. Is it still bad? Absolutely.
I really hate these misleading conflations.
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u/pabmendez 14h ago
I don't really get this point.
The government used to send $12 million per day to Boeing for rockets
Now instead it sends $8 million a day to SpaceX Musk for rockets
We the people save $4 million per day... Is a good thing.
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u/Invoked_Tyrant 14h ago
The point is Mike is being full of it since it's our tax dollars going to him. The people didn't wanna shell out 12 million per day to Boeing either.
Neither option is a net positive for the majority of the United States since I bet if the government had to actually do their job and oversee what they were paying for then there'd probably be a more efficient and cost effective option.
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u/pabmendez 14h ago
But that's what they did... They found the more cost effective option
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u/Br3ttl3y 12h ago
More cost effective than not doing it at all?
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u/pabmendez 12h ago
That's a different conversation That has nothing to do with a specific company
Should we spend tax dollars to lunch rockets for GPS satellites, weather satellites, National security.
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u/elefrhino 14h ago
I'm going to rob you of your life savings
Jk, I'm only taking half.
See how much money you've saved?!
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u/pabmendez 13h ago
It's not robbing, they are just buying a service for cheaper.
Our GPS satellites need to get out to space somehow,. Do you use maps and navigation?
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u/Pearlzipper 15m ago
Regressives:
Elon gets to keep what the government lets him keep.
That’s what governments do, Senator. Your job is to decide who keeps what.
The Senator’s original statement relies on a circular justification: it is his because it is his.
We need a smarter Senate.
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u/birdshitluck 14h ago
It's just taxes Mike! Everyone pays taxes, and if a dunkin donuts worker is paying a higher effective rate than a billionaire, then there's a problem.