I remember during his recent divorce, he claimed he was broke and sleeping in friends’ couches…it was bad enough that he was in a big hurry before his pre-nup expired.
Is the price of the car just spare change compared to the savings on the rocket? Or the virtual power plant in South Australia? Those things probably could have been accomplished without the force of one personality, but it would have required a few more committee meetings (and everyone getting paid to discuss why it shouldn’t be done). Humans are a challenge.
The funny thing is there are plenty of public funds that could be used to serve humanity, but aren’t. We have the right to demand those funds be used for public benefit, but any one would balk at random strangers saying they have the right to tell us what to do with our money.
Daniel Medin that’s a big problem as well. We’re “#1” in all the wrong things: biggest military, for example. It’s estimated that 1/6 of US children go hungry. If we used public funds to actually help the public we wouldn’t be in such a mess.
It’s an interesting question – would you limit both individual and corporate profit? My notion is that given the role companies play in employment, the tax structure might be altered to give more credit to companies that employ more people as well as pay them a livable wage. You don’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, but you want to put some restrictions on the goose that keeps tearing up the neighbor’s garden (those that are paying less than livable wages or those that are making rapacious profits without employing very many people). Elon Musk would fare better in that system than say Martin Shkreli, who is a (greed is good) lone wolf just out for fattening his own account. You don’t necessarily want to impede brilliant people who are doing things that seem to be in the public interest, but you also don’t want to subsidize them when they’re already rolling in the dough. I recently read an article that quoted a woman who owned a hardware store in a town that was offering billions in tax incentives for Amazon to locate a new complex there. “Why should the richest man in the world be offered billions in tax incentives, while he’s putting me out of business?” A local hardware store isn’t exactly obsolete at this point, and home delivery isn’t necessarily environmentally sound. But Amazon is playing a tactic that had fallen out of favor when companies started offshoring – pitting one municipality against another for tax breaks to locate jobs in the area. In general, economists saw that as soon as the benefits expired, companies offshored or repeated the cycle, and the net gains for a community were not good.
John Hardy Developer 
I remember during his recent divorce, he claimed he was broke and sleeping in friends’ couches…it was bad enough that he was in a big hurry before his pre-nup expired.
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Is the price of the car just spare change compared to the savings on the rocket? Or the virtual power plant in South Australia? Those things probably could have been accomplished without the force of one personality, but it would have required a few more committee meetings (and everyone getting paid to discuss why it shouldn’t be done). Humans are a challenge.
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Yeah, it would have been better if Elon sent a slab of concrete like a test would normally have…. 🙄
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Chad Alan lol!
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The funny thing is there are plenty of public funds that could be used to serve humanity, but aren’t. We have the right to demand those funds be used for public benefit, but any one would balk at random strangers saying they have the right to tell us what to do with our money.
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If the rich were properly taxed it would be public money.
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L Gorrie that’s the plan.
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US public funds usually goes to start wars with third world countries. But I guess that is what retarded yanks consider “help humanity”.
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Well, we used to fund NASA. Oh well.
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Daniel Medin that’s a big problem as well. We’re “#1” in all the wrong things: biggest military, for example. It’s estimated that 1/6 of US children go hungry. If we used public funds to actually help the public we wouldn’t be in such a mess.
LikeLike
It’s an interesting question – would you limit both individual and corporate profit? My notion is that given the role companies play in employment, the tax structure might be altered to give more credit to companies that employ more people as well as pay them a livable wage. You don’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, but you want to put some restrictions on the goose that keeps tearing up the neighbor’s garden (those that are paying less than livable wages or those that are making rapacious profits without employing very many people). Elon Musk would fare better in that system than say Martin Shkreli, who is a (greed is good) lone wolf just out for fattening his own account. You don’t necessarily want to impede brilliant people who are doing things that seem to be in the public interest, but you also don’t want to subsidize them when they’re already rolling in the dough. I recently read an article that quoted a woman who owned a hardware store in a town that was offering billions in tax incentives for Amazon to locate a new complex there. “Why should the richest man in the world be offered billions in tax incentives, while he’s putting me out of business?” A local hardware store isn’t exactly obsolete at this point, and home delivery isn’t necessarily environmentally sound. But Amazon is playing a tactic that had fallen out of favor when companies started offshoring – pitting one municipality against another for tax breaks to locate jobs in the area. In general, economists saw that as soon as the benefits expired, companies offshored or repeated the cycle, and the net gains for a community were not good.
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