Elon Musk Would Rather Spend His Money on Mars Than Help People on Earth - Vanity Fair

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Sorry, humans. 

By Bess Levin

October 28, 2021

As Elon Musk has made very clear this week, he is not in favor of the billionaire tax proposed by Democratic leadership, which would raise hundreds of billions of dollars to help fund Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill and make life better for millions of Americans. In the mind of the Tesla cofounder, who is worth $292 billion, he already pays more than his fair share in taxes, even though, like many of the richest people in the country, he actually forks over a relative pittance to the IRS. In 2018, for example, the now richest man in the world paid a grand total of nothing in income taxes, and between 2014 and 2018, he paid what ProPublica calls a “true tax rate” of 3.27%. Which, as any nonbillionaire can attest, is a f--k ton less than what normal people who don’t own their own rocket ship companies part with every tax season.

According to Musk, though, the proposal by Democrats is a nefarious plot that must be stopped. Without a scintilla of irony, the Tesla cofounder warned on Monday that taxing him on the increase in value of his publicly traded assets will ultimately hurt people who won’t make as much money in their lifetimes as he does in one hour. “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you,” he warned, trying to convince people to contact their representatives by letter and write: “Although the proposal targets billionaires and not myself, the government of elected representatives have a track record of scope creep when writing new taxes. I anticipate that any new unrealized capital gains taxes will slowly make their way down to middle class retirement investments over the next several years. It will start with billionaires, then eventually millionaires, then the modest investments will get hit possibly within a decade.” Which is deeply rich considering the plan proposed by Biden, which the 700 richest people in the country could help fund without making a real dent in their net worths, would include universal preschool for all three- and four-year olds; subsidized child care; a one-year extension on the current expanded Child Tax Credit, which impacts roughly 35 million households; and a four-year extension on pandemic-related Affordable Care Act subsidies, i.e. things that would make people’s live much easier.

So, where does Musk prefer to spend his cash? If you guessed “outer space,” congratulations, you know your billionaires. Per Bloomberg:

The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, said he plans to use his money to “get humanity to Mars and preserve the light of consciousness” as Democrats weigh a billionaires’ tax for the wealthiest Americans that could hit him hardest of all. The Tesla Inc. CEO was responding to a tweet by Washington Post reporter Christian Davenport, who said that Musk and Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos’s tax bills under the proposed plan—as much as $50 billion and $44 billion over the first five years—could pay for a mission to Mars. Bezos and Musk have a combined net worth that approached $500 billion Wednesday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The tax plan promoted by some congressional Democrats explicitly targeted appreciated public shareholdings, which have been a main driver of billionaires’ steep wealth gains in recent years.

Musk, whose net worth reached about $292 billion, has been particularly vocal on Twitter against the billionaires’ tax. He argued in an earlier tweet that spending is the real problem and that taxing all billionaires at 100% would only make a “small dent” in the U.S. national debt. In another tweet, Musk said that the unrealized capital gains tax proposal targeted at billionaires could eventually be widened to the middle class. 

At present, it doesn’t look like the billionaire tax will actually happen, thanks to resistance from—who else?—Senator Joe Manchin (and, obviously, the Republican Party). On Wednesday, House Ways and Means Committee chair Richard Neal said there probably isn’t enough support to get it through Congress, and that the House and Senate are instead negotiating to include a 3% surtax on top of the highest income rate, for those making more than $10 million a year. Which is a pretty nice turn of events for the richest people in the country in general, and in particular for Musk, who has the government to thank for his business and his vast wealth. As CNN reminds us:

Tesla was built on government cash. For years it used government incentives for people to buy electric vehicles. Much of its current profits are thanks to the sale of government regulatory credits to other, traditional automakers, which allowed them to keep making gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs rather than reduce their emissions. Investors think it’s a good scheme, which is why Tesla is worth three times more than Toyota but sells far fewer vehicles.

Pretty sweet deal he’s worked out for himself.

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