From November 20, 2024
How much of Musk’s wealth comes from tax dollars and government help?
By some measures, little of his wealth is thanks to taxpayers. Musk is worth an estimated $326 billion, according to Bloomberg’s real-time billionaire tracker. His companies have received “only” tens of billions from government contracts and programs.
But in other ways, virtually all of his net worth can be pinned to government help. Tesla and SpaceX got started – and survived their early days – with assistance from state and federal policies, government contracts and loans.
“The foundation for Musk’s financial success has been the US government,” said Daniel Ives, tech analyst for Wedbush Securities.
And the value of Tesla and SpaceX doesn’t come from their profits so far.
Instead, their value comes from investments in their future worth, such as Tesla’s publicly traded stock and private funding rounds for SpaceX.
New Report Exposes How Elon Musk Made U.S. Government His Cash Cow
A new Washington Post report found that the tech mogul/fascism enthusiast built his fortune from $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits going back more than 20 years. Musk’s companies received at least $6.3 billion in commitments from state and local governments in 2024 alone, and this is likely an undercount.
The total amount of government funding that Musk has received is likely much higher, given that federal funding related to defense and intelligence projects is often classified. For example, Musk’s company SpaceX has a contract to build spy satellites from the National Reconnaissance Office, an intelligence agency tasked with building satellites for national defense. That contract is reportedly worth $1.8 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
According to the Post, Musk’s companies have close to a dozen other local grants, tax credits, and reimbursements whose costs are not publicly known. Musk also has 52 ongoing contracts with seven government agencies—including the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and NASA—that could pay his companies $11.8 billion in the next few years.
Tesla has been a major beneficiary of federal and state government funding, receiving $11.4 billion in regulatory credits meant to boost electric cars. Tesla sales have been helped by a $7,500 tax credit for buyers of electric vehicles too.
The electric car company may not have even survived without government help: When Musk took over as CEO of Tesla in 2008, he pressed the Department of Energy for a low-interest loan for the company, which was then cash-poor. A $465 million loan would arrive two years later, allowing Tesla to build its first luxury electric sedan and buy a factory in California.
“Tesla would not have survived without the loan,” said one former high-level Tesla employee, who spoke to the Post anonymously. “It was a critical loan at a critical time.”
As Musk rails against government fraud and waste (and gets it wrong), he would do well to remember how much he has benefited from taxpayer funds. Or he might appreciate it all too well, and his DOGE efforts may be focused on getting as much money as possible from the government while gutting pesky regulations and investigations into himself and his companies. He’s either a hypocrite, a fool, or both, living the life of a greedy welfare billionaire.
Also Grifting in Canada
Tesla Gamed The System To Steal Tens Of Millions In Canadian Incentives On The Final Day Of Eligibility
The Minister of Transport Canada is investigating Tesla after a mountain of suspicious rebate requests were filed in the final three days of Canada’s iZEV government incentive program. As the program wound to a close last month, Tesla filed an incredible 8,600 sales in three days. In spite of severe backlash within Canada against Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his participation in the hostile U.S. Trump Administration, the electric car retailer claims that it sold more cars in Canada in the final three days of the $5,000 incentive program than it had in the entirety of the first quarter of 2024. According to the Toronto Star, Tesla claims to have shifted 8,653 units in a single weekend, with over 4,000 units delivered by a single location in Quebec City. The final-weekend play from Tesla netted the company more than $43 million in Canadian rebates, over half of the program’s remaining budget. The program was scheduled to operate through mid-March, but by the end of January the government was warning that the program was running out of money. With that last blast of Tesla rebate requests, the system’s cash reserves were gone.
According to the Canadian Auto Dealers Association, the last-minute Tesla application bomb left some 2,300 cars with unreimbursed rebates. The dealers gave their customers the $5,000 rebate from the point of sale, but the program had run out of money and ended over the course of the weekend when government offices were closed, sticking the dealership collective with about $10 million in broken promises. CADA spox Huw Williams complained, “These dealers in good faith gave customers the money for a program that is always refunded. They shouldn’t be left making a payment on behalf of the Government of Canada. Tesla gamed the system.”
Read More: https://www.jalopnik.com/1807796/tesla-last-minute-canadian-incentives-eligibility-request/
Read More: https://www.jalopnik.com/1807796/tesla-last-minute-canadian-incentives-eligibility-request/