Has Trickle Down Economics Failed?

[Immanuel]

yes, that is what we both agree on. The difference is that I don't think you think that massive profits by huge corporation and massive profits by the banking sector is at the expense of the working and middle class. Because every time I mention this fact, what I hear from most Conservatives is that "it's their money, they can do what they want with it". Which Technically, is true... but practically speaking, if it's detrimental to our country and for the vast majority of it's people, it needs to change. Now.. before you start... No one is calling for their heads, no one is into forcing them into poverty, or even not allowing them to remain very, very rich. But it's gotten almost to the same point(ratio-wise) as it was back in the robber baron days in the turn of the 20th century, when Industry and Banking ruled with an Iron fist and workers struggled to feed their families... much like today. We need a Teddy Roosevelt to come in and kick their asses.

Unfortunately... thus far, Obama is more like Teddy Ruxpin than Teddy Roosevelt. That is my biggest beef with Obama... that and he only went half way with Health Care...which is something else you and I are probably polar opposites on.

Anyway... gotta go to bed... 4AM comes early... back to work tomorrow.

Good night SP.

In reference to the banks, if they are charging me too much money and taking my money then I am going to go find another bank that charges less. If I think they are ripping me off, then I am not going to do business with them. Enough of us do that and they will get the idea.

Once I have agreed to their services on their fee schedule, then it becomes their money when it is due.

Immie

Ok... last post for the night... dammit, I always do this... Take a look around... I think most banks are pretty much in cahoots, you may see slight fluctuations, but they are essentially a force of one. Besides... I am not talking about loan rates or paying for your checks here... I am talking about bigger fish that people like you and I have next to no say in. The world of investment banking, derivatives and the like.

Yeah, right, last post of the night. I've said that before myself... come on, how much will power do you really have... step away from the monitor... come on do it... I dare ya!!

Immie

 

[KissMy]

Democrats want to tax away profits of people like Elon Musk. Elon Musk took his Zip2 profits & created Pay-Pal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, & SolarCity. Musk's business, innovations & jobs creation have run circles around government's.

Zip2 - In 1995, Musk went on to a graduate program in applied physics and materials science at Stanford, in which he stayed two days before dropping out to start Zip2, with his brother Kimbal Musk which provided online content publishing software for news organizations. In 1999, Compaq's AltaVista division acquired Zip2 for US$307 million in cash and US$34 million in stock options.

PayPal - In March 1999, Elon Musk invested Zip2 profits into & co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company. One year later, X.com merged with Confinity, originally a company formed to beam money between Palm Pilots, and the combined entity focused on email payments through the PayPal domain, acquired as part of Confinity. In February 2001, X.com changed its legal name to PayPal. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Before its sale, Musk, the company's largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal's shares.

SpaceX - In June 2002, With a $100 million of his PayPal fortune Elon Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), of which he is currently the CEO and CTO. SpaceX develops and manufactures space launch vehicles, with an emphasis on low cost and high reliability. His goal is to reduce the cost of human spaceflight by a factor of 100. The company's first two launch vehicles are the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets and its first spacecraft is Dragon. On 23 December 2008, SpaceX was awarded a $1.6 billion NASA contract for 12 flights of their Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after it retires in 2011. Initially, Falcon 9/Dragon will replace the cargo transport function of the Shuttle and astronaut transport will be handled by the Soyuz. However, SpaceX has designed Falcon 9/Dragon with astronaut transport in mind and the Augustine commission has recommended that astronaut transport be handled by commercial companies like SpaceX. Musk said that multiplanetary life may serve as a hedge against threats to the survival of the human species.

Tesla Motors - Elon Musk invested most of his remaining fortune in Tesla Motors, where he led design of their Tesla Roadster, arguably the first viable production electric car of the modern era. He originally came to Silicon Valley to do a PhD at Stanford in Applied Physics and Materials Science, where his goal was to create ultracapacitors with enough energy to power electric cars. Musk provided almost all of the capital for Tesla.

Tesla Motors currently builds an electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, and has shipped over 1800 vehicles to 31 countries. Tesla sells electric powertrain systems to Daimler, for the Smart EV and Mercedes A Class, and Toyota, for the upcoming electric RAV4.

His vision was to create the Tesla Roadster as a means to that end—a car aimed specifically at affluent early adopters, whose purchase of the sports car would subsidize the research and development costs of lower priced models of electric vehicles. Musk has also favored building a sub-$30,000 subcompact and building and selling electric vehicle powertrain components so that other automakers can produce electric vehicles at affordable prices without having to develop the products in house.

SolarCity - Elon Musk is also the primary investor and chairman of the board of SolarCity, a photovoltaics products and services 2006 startup company where his cousin Lyndon Rive is the CEO and co-founder. The underlying motivation for funding both SolarCity and Tesla is to help combat global warming.

 

[Richard-H]

yes, that is what we both agree on. The difference is that I don't think you think that massive profits by huge corporation and massive profits by the banking sector is at the expense of the working and middle class. Because every time I mention this fact, what I hear from most Conservatives is that "it's their money, they can do what they want with it". Which Technically, is true... but practically speaking, if it's detrimental to our country and for the vast majority of it's people, it needs to change. Now.. before you start... No one is calling for their heads, no one is into forcing them into poverty, or even not allowing them to remain very, very rich. But it's gotten almost to the same point(ratio-wise) as it was back in the robber baron days in the turn of the 20th century, when Industry and Banking ruled with an Iron fist and workers struggled to feed their families... much like today. We need a Teddy Roosevelt to come in and kick their asses.

Unfortunately... thus far, Obama is more like Teddy Ruxpin than Teddy Roosevelt. That is my biggest beef with Obama... that and he only went half way with Health Care...which is something else you and I are probably polar opposites on.

Anyway... gotta go to bed... 4AM comes early... back to work tomorrow.

Good night SP.

In reference to the banks, if they are charging me too much money and taking my money then I am going to go find another bank that charges less. If I think they are ripping me off, then I am not going to do business with them. Enough of us do that and they will get the idea.

Once I have agreed to their services on their fee schedule, then it becomes their money when it is due.

Immie

Ok... last post for the night... dammit, I always do this... Take a look around... I think most banks are pretty much in cahoots, you may see slight fluctuations, but they are essentially a force of one. Besides... I am not talking about loan rates or paying for your checks here... I am talking about bigger fish that people like you and I have next to no say in. The world of investment banking, derivatives and the like.

All businesses are in cahoots. They aren't stupid. They know that under cutting each other is just slitting their own throats. They only keep prices and profitablilty low enough to prohibit new comers to the market. The established competitors each have a market share and don't try to under cut each other.

Another fallacy capitaist theory.

 

[Richard-H]

Democrats want to tax away profits of people like Elon Musk. Elon Musk took his Pay-Pal profits & created SpaceX, Tesla Motors, & SolarCity. Musk's business, innovations & jobs creation have run circles around government's.

PayPal In March 1999, Elon Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company. One year later, X.com merged with Confinity, originally a company formed to beam money between Palm Pilots, and the combined entity focused on email payments through the PayPal domain, acquired as part of Confinity. In February 2001, X.com changed its legal name to PayPal. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Before its sale, Musk, the company's largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal's shares.

SpaceX In June 2002, With a $100 million of his PayPal fortune Elon Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), of which he is currently the CEO and CTO. SpaceX develops and manufactures space launch vehicles, with an emphasis on low cost and high reliability. His goal is to reduce the cost of human spaceflight by a factor of 100. The company's first two launch vehicles are the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets and its first spacecraft is Dragon. On 23 December 2008, SpaceX was awarded a $1.6 billion NASA contract for 12 flights of their Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after it retires in 2011. Initially, Falcon 9/Dragon will replace the cargo transport function of the Shuttle and astronaut transport will be handled by the Soyuz. However, SpaceX has designed Falcon 9/Dragon with astronaut transport in mind and the Augustine commission has recommended that astronaut transport be handled by commercial companies like SpaceX. Musk said that multiplanetary life may serve as a hedge against threats to the survival of the human species.

Tesla Motors Elon Musk invested most of his remaining fortune in Tesla Motors, where he led design of their Tesla Roadster, arguably the first viable production electric car of the modern era. He originally came to Silicon Valley to do a PhD at Stanford in Applied Physics and Materials Science, where his goal was to create ultracapacitors with enough energy to power electric cars. Musk provided almost all of the capital for Tesla.

Tesla Motors currently builds an electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, and has shipped over 1800 vehicles to 31 countries. Tesla sells electric powertrain systems to Daimler, for the Smart EV and Mercedes A Class, and Toyota, for the upcoming electric RAV4.

His vision was to create the Tesla Roadster as a means to that end—a car aimed specifically at affluent early adopters, whose purchase of the sports car would subsidize the research and development costs of lower priced models of electric vehicles. Musk has also favored building a sub-$30,000 subcompact and building and selling electric vehicle powertrain components so that other automakers can produce electric vehicles at affordable prices without having to develop the products in house.

SolarCity Elon Musk is also the primary investor and chairman of the board of SolarCity, a photovoltaics products and services 2006 startup company where his cousin Lyndon Rive is the CEO and co-founder. The underlying motivation for funding both SolarCity and Tesla is to help combat global warming.

So I had the idea of an 'Internet wallet' long before pay-pal ever existed. If I'd been paid fairly through out my life I could have financed that idea.

And if Elon Musk had paid his programmers & techs fairly they could have been the ones that financed SpaceX, Tesla Motors, & SolarCity.

Please don't expect any intelligent people to cry about mega-millionaires paying too much taxes. They're all theives.

 

[ShackledNation]

The real theory of trickle down is actually advocated by the interventionists and socialists. They think that if we tax everyone and give money to the government, it will eventually come trickling down to the middle class and the poor. Same with power. If we give more power to the state to regulate and run our lives, this power will trickle down to the rest of us.

If you want to talk of implausible theories, this is surely it. Government’s power and money doesn’t trickle down. It takes money and pours it into ever more bureaucracy and gives it to the elites. Its power grows and grows at the expense of society. This is the experience of the whole of human history.

 

[KissMy]

Democrats want to tax away profits of people like Elon Musk. Elon Musk took his Zip2 profits & created Pay-Pal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, & SolarCity. Musk's business, innovations & jobs creation have run circles around government's.

Zip2 - In 1995, Musk went on to a graduate program in applied physics and materials science at Stanford, in which he stayed two days before dropping out to start Zip2, with his brother Kimbal Musk which provided online content publishing software for news organizations. In 1999, Compaq's AltaVista division acquired Zip2 for US$307 million in cash and US$34 million in stock options.

PayPal - In March 1999, Elon Musk invested Zip2 profits into & co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company. One year later, X.com merged with Confinity, originally a company formed to beam money between Palm Pilots, and the combined entity focused on email payments through the PayPal domain, acquired as part of Confinity. In February 2001, X.com changed its legal name to PayPal. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Before its sale, Musk, the company's largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal's shares.

SpaceX - In June 2002, With a $100 million of his PayPal fortune Elon Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), of which he is currently the CEO and CTO. SpaceX develops and manufactures space launch vehicles, with an emphasis on low cost and high reliability. His goal is to reduce the cost of human spaceflight by a factor of 100. The company's first two launch vehicles are the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets and its first spacecraft is Dragon. On 23 December 2008, SpaceX was awarded a $1.6 billion NASA contract for 12 flights of their Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after it retires in 2011. Initially, Falcon 9/Dragon will replace the cargo transport function of the Shuttle and astronaut transport will be handled by the Soyuz. However, SpaceX has designed Falcon 9/Dragon with astronaut transport in mind and the Augustine commission has recommended that astronaut transport be handled by commercial companies like SpaceX. Musk said that multiplanetary life may serve as a hedge against threats to the survival of the human species.

Tesla Motors - Elon Musk invested most of his remaining fortune in Tesla Motors, where he led design of their Tesla Roadster, arguably the first viable production electric car of the modern era. He originally came to Silicon Valley to do a PhD at Stanford in Applied Physics and Materials Science, where his goal was to create ultracapacitors with enough energy to power electric cars. Musk provided almost all of the capital for Tesla.

Tesla Motors currently builds an electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, and has shipped over 1800 vehicles to 31 countries. Tesla sells electric powertrain systems to Daimler, for the Smart EV and Mercedes A Class, and Toyota, for the upcoming electric RAV4.

His vision was to create the Tesla Roadster as a means to that end—a car aimed specifically at affluent early adopters, whose purchase of the sports car would subsidize the research and development costs of lower priced models of electric vehicles. Musk has also favored building a sub-$30,000 subcompact and building and selling electric vehicle powertrain components so that other automakers can produce electric vehicles at affordable prices without having to develop the products in house.

SolarCity - Elon Musk is also the primary investor and chairman of the board of SolarCity, a photovoltaics products and services 2006 startup company where his cousin Lyndon Rive is the CEO and co-founder. The underlying motivation for funding both SolarCity and Tesla is to help combat global warming.

So I had the idea of an 'Internet wallet' long before pay-pal ever existed. If I'd been paid fairly through out my life I could have financed that idea.

And if Elon Musk had paid his programmers & techs fairly they could have been the ones that financed SpaceX, Tesla Motors, & SolarCity.

Please don't expect any intelligent people to cry about mega-millionaires paying too much taxes. They're all theives.

I just know you would have risk everything like he did. Elon did the actual work of creating these products instead of having one of your pot induced hallucinations. He is a job creator. You are a job sponge & a taker. If you want to tax the hoarders, that is fine with me, but not the innovators & jobs creators who are the backbone of this country & the ones who provide for you.

 

[Richard-H]

Democrats want to tax away profits of people like Elon Musk. Elon Musk took his Zip2 profits & created Pay-Pal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, & SolarCity. Musk's business, innovations & jobs creation have run circles around government's.

Zip2 - In 1995, Musk went on to a graduate program in applied physics and materials science at Stanford, in which he stayed two days before dropping out to start Zip2, with his brother Kimbal Musk which provided online content publishing software for news organizations. In 1999, Compaq's AltaVista division acquired Zip2 for US$307 million in cash and US$34 million in stock options.

PayPal - In March 1999, Elon Musk invested Zip2 profits into & co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company. One year later, X.com merged with Confinity, originally a company formed to beam money between Palm Pilots, and the combined entity focused on email payments through the PayPal domain, acquired as part of Confinity. In February 2001, X.com changed its legal name to PayPal. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Before its sale, Musk, the company's largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal's shares.

SpaceX - In June 2002, With a $100 million of his PayPal fortune Elon Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), of which he is currently the CEO and CTO. SpaceX develops and manufactures space launch vehicles, with an emphasis on low cost and high reliability. His goal is to reduce the cost of human spaceflight by a factor of 100. The company's first two launch vehicles are the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets and its first spacecraft is Dragon. On 23 December 2008, SpaceX was awarded a $1.6 billion NASA contract for 12 flights of their Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after it retires in 2011. Initially, Falcon 9/Dragon will replace the cargo transport function of the Shuttle and astronaut transport will be handled by the Soyuz. However, SpaceX has designed Falcon 9/Dragon with astronaut transport in mind and the Augustine commission has recommended that astronaut transport be handled by commercial companies like SpaceX. Musk said that multiplanetary life may serve as a hedge against threats to the survival of the human species.

Tesla Motors - Elon Musk invested most of his remaining fortune in Tesla Motors, where he led design of their Tesla Roadster, arguably the first viable production electric car of the modern era. He originally came to Silicon Valley to do a PhD at Stanford in Applied Physics and Materials Science, where his goal was to create ultracapacitors with enough energy to power electric cars. Musk provided almost all of the capital for Tesla.

Tesla Motors currently builds an electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, and has shipped over 1800 vehicles to 31 countries. Tesla sells electric powertrain systems to Daimler, for the Smart EV and Mercedes A Class, and Toyota, for the upcoming electric RAV4.

His vision was to create the Tesla Roadster as a means to that end—a car aimed specifically at affluent early adopters, whose purchase of the sports car would subsidize the research and development costs of lower priced models of electric vehicles. Musk has also favored building a sub-$30,000 subcompact and building and selling electric vehicle powertrain components so that other automakers can produce electric vehicles at affordable prices without having to develop the products in house.

SolarCity - Elon Musk is also the primary investor and chairman of the board of SolarCity, a photovoltaics products and services 2006 startup company where his cousin Lyndon Rive is the CEO and co-founder. The underlying motivation for funding both SolarCity and Tesla is to help combat global warming.

So I had the idea of an 'Internet wallet' long before pay-pal ever existed. If I'd been paid fairly through out my life I could have financed that idea.

And if Elon Musk had paid his programmers & techs fairly they could have been the ones that financed SpaceX, Tesla Motors, & SolarCity.

Please don't expect any intelligent people to cry about mega-millionaires paying too much taxes. They're all theives.

I just know you would have risk everything like he did. Elon did the actual work of creating these products instead of having one of your pot induced hallucinations. He is a job creator. You are a job sponge & a taker. If you want to tax the hoarders, that is fine with me, but not the innovators & jobs creators who are the backbone of this country & the ones who provide for you.

You are truly out of your mind. Working people more than earn what we get. Nobody 'provides' for us. If workers were actually paid in accordance with their true value they could start businesses. The wealthy have eliminated opportunity.

There were a rare few people that made a fortune from the internet boom - but they don't begin to deserve the amounts of money that they made. Not relative to the value of all other work that's being done.

The fact is that the human race did just fine without computers or the internet. But without ditch diggers we'd all be dead.

Which has more value?

 

[ShackledNation]

So I had the idea of an 'Internet wallet' long before pay-pal ever existed. If I'd been paid fairly through out my life I could have financed that idea.

And if Elon Musk had paid his programmers & techs fairly they could have been the ones that financed SpaceX, Tesla Motors, & SolarCity.

Please don't expect any intelligent people to cry about mega-millionaires paying too much taxes. They're all theives.

I just know you would have risk everything like he did. Elon did the actual work of creating these products instead of having one of your pot induced hallucinations. He is a job creator. You are a job sponge & a taker. If you want to tax the hoarders, that is fine with me, but not the innovators & jobs creators who are the backbone of this country & the ones who provide for you.

You are truly out of your mind. Working people more than earn what we get. Nobody 'provides' for us. If workers were actually paid in accordance with their true value they could start businesses. The wealthy have eliminated opportunity.

There were a rare few people that made a fortune from the internet boom - but they don't begin to deserve the amounts of money that they made. Not relative to the value of all other work that's being done.

The fact is that the human race did just fine without computers or the internet. But without ditch diggers we'd all be dead.

Which has more value?

What is the "true value" of labor?

 

[KissMy]

So I had the idea of an 'Internet wallet' long before pay-pal ever existed. If I'd been paid fairly through out my life I could have financed that idea.

And if Elon Musk had paid his programmers & techs fairly they could have been the ones that financed SpaceX, Tesla Motors, & SolarCity.

Please don't expect any intelligent people to cry about mega-millionaires paying too much taxes. They're all theives.

I just know you would have risk everything like he did. Elon did the actual work of creating these products instead of having one of your pot induced hallucinations. He is a job creator. You are a job sponge & a taker. If you want to tax the hoarders, that is fine with me, but not the innovators & jobs creators who are the backbone of this country & the ones who provide for you.

You are truly out of your mind. Working people more than earn what we get. Nobody 'provides' for us. If workers were actually paid in accordance with their true value they could start businesses. The wealthy have eliminated opportunity.

There were a rare few people that made a fortune from the internet boom - but they don't begin to deserve the amounts of money that they made. Not relative to the value of all other work that's being done.

The fact is that the human race did just fine without computers or the internet. But without ditch diggers we'd all be dead.

Which has more value?

Elon Musk created thousands of jobs. Those employees were able to buy houses from developers who employed the ditch digger. Without Elon's investments & efforts there would be thousands more of you living in moms basement smoking pot. There would be no new homes or ditch diggers.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

One man.... hell even one party is not responsible for all of this. I'm not rationalizing either the Dems or Obama. I am saying 30 years of Trickle down economics...a system that is firmly in place and has been since Reagan has outlived it's usefulness. This whole "privatization" ideology is just a re-hash of the same economic policies that have put us where we are. The policies that encourage Companies and Banking to go for the fast buck instead of steady growth....mostly at the expense of labor, who keeps both production going and buys most of the products and services that business provides. This started happening over a decade ago. People were struggling, sales of goods and services were down... so what did we do? Instead of realizing that the workforce is falling behind and need a boost, we simply lowered interest rates and made credit easier to get so that people can still keep buying and Banks get a huge windfall on the backs of people trying to make ends meet AND buy those "luxuries" that keep our economy rolling.

It was all a sham, and we fell for it hook line and sinker. Now look at us. Now that the easy credit has gone away, we aren't buying as much... unemployment is high(for us), Production is down. I am telling you as I sit here living and breathing... if you build it, they will come. That is, if you hire people at a decent wage....even at a short term loss... they will want to spend their earnings on stuff. Us Americans are hard wired to Capitalism and Consumerism. If they have money in their pockets it will do wonders for our economy.

The whole point is that labor and business aren't exclusive of one another...they are in a symbiotic relationship where one needs the other. That is, until business cheated and took their production abroad. Now we have Business with way too much power and influence, a government that is obligated to them for paying for their campaigns and a whole lot of people who bust their asses everyday just to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads wondering where the American Dream went.

What the hell are you talking about. If what you say is true and the last 30 years have been an embrace of trickle down economics, then it had an incredible success until...what?

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs]Shocking Video Unearthed Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our Economic Crisis - YouTube[/ame]

Let me hear your response to this video. Privatization led to this mess??? YOU ARE AN IDIOT.

Didn't bother to watch your video. It had incredible success for who? Oh... that's right, the only people that "matter" in your precious tea party propagandized mind... the wealthy. I won't sit here and say that Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac is guiltless in this... I will say that the repeal of Glass Steagal had much more to do with it.

You can type in big fonts all you want... all it does is paint you as the irrational lunatic you seem to be.

Because ending Glass-Steagall allowed banks to write mortgages for the first time?
LOL!
I love it when liberals repeat talking points with absolutely zero understanding.
Please explain how Glass-Steagall would have prevented the crisis.

 

[Oldstyle]

I wish we were back in the Reagan years. People actually had some hope for a better future then. That's pretty much nonexistent after 2 1/2 years of Progressive policies. "Hope and Change" has turned into "Hope I Can Find a Job".

 

[Urkie]

Because ending Glass-Steagall allowed banks to write mortgages for the first time?
LOL!
I love it when liberals repeat talking points with absolutely zero understanding.
Please explain how Glass-Steagall would have prevented the crisis.

Well then why don't you explain to me what the Glass-Steagall Act did? I don't think you understand based on your comments.

It is important to know because if you understand what it actually did, then you would realize its repeal definitely was one of the biggest reasons the crisis happened.

 

[Avatar4321]

I won't say it failed.

I will say it has never been proven to work.

Which, of course, is why when you ease the burden on the people economic growth skyrockets. Because it never works.

 

[Steelplate]

Democrats want to tax away profits of people like Elon Musk. Elon Musk took his Zip2 profits & created Pay-Pal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, & SolarCity. Musk's business, innovations & jobs creation have run circles around government's.

Zip2 - In 1995, Musk went on to a graduate program in applied physics and materials science at Stanford, in which he stayed two days before dropping out to start Zip2, with his brother Kimbal Musk which provided online content publishing software for news organizations. In 1999, Compaq's AltaVista division acquired Zip2 for US$307 million in cash and US$34 million in stock options.

PayPal - In March 1999, Elon Musk invested Zip2 profits into & co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company. One year later, X.com merged with Confinity, originally a company formed to beam money between Palm Pilots, and the combined entity focused on email payments through the PayPal domain, acquired as part of Confinity. In February 2001, X.com changed its legal name to PayPal. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock. Before its sale, Musk, the company's largest shareholder, owned 11.7% of PayPal's shares.

SpaceX - In June 2002, With a $100 million of his PayPal fortune Elon Musk founded his third company, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), of which he is currently the CEO and CTO. SpaceX develops and manufactures space launch vehicles, with an emphasis on low cost and high reliability. His goal is to reduce the cost of human spaceflight by a factor of 100. The company's first two launch vehicles are the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 rockets and its first spacecraft is Dragon. On 23 December 2008, SpaceX was awarded a $1.6 billion NASA contract for 12 flights of their Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, replacing the Space Shuttle after it retires in 2011. Initially, Falcon 9/Dragon will replace the cargo transport function of the Shuttle and astronaut transport will be handled by the Soyuz. However, SpaceX has designed Falcon 9/Dragon with astronaut transport in mind and the Augustine commission has recommended that astronaut transport be handled by commercial companies like SpaceX. Musk said that multiplanetary life may serve as a hedge against threats to the survival of the human species.

Tesla Motors - Elon Musk invested most of his remaining fortune in Tesla Motors, where he led design of their Tesla Roadster, arguably the first viable production electric car of the modern era. He originally came to Silicon Valley to do a PhD at Stanford in Applied Physics and Materials Science, where his goal was to create ultracapacitors with enough energy to power electric cars. Musk provided almost all of the capital for Tesla.

Tesla Motors currently builds an electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, and has shipped over 1800 vehicles to 31 countries. Tesla sells electric powertrain systems to Daimler, for the Smart EV and Mercedes A Class, and Toyota, for the upcoming electric RAV4.

His vision was to create the Tesla Roadster as a means to that end—a car aimed specifically at affluent early adopters, whose purchase of the sports car would subsidize the research and development costs of lower priced models of electric vehicles. Musk has also favored building a sub-$30,000 subcompact and building and selling electric vehicle powertrain components so that other automakers can produce electric vehicles at affordable prices without having to develop the products in house.

SolarCity - Elon Musk is also the primary investor and chairman of the board of SolarCity, a photovoltaics products and services 2006 startup company where his cousin Lyndon Rive is the CEO and co-founder. The underlying motivation for funding both SolarCity and Tesla is to help combat global warming.

What a crock... First off, No one wants to tax the profits away from anyone.... that's just pure bullshit hyperbole. Second... If Elon Musk is willing to invest in this country and it's people(or anyone else), I am sure there are things that could be worked out.

But your side doesn't see that... it's all black and white to you.

 

[Steelplate]

I just know you would have risk everything like he did. Elon did the actual work of creating these products instead of having one of your pot induced hallucinations. He is a job creator. You are a job sponge & a taker. If you want to tax the hoarders, that is fine with me, but not the innovators & jobs creators who are the backbone of this country & the ones who provide for you.

You are truly out of your mind. Working people more than earn what we get. Nobody 'provides' for us. If workers were actually paid in accordance with their true value they could start businesses. The wealthy have eliminated opportunity.

There were a rare few people that made a fortune from the internet boom - but they don't begin to deserve the amounts of money that they made. Not relative to the value of all other work that's being done.

The fact is that the human race did just fine without computers or the internet. But without ditch diggers we'd all be dead.

Which has more value?

What is the "true value" of labor?

Lincoln said it best... look at my sigline. Without labor, you have no capital. Without PAYING CUSTOMERS, you have no business.

 

[Steelplate]

Do any of the liberals in here dispute these facts:

Total federal revenues doubled from just over $517 billion in 1980 to more than $1 trillion in 1990. In constant inflation-adjusted dollars, this was a 28 percent increase in revenue.

This economic boom lasted 92 months without a recession, from November 1982 to July 1990, the longest period of sustained growth during peacetime and the second-longest period of sustained growth in U.S. history. The growth in the economy lasted more than twice as long as the average period of expansions since World War II.

From 1950 to 1973, real economic growth in the U.S. economy averaged 3.6 percent per year. From 1973 to 1982, it averaged only 1.6 percent. The Reagan economic boom restored the more usual growth rate as the economy averaged 3.5 percent in real growth from the beginning of 1983 to the end of 1990.

Once again...in the beginning... Big business and banking bought into it. They hired and paid and things were good. But over the years, they decided it would be better for THEM if they held on to more and more of that growth for themselves....it was sustained for a while by Easy Credit... but that Collapsed upon itself.... where we are now is the (hopefully)end result.

 

[Mr. Shaman]

No... at the time, I believed in it. I voted for Reagan in his second term(my first election as an adult), and in the very beginning... when everyone was playing along... it did work.

But as time went on, Big Money found out something... Trickling Down was optional... Once they figured that out... it's been a Corporatist wet dream ever since.

Big Money, eh, Dim? And what will you do with the big, big money?

'Tis true!!!

"Trickle Down" was the "Bush Tax-Cuts" of it's day....the 1%ers/high-roller$ KNEW what the hu$tle was....right from the start!!

Voodoo Reaganomics;
The $equel

It's always so amusing, as well, to hear people attempt to deflect any-and-all blame from ReRon Reagan.....that murdering son-of-a-bitch.​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

One thing is for sure DIVIDE AND CONQUER is rolling right along.

C'mon....it's making the Republican Primary SO-much-more amusing!!!!

Those Battling BIMBOS!!!

 

[Mr.Nick]

Trickle down economics has been mildly unsuccessful because democrats will do absolutely EVERYTHING in their power to offset the ideas success.

Progressives offset trickle down by manifesting new regulations and taxes which they sell to you or those that employ you as "for the better good of humanity taxes and regulations." Then you don't see a dime of the savings and believe the idea is a failure.

In short - hypothetically if trickle down saves you 300 bucks but progressives raise your taxes or reduce your paycheck by 350 bucks while pocketing a 50 for the government which they turn around and redistribute to their unions, to themselves to those dependent on government in exchange for a vote, to the "global warming" asshats that perpetuate the regulations in the first place etc..

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Because ending Glass-Steagall allowed banks to write mortgages for the first time?
LOL!
I love it when liberals repeat talking points with absolutely zero understanding.
Please explain how Glass-Steagall would have prevented the crisis.

Well then why don't you explain to me what the Glass-Steagall Act did? I don't think you understand based on your comments.

It is important to know because if you understand what it actually did, then you would realize its repeal definitely was one of the biggest reasons the crisis happened.

You go first Sparky.