The King of Crony Capitalists!!

[Zander]

This leftist c#nt has fleeced the American taxpayer to the tune of BILLIONS. He's the world's greatest con man.

The Crony Capitalist King - EPautos

The Crony Capitalist King
by eric • May 5, 2016 • 40 Comments

If Elon Musk’s various projects are so Iron Man fabulous, why do they all need so much government “help”? Shouldn’t Tesla – and Solar City and SpaceX – be able to stand on their merits… if they actually have merit?Tesla fanbois – and Musk himself – will tell you all about the virtues of his electric cars. They are sleek and speedy. This is true. But they are also expensive (the least expensive model, the pending Model X, will reportedly start around $35k, about the same price as a luxury sedan like the Lexus ES350) and come standard with a number of significant functional deficits such as a best-case range about half that of most conventional cars and recharge times at least 4-5 times as long as it takes to refuel a conventional car.

That’s if you can find a Tesla “supercharger” station.

If not, then the recharge time becomes hours rather than half an hour.

But the real problem with Tesla cars is that no one actually buys them.

Well, not directly.

Their manufacture is heavily subsidized– and their sale is heavily subsidized

Either way, the taxpayer (rather than the “buyer”) is the one who gets the bill.

On the manufacturing end, Tesla got $1.3 billion in special crony-capitalist “incentives”from the state of Nevada to build its battery factory there. This includes an exemption from having to pay any property taxes (unlike you and I) for the next 20 years. Another inducement was $195 million in transferable tax credits – which Tesla could sell for cash.

California provides similar inducements – including $15 million from the state of California to “create jobs” in the state.

Tesla does not make money by selling cars, either.

It makes money by selling “carbon credits” to real car companies that make functionally and economically viable vehicles that can and do sell on the merits – but which are not “zero emissions” vehicles, as the electric Tesla is claimed to be (but isn’t, actually, unless you don’t count the emissions produced by the utility plants that provide the electricity they run on, or the emissions produced mining the materials necessary to make the hundreds of pounds of batteries needed by each car).

Laws in nine states (including California) require each automaker selling cars in the state to sell a certain number of “zero emissions” vehicles, else be fined. Since only electric cars qualify under the law as “zero emissions” vehicles – and the majority of cars made by the real car companies are not electric cars – they end up having to “purchase” (air quotes for the same reason that you are a “customer” of the IRS’s) these “carbon credits” from Tesla, subsidizing Tesla’s operations and adding to the expense of manufacturing their own functionally and economically viable cars.

The amount Tesla has “earned” this way is in the neighborhood of $517 million.

Tesla is a newfangled taken on the welfare queen. Or more accurately, the EBT card – which is designed to look like a credit card. To have the appearance of a legitimate transaction … as opposed to a welfare payment.

Underneath the glitz and showmanship, that’s what all of Musk’s “businesses” are about. They all depend entirely on government – that is, on taxpayer “help” – in order to survive.

Without that “help,” none of Musk’s Tesla’s could survive.

Continued here........The Crony Capitalist King - EPautos​

 

[flacaltenn]

The guy is a seminar class on how a small group of egotistical entrepreneurs can become the elite benefactors of govt handouts. I'm not opposed to R&D money being doled out the old fashioned way -- on the basis of writing research proposals and for stuff that is NOT commercially available. But this is a new hybrid where one guy is able to leverage enough money and promises from the government to DOMINATE an area like private space flight.

I AM opposed to some very unethical claims and marketing hype that Musk has employed. Like this jizz about his "super-charging stations being solar powered".. That's just pandering and saying the right things to make the Patrons in Wash D.C. very happy with him.. Or some of the claims for his "hyper-link" tube transport deal..

Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies

Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space.

And he's built those companies with the help of billions in government subsidies.

Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups.

"He definitely goes where there is government money," said Dan Dolev, an analyst at Jefferies Equity Research. "That's a great strategy, but the government will cut you off one day."

The figure compiled by The Times comprises a variety of government incentives, including grants, tax breaks, factory construction, discounted loans and environmental credits that Tesla can sell. It also includes tax credits and rebates to buyers of solar panels and electric cars.



Elon Musk's companies have always depended on government money — and he's has always been up front about it

If there's a consistent charge against Elon Musk and his high-flying companies — Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity — it's that they're not really examples of independent, innovative market capitalism.

Rather, they're government contractors, dependent on taxpayer money to stay afloat.

A few years later, Tesla warned in an SEC filing that its DOE guarantees represented a meaningful business risk, something that investors needed to be aware of.

"We are dependent upon our ability to fully draw down on our loan facility from the United States Department of Energy, which may restrict our ability to conduct our business," the company said in early 2010.

As for SpaceX — Musk has never pretended that there would be a SpaceX without NASA. The space agency is by far the growing private space company's most important customer.

Mattera focuses on the fact that Tesla can sell zero-emission credits in California to automakers who don't produce enough zero-emission vehicles to satisfy the state's requirements.

And of course SolarCity customers can claim tax credits when they use the company to provide solar panels. This mitigates some of the cost of installing the technology.

 

[Searcher44]

This leftist c#nt has fleeced the American taxpayer to the tune of BILLIONS. He's the world's greatest con man.

The Crony Capitalist King - EPautos

The Crony Capitalist King
by eric • May 5, 2016 • 40 Comments

If Elon Musk’s various projects are so Iron Man fabulous, why do they all need so much government “help”? Shouldn’t Tesla – and Solar City and SpaceX – be able to stand on their merits… if they actually have merit?Tesla fanbois – and Musk himself – will tell you all about the virtues of his electric cars. They are sleek and speedy. This is true. But they are also expensive (the least expensive model, the pending Model X, will reportedly start around $35k, about the same price as a luxury sedan like the Lexus ES350) and come standard with a number of significant functional deficits such as a best-case range about half that of most conventional cars and recharge times at least 4-5 times as long as it takes to refuel a conventional car.

That’s if you can find a Tesla “supercharger” station.

If not, then the recharge time becomes hours rather than half an hour.

But the real problem with Tesla cars is that no one actually buys them.

Well, not directly.

Their manufacture is heavily subsidized– and their sale is heavily subsidized

Either way, the taxpayer (rather than the “buyer”) is the one who gets the bill.

On the manufacturing end, Tesla got $1.3 billion in special crony-capitalist “incentives”from the state of Nevada to build its battery factory there. This includes an exemption from having to pay any property taxes (unlike you and I) for the next 20 years. Another inducement was $195 million in transferable tax credits – which Tesla could sell for cash.

California provides similar inducements – including $15 million from the state of California to “create jobs” in the state.

Tesla does not make money by selling cars, either.

It makes money by selling “carbon credits” to real car companies that make functionally and economically viable vehicles that can and do sell on the merits – but which are not “zero emissions” vehicles, as the electric Tesla is claimed to be (but isn’t, actually, unless you don’t count the emissions produced by the utility plants that provide the electricity they run on, or the emissions produced mining the materials necessary to make the hundreds of pounds of batteries needed by each car).

Laws in nine states (including California) require each automaker selling cars in the state to sell a certain number of “zero emissions” vehicles, else be fined. Since only electric cars qualify under the law as “zero emissions” vehicles – and the majority of cars made by the real car companies are not electric cars – they end up having to “purchase” (air quotes for the same reason that you are a “customer” of the IRS’s) these “carbon credits” from Tesla, subsidizing Tesla’s operations and adding to the expense of manufacturing their own functionally and economically viable cars.

The amount Tesla has “earned” this way is in the neighborhood of $517 million.

Tesla is a newfangled taken on the welfare queen. Or more accurately, the EBT card – which is designed to look like a credit card. To have the appearance of a legitimate transaction … as opposed to a welfare payment.

Underneath the glitz and showmanship, that’s what all of Musk’s “businesses” are about. They all depend entirely on government – that is, on taxpayer “help” – in order to survive.

Without that “help,” none of Musk’s Tesla’s could survive.

Continued here........The Crony Capitalist King - EPautos​

What are you, some kind of naive blind Baby? Don't you know that the U.S. taxpayer funded just about every techno-marvel that has enriched the super-capitalists for at least 75 yrs. thru DARPA and other government research and development? Grow up.

Everything from the ubiquitous mouse to SIRI-type voice-to-text text-to-voice, GPS, you name it, somebody other than the American taxpayer profited from it.

This is a Business Insider headline, and it's just the tip of the iceberg...

This Chart Shows How The US Military Is Responsible For Almost All The Technology In Your iPhone.

Nearly all of the technology in many of the world's most ubiquitous electronic devices can be traced to a single, taxpayer-funded source: the US Department of Defense.

In an article promoted by the European Commission today, Italian economist Mariana Mazzucato wrote that sparking the world's economies after a long recession will require greater and riskier investment from government. She used Apple's wildly popular handheld devices as a present-day example.

The world's biggest company may have more cash on hand than many actual governments. But the technological breakthroughs behind its iconic iPods, iPhones, and iPads were funded almost exclusively by government agencies — and by one particular segment of one particular country's government.

As the chart below demonstrates, there's little in these devices that doesn't owe its existence to the US Department of Defense in some form or another.

Every time you see U.S. Military read U.S. Fucking Taxpayer!

Later devices saw investments from the Navy U.S. Taxpayer for their GPS capabilities, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) U.S. Taxpayer funded Siri. In fact, the parent company of Siri's creator, which was acquired by Apple in 2010, still gets over half of its revenue from the Department of Defense, U.S. Taxpayer according to a report they published earlier this year.

Highlighting an idea from her recent book on the relationship between the private and public sectors, U.S. Taxpayer, Mazzucato explains that achieving missions like putting a man on the moon required "a confident ‘entrepreneurial state’ U.S. Taxpayer willing and able to take on the early, capital-intensive high risk areas which the private sector tends to fear."

The US military U.S. Taxpayer was often the one taking "capital-intensive risks" that resulted in Apple's line of products. And the result is a family of devices so widely used that it's difficult to imagine the world without them.

If you whining dildos collected royalties and taxes due, you would be putting every child thru Graduate School and not even thinking of the cost, idiot suckers.

 

[Toro]

Government spending is a big driver of American technological innovation, whether it is through the military or universities. American companies are very good at commercializing that technology. But a lot of it starts with government spending.

 

[flacaltenn]

This leftist c#nt has fleeced the American taxpayer to the tune of BILLIONS. He's the world's greatest con man.

The Crony Capitalist King - EPautos

The Crony Capitalist King
by eric • May 5, 2016 • 40 Comments

If Elon Musk’s various projects are so Iron Man fabulous, why do they all need so much government “help”? Shouldn’t Tesla – and Solar City and SpaceX – be able to stand on their merits… if they actually have merit?Tesla fanbois – and Musk himself – will tell you all about the virtues of his electric cars. They are sleek and speedy. This is true. But they are also expensive (the least expensive model, the pending Model X, will reportedly start around $35k, about the same price as a luxury sedan like the Lexus ES350) and come standard with a number of significant functional deficits such as a best-case range about half that of most conventional cars and recharge times at least 4-5 times as long as it takes to refuel a conventional car.

That’s if you can find a Tesla “supercharger” station.

If not, then the recharge time becomes hours rather than half an hour.

But the real problem with Tesla cars is that no one actually buys them.

Well, not directly.

Their manufacture is heavily subsidized– and their sale is heavily subsidized

Either way, the taxpayer (rather than the “buyer”) is the one who gets the bill.

On the manufacturing end, Tesla got $1.3 billion in special crony-capitalist “incentives”from the state of Nevada to build its battery factory there. This includes an exemption from having to pay any property taxes (unlike you and I) for the next 20 years. Another inducement was $195 million in transferable tax credits – which Tesla could sell for cash.

California provides similar inducements – including $15 million from the state of California to “create jobs” in the state.

Tesla does not make money by selling cars, either.

It makes money by selling “carbon credits” to real car companies that make functionally and economically viable vehicles that can and do sell on the merits – but which are not “zero emissions” vehicles, as the electric Tesla is claimed to be (but isn’t, actually, unless you don’t count the emissions produced by the utility plants that provide the electricity they run on, or the emissions produced mining the materials necessary to make the hundreds of pounds of batteries needed by each car).

Laws in nine states (including California) require each automaker selling cars in the state to sell a certain number of “zero emissions” vehicles, else be fined. Since only electric cars qualify under the law as “zero emissions” vehicles – and the majority of cars made by the real car companies are not electric cars – they end up having to “purchase” (air quotes for the same reason that you are a “customer” of the IRS’s) these “carbon credits” from Tesla, subsidizing Tesla’s operations and adding to the expense of manufacturing their own functionally and economically viable cars.

The amount Tesla has “earned” this way is in the neighborhood of $517 million.

Tesla is a newfangled taken on the welfare queen. Or more accurately, the EBT card – which is designed to look like a credit card. To have the appearance of a legitimate transaction … as opposed to a welfare payment.

Underneath the glitz and showmanship, that’s what all of Musk’s “businesses” are about. They all depend entirely on government – that is, on taxpayer “help” – in order to survive.

Without that “help,” none of Musk’s Tesla’s could survive.

Continued here........The Crony Capitalist King - EPautos​

What are you, some kind of naive blind Baby? Don't you know that the U.S. taxpayer funded just about every techno-marvel that has enriched the super-capitalists for at least 75 yrs. thru DARPA and other government research and development? Grow up.

Everything from the ubiquitous mouse to SIRI-type voice-to-text text-to-voice, GPS, you name it, somebody other than the American taxpayer profited from it.

This is a Business Insider headline, and it's just the tip of the iceberg...

This Chart Shows How The US Military Is Responsible For Almost All The Technology In Your iPhone.

Nearly all of the technology in many of the world's most ubiquitous electronic devices can be traced to a single, taxpayer-funded source: the US Department of Defense.

In an article promoted by the European Commission today, Italian economist Mariana Mazzucato wrote that sparking the world's economies after a long recession will require greater and riskier investment from government. She used Apple's wildly popular handheld devices as a present-day example.

The world's biggest company may have more cash on hand than many actual governments. But the technological breakthroughs behind its iconic iPods, iPhones, and iPads were funded almost exclusively by government agencies — and by one particular segment of one particular country's government.

As the chart below demonstrates, there's little in these devices that doesn't owe its existence to the US Department of Defense in some form or another.

Every time you see U.S. Military read U.S. Fucking Taxpayer!

Later devices saw investments from the Navy U.S. Taxpayer for their GPS capabilities, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) U.S. Taxpayer funded Siri. In fact, the parent company of Siri's creator, which was acquired by Apple in 2010, still gets over half of its revenue from the Department of Defense, U.S. Taxpayer according to a report they published earlier this year.

Highlighting an idea from her recent book on the relationship between the private and public sectors, U.S. Taxpayer, Mazzucato explains that achieving missions like putting a man on the moon required "a confident ‘entrepreneurial state’ U.S. Taxpayer willing and able to take on the early, capital-intensive high risk areas which the private sector tends to fear."

The US military U.S. Taxpayer was often the one taking "capital-intensive risks" that resulted in Apple's line of products. And the result is a family of devices so widely used that it's difficult to imagine the world without them.

If you whining dildos collected royalties and taxes due, you would be putting every child thru Graduate School and not even thinking of the cost, idiot suckers.

That chart is not accurate at all.. Just because DARPA funded it -- doesn't mean it wasn't being developed commercially anyways. I used to sell research to DARPA for my research group at a Silicon Valley company. They funded stuff WE HAD already developed.. And we "sold" contracts to MULTIPLE government agencies interested in applying that science/technology to their latest hot list of "military apps"..

More than HALF the items on that chart would have been "just fine" without funding from the Govt. There's just so much horseshit there --- I'll just say that RCA held the original LCD patent in the 1960s and devices were commercially available soon after. Signal Compression techniques were known and applied as far back as the late 19th century. And APPLIED commercially probably before DARPA was created. Same deal with microprocessors.

Multi-touch technology is something that my current group helped create. So I know that THERE -- the CIA might have been a research client, but NOT by any means the technology developer.. .

 

[Searcher44]

Government spending is a big driver of American technological innovation, whether it is through the military or universities. American companies are very good at commercializing that technology. But a lot of it starts with government spending.

Government spending U.S. Taxpayer money is a big driver of American technological innovation, whether it is through the military U.S. Taxpayer or universities. American companies are very good at commercializing commandeering that technology. But a lot of it starts with government U.S. Taxpayer spending.

Yup.

 

[Searcher44]

This leftist c#nt has fleeced the American taxpayer to the tune of BILLIONS. He's the world's greatest con man.

The Crony Capitalist King - EPautos

The Crony Capitalist King
by eric • May 5, 2016 • 40 Comments

If Elon Musk’s various projects are so Iron Man fabulous, why do they all need so much government “help”? Shouldn’t Tesla – and Solar City and SpaceX – be able to stand on their merits… if they actually have merit?Tesla fanbois – and Musk himself – will tell you all about the virtues of his electric cars. They are sleek and speedy. This is true. But they are also expensive (the least expensive model, the pending Model X, will reportedly start around $35k, about the same price as a luxury sedan like the Lexus ES350) and come standard with a number of significant functional deficits such as a best-case range about half that of most conventional cars and recharge times at least 4-5 times as long as it takes to refuel a conventional car.

That’s if you can find a Tesla “supercharger” station.

If not, then the recharge time becomes hours rather than half an hour.

But the real problem with Tesla cars is that no one actually buys them.

Well, not directly.

Their manufacture is heavily subsidized– and their sale is heavily subsidized

Either way, the taxpayer (rather than the “buyer”) is the one who gets the bill.

On the manufacturing end, Tesla got $1.3 billion in special crony-capitalist “incentives”from the state of Nevada to build its battery factory there. This includes an exemption from having to pay any property taxes (unlike you and I) for the next 20 years. Another inducement was $195 million in transferable tax credits – which Tesla could sell for cash.

California provides similar inducements – including $15 million from the state of California to “create jobs” in the state.

Tesla does not make money by selling cars, either.

It makes money by selling “carbon credits” to real car companies that make functionally and economically viable vehicles that can and do sell on the merits – but which are not “zero emissions” vehicles, as the electric Tesla is claimed to be (but isn’t, actually, unless you don’t count the emissions produced by the utility plants that provide the electricity they run on, or the emissions produced mining the materials necessary to make the hundreds of pounds of batteries needed by each car).

Laws in nine states (including California) require each automaker selling cars in the state to sell a certain number of “zero emissions” vehicles, else be fined. Since only electric cars qualify under the law as “zero emissions” vehicles – and the majority of cars made by the real car companies are not electric cars – they end up having to “purchase” (air quotes for the same reason that you are a “customer” of the IRS’s) these “carbon credits” from Tesla, subsidizing Tesla’s operations and adding to the expense of manufacturing their own functionally and economically viable cars.

The amount Tesla has “earned” this way is in the neighborhood of $517 million.

Tesla is a newfangled taken on the welfare queen. Or more accurately, the EBT card – which is designed to look like a credit card. To have the appearance of a legitimate transaction … as opposed to a welfare payment.

Underneath the glitz and showmanship, that’s what all of Musk’s “businesses” are about. They all depend entirely on government – that is, on taxpayer “help” – in order to survive.

Without that “help,” none of Musk’s Tesla’s could survive.

Continued here........The Crony Capitalist King - EPautos​

What are you, some kind of naive blind Baby? Don't you know that the U.S. taxpayer funded just about every techno-marvel that has enriched the super-capitalists for at least 75 yrs. thru DARPA and other government research and development? Grow up.

Everything from the ubiquitous mouse to SIRI-type voice-to-text text-to-voice, GPS, you name it, somebody other than the American taxpayer profited from it.

This is a Business Insider headline, and it's just the tip of the iceberg...

This Chart Shows How The US Military Is Responsible For Almost All The Technology In Your iPhone.

Nearly all of the technology in many of the world's most ubiquitous electronic devices can be traced to a single, taxpayer-funded source: the US Department of Defense.

In an article promoted by the European Commission today, Italian economist Mariana Mazzucato wrote that sparking the world's economies after a long recession will require greater and riskier investment from government. She used Apple's wildly popular handheld devices as a present-day example.

The world's biggest company may have more cash on hand than many actual governments. But the technological breakthroughs behind its iconic iPods, iPhones, and iPads were funded almost exclusively by government agencies — and by one particular segment of one particular country's government.

As the chart below demonstrates, there's little in these devices that doesn't owe its existence to the US Department of Defense in some form or another.

Every time you see U.S. Military read U.S. Fucking Taxpayer!

Later devices saw investments from the Navy U.S. Taxpayer for their GPS capabilities, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) U.S. Taxpayer funded Siri. In fact, the parent company of Siri's creator, which was acquired by Apple in 2010, still gets over half of its revenue from the Department of Defense, U.S. Taxpayer according to a report they published earlier this year.

Highlighting an idea from her recent book on the relationship between the private and public sectors, U.S. Taxpayer, Mazzucato explains that achieving missions like putting a man on the moon required "a confident ‘entrepreneurial state’ U.S. Taxpayer willing and able to take on the early, capital-intensive high risk areas which the private sector tends to fear."

The US military U.S. Taxpayer was often the one taking "capital-intensive risks" that resulted in Apple's line of products. And the result is a family of devices so widely used that it's difficult to imagine the world without them.

If you whining dildos collected royalties and taxes due, you would be putting every child thru Graduate School and not even thinking of the cost, idiot suckers.

Just because DARPA funded it -- doesn't mean it wasn't being developed commercially anyways.
I used to sell research to DARPA for my research group at a Silicon Valley company. They funded stuff WE HAD already developed.. And we "sold" contracts to MULTIPLE government agencies interested in applying that science/technology to their latest hot list of "military apps"..

More than HALF the items on that chart would have been "just fine" without funding from the Govt. There's just so much horseshit there --- I'll just say that RCA held the original LCD patent in the 1960s and devices were commercially available soon after. Signal Compression techniques were known and applied as far back as the late 19th century. And APPLIED commercially probably before DARPA was created. Same deal with microprocessors.

Multi-touch technology is something that my current group helped create. So I know that THERE -- the CIA might have been a research client, but NOT by any means the technology developer.. .

Darpa's been around in several incarnations for a long time. And like most of us they found there were some drawbacks to various Trade Agreements. Rules against gov'ts underwriting certain industries were included and Darpa and other money dispensing alphabet soup agencies had to get creative and careful in finding ways to get the money to where they wanted it to go. I'm sure as a libber you're more knowledgeable in this area than I am. And this tech and an American source for it was particularly important to Darpa for security reasons - I'll find the article where I read that. You mention the C.I.A. for example. I'm sure they know how to launder a money trail, most of the time not fucking up their own plan.

Just because DARPA funded it -- doesn't mean it wasn't being developed commercially anyways.

I was trying to rub the OP's eyeballs into the fact that government doled lots of taxpayer money out to lots of wealthy Corps. Certainly not just "left-wing" Corps. I wasn't arguing how efficiently they did it. I'm not sure I'm getting your drift here, are you challenging my claim that Darpa and other related gov't agencies funneled hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to private companies, with basically no return, or just that this tech would have been developed anyway or, What? Also I don't think I've mentioned that DOD somewhere along the line probably signed inflated multi-billion dollar contracts to buy this tech back off many of these companies, certainly not getting any consideration for all the billions they put into into its r&d.

 

[HUGGY]

How long did it take from the first personal gasoline operated transportation til everyone could buy a car?

Don't forget that if Edison had his way we would have had DC as the standard electricity of the country not AC which can be transmitted for hundreds of miles. DC not so much.

The OP is willfully ignorant of how major developments in technology happen. I fail to see his point. Perhaps that is because he has none.