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What a crappy article. Including SpaceX contracts as a subsidy? Seriously?
Can we wean oil & farm companies off of government support first?
I don't know about farming, but where's the evidence that oil companies are on some kind of special Government support? This StackExchange answer[0] goes into a decent amount of detail on exactly what "subsidies" Shell is receiving and why. [0] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/39112/does-shel...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hey! I really like my cheap produce.
Cheap meat is more likely to take a hit if we cut farm subsidies; feed crops are the biggest beneficiary (mostly corn). The data on wikipedia[1] is from 2004, but I haven't heard of any major reforms since then. From greatest to least, subsidies went to: corn, cotton, wheat, rice, soybeans, dairy, peanuts, sugar, minor oilseeds, tobacco, wool and mohair, vegetable oil products, and honey. Anything else is in the rema…
Ugh, what a bad-faith argument. The whole reason government puts subsidies on things is to encourage those things. The article starts with the assumption that market distortion is always has a bad outcome, but it's going to have to back that up. It also assumes (at the end) that our representatives in Congress can't possibly really be representing us. The rebates and tax cuts are working as intended. For example, by…
I'm not saying the government subsidies are wrong, but a counter case might be what if the government subsidized scientifc GPU's at the turn of the century over gaming GPU's? Would gaming have grown as big as it is without modern GPU's targeted at gaming? Would we have gotten such cheap GPU compute power without the massive investment in gaming? Would the government subsidy have ended up hurting long term advancement…
Elon Musk has earned every tax payer dollar he has received. From what I can tell by reading the news, the man works himself and his companies insanely hard. Perhaps this argument could be made about any other organizations or institutions, but not Elon Musk and his companies
Isn't it a little odd that every one of Musk's ventures is either heavily subsidized or directly paid for with government dollars? It's the old Ross Perot playbook. There is no greater spendthrift and hence more profitable customer than the U.S. government.
I think his companies are doing amazing technical work, but let's be honest, profit is absolutely priority number #1. Saint Musk isn't trying to kickstart an international colonization of Mars because it's a sensible Plan B (hint: it's not). I'm guessing the real motive is that it would involve more money than any project in the history of mankind.