Once Volkswagen gets its Modulare Elektroauto Baukasten rolling at full production speed it's game over for Tesla anyhow.
perhaps, but I'll never buy a Volkswagon just on principal. Fool me twice...
Elon Musk moves to Texas
81–90 of 1001 posts
Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
California has a $54B deficit this year. It's been all over the news, including very left-wing sources like NY Times and Politico. The state _projected_ a surplus and was off by an entire order of magnitude into the red. The state has been campaigning to Congress all year for about $14B in bailout money.
Yes, most places in the country have a massive deficit this year because states are spending money to protect their citizens and stimulate the economy. So this year is an odd year for most states... don't try and single out California as this bad actor that can't manage its finances. That narrative is misleading.
California has historically had budget problems for decades and resolved things 8 years ago through increased taxes. It also increased taxes by about $2B this year.
As recently as 2017, the state miscalculated the costs of Medi-Cal and had a 1.6B deficit for the year.
The argument that I'm framing is that the state has to continuously dig further into its citizens pockets in order to fund its appetite for spending. It's entirely true.
Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas
#83Shocking to see someone anti-union trying to flee a state that actually protects workers rights: https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/30/20891314/elon-musk-... While I admire Elon's vision, I'm not a huge fan of how he's going about it. Kind of seems like he views other human beings as tools to be used and discarded when they've outlived their usefulness. You can see it when he makes comments about things like the U…
No, I really do think people in the US are massively entitled. I've lived in 3rd world countries and the standard of living even for a minimum wage worker is so beyond that of a poor person in a third world country (like Tanzania or Kenya, for example). People in the US are lucky, and yet, all everyone does is complain and bitch all the time. I think most Americans lack perspective and are ungrateful for what they have.
Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish all brands had this. I despise the dealer sales experience.
My understanding is that car dealerships and the laws around them are essentially a sales union. They are in place to force manufacturers to leverage local sales people instead of their own. It blew my mind when I went to a dealership that had radio ads about their great lease deals on a Chevy Volt. I walked in, told them I'd like to lease a Chevy Volt and that I was very excited about the deal. They spent an hour tr…
From what I've heard, dealership don't like electric cars because they make their money off of maintainance and EVs require less.
Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas
#85Musk made it clear what he thought about worker’s rights when he forced the Tesla plant open during the pandemic: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52627744 The modern day robber barons will never care about the working class. It is up to us to look out for ourselves.
I'll never understand why people look up to him. I have friends that are totally extreme communists, who hate everything capitalist and they idolize him. He's still a billionaire and a shitty person, just because he has interests in helping the planet (with his great business ventures) doesn't make him a swell fellow. He's still trash, like most billionaires.
Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas
#86In case anyone is surprised or represents a new phenomenon, it's covered here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_flight
or, for apologists:
Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas
#87Isn't the actual listed location of residence more a formality for a billionaire like Musk? I presume he'll still rent residences in LA and the Bay Area considering he'll be back and forth for business related to Tesla and SpaceX. This seems like he's renting a place in Texas and making a big deal out of 'moving there' to make a point about California's regulatory environment.
The CA Franchise Tax Board aggressively pursues departing taxpayers who maintain even slight residual connections to the state. There are no bright-line rules to determine residency, so the state has great leeway (and incentive) to pursue punishing residency audits. Horror stories abound!
Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. All of our Teslas were bought online, and we showed up at the gallery or service center only to take delivery ("here's your [fob|rfid key] and we'll auth the vehicle in your Tesla account"). Carvana has a similar model for used vehicles, and they are very successful with the demo they cater to (buy online or in app, with a test drive period after purchase if you want to return the vehicle). People hate the trad…
I'd buy a car through Carvana (in principle), but I don't recall the prices being very attractive. It was the same or slightly more than what was available at traditional local places.
It appears folks are willing to pay a premium for a superior experience.
Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
California has a $54B deficit this year. It's been all over the news, including very left-wing sources like NY Times and Politico. The state _projected_ a surplus and was off by an entire order of magnitude into the red. The state has been campaigning to Congress all year for about $14B in bailout money.
Did you miss the part where there's been a massive pandemic and sky-high unemployment for the past year? California had the nation's healthiest budget prior to the pandemic, with the highest per-capita surplus, largest rainy day fund. It's true that California relies heavily on income taxes, which include capital gains, both of which are much more strongly impacted by the business cycle than states primarily funded b…
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Re: Elon Musk moves to Texas
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let’s say you are a painter, and you paint 20 pictures and sell 10 for 100,000 each. You pay taxes on the 1m you receive. The other 10 painting are sitting in a storage unit. Then at some point in the future someone, one of you previous customers sells their painting in a private sale for 10M. They pay capital gains on $9.9m. Now you as the painter hypothetically have $100M worth of in paintings in your storage unit.…
Put another way, it's taxing money (value) that you haven't actually made yet.
More-dangerously, it is taxing theoretical money that you haven't yet made.
There is no guarantee that the current market-clearing price for a given object is equivalent to that at which a larger inventory can be sold.
Taxing capital gains at the time of sale makes sense -- there is actual revenue available for taxation. Taxing unrealized gains can be a path to really-negative outcomes. This is particularly so if the government doesn't give matching credits for unrealized capital losses.