I know few here will understand this, but trust me, from an older wiser very successful investor, do yourself a favor, get into the stock market early, no excuses. Pick companies you know will do well. You’ll be able to control your future. Spacex will create more millionaires than Tesla + Apple + Microsoft combined.
New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure
121–130 of 139 posts
Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure
#122> Elon has control and optimizes for cool shit and going to Mars This trope needs to die. SpaceX has no plans to go to Mars. Elon meanwhile regularly says forward looking stuff to attempt to justify the lofty valuations of his companies. Let's just say there is a ... mixed track record on these proclamations (Full self driving, Hyperloop anyone?)
This trope has to die. SpaceX Starship design is optimized for Mars (instead of Blue Origin NG) and the gigantic Starship Factory and multiple launch pads under construction in Texas, Florida and Louisiana (plus potentially foreign countries) only make sense with Mars.
And how exactly is SpaceX going to make any meaningful ROI on getting Mars orbit capability? It's not like people and govt's are raring to get there.
Scientific organizations like NASA would jump on a Mars Starship in a heartbeat, but how many missions will they want?
SpaceX is a corporation first and foremost, not a research org.
Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Option 3: Elon takes over the Federal government, causes some major security incidents, and cuts off USAID stranding a number of Federal employees and cutting off short term food support for hundreds of thousands of people depending on it. Option 4: Elon takes over a social network and tries to Orbanize the West with it.
It’s not just cutting food support. Hundreds of thousands of people have died because we cut USAID. https://www.cgdev.org/blog/update-lives-lost-usaid-cuts
Correct. He has unfathomable amounts of blood on his hands. And I don't have the links handy, but I read at least two articles that directly traced his criminally negligent dismantling of USAID to individual deaths.
Every article concerning Musk or his companies needs to forever be prefaced with this fact.
Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Musk just tied his compensation to having 1 million people on Mars. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulat... Do explain to me his evil plan of becoming rich by lying about going to Mars and yet agreeing to only get paid when he does go to Mars.
We currently have 0 people on the moon. The Antarctica population peaks at about 5,000, which is a paradise compared to Mars, with drinkable water and breathable air. It even has naturally occurring food! You can get there with a mere boat! One million people on Mars within our lifetimes is a total fantasy. Like the Nigerian Prince emails, its main purpose is to identify marks.
Elon and his company was sued when he delivered on one of his previous compensation tied to moonshot never gonna happen things.
Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Absolutely, that's the main reason there's been a push for that for decades. It's a giant pile of poor people's money that rich people can't easily skim from, and they'd really, really like to. Once it's "in the market" they gain all kinds of options for turning some of that money into their money, some immediately, some with tweaks to laws or policy.
That’s literally not how it works. You buy a share of stock and participate in their gains. For example, I owned a bunch of Tesla stock since around 2017. Now I have a ton in the stock as well as a new house and a model s plaid thanks to their greatness. Did the same with Apple, that is my retirement and travel fund. it ain’t hard.
> You buy a share of stock and participate in their gains
That is "literally not how it works", as you missed "... and losses".
Since dividends aren't really a thing any more and gains are ~100% from stock prices increasing, existing holders of securities would really like a bunch more money to come shopping and drive that price up. Very helpful if you want to make sure a period where "... and losses" seems like a silly thing to be worried about keeps going for a while longer.
Bunch of folks out there would love to be taking management fees on funds that're required by law to receive 10ish% of every middle-class-and-under working American's paycheck (some at the higher end of the pay scale pay less than that, because of the cutoff, and of course anyone rich enough not to have wage income pays no FICA at all).
Others would like to game the system to make Social Security a huge, deep-pocketed buyer for their scams. This is for when "... and losses" starts really biting people.
Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
We currently have 0 people on the moon. The Antarctica population peaks at about 5,000, which is a paradise compared to Mars, with drinkable water and breathable air. It even has naturally occurring food! You can get there with a mere boat! One million people on Mars within our lifetimes is a total fantasy. Like the Nigerian Prince emails, its main purpose is to identify marks.
Elon and his company was sued when he delivered on one of his previous compensation tied to moonshot never gonna happen things.
> Elon and his company was sued when he delivered
"When" is inaccurate. The original shareholder vote for Musk's 2018 compensation plan was on 2018-03-18. Tornetta was filed on 2018-06-05, well before the first tranche vested in 2020.
Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Social Security replaced with an index Yes please! I learned just how bad of a deal Social Security is when an employer (a bootstrapped startup) offered a predatory 401k plan. It was free for my employer to setup but the employees were stuck with extremely high fees. It was so bad that John Oliver made an episode[0] about it! Yet, even for the worst 401K plan in America, the projected retirement returns were 1600%…
Are you aware that SSI is an insurance (or lifetime annuity) not an investment? SSI covers disability, and supplements income no matter what happens. Disability? You're covered. Live to 105? You're covered. Market dips 50% in a period you have a lot of expenses? Your benefits are unaffected. Tax advantaged 401k is already the vehicle of choice for retirement funds.
> Are you aware that SSI is an insurance
Insurance is an effective tool for managing unlikely risks -- few people will be rendered unable to work early in life, so with a large pool we can cover these cases with only a small per-person contribution. What makes SSI ineffective is that it is also liable for a broad eventuality: most everyone will age.
When any self-interested person plans for a far-off expense, they will save up principle, and manage it to yield interest as well. But the government isn't looking out for your interest; instead of investing or growing funds on behalf of the people, the congress and administrators spent down the SSI nest egg leaving no principle to manage. Today it makes payments only as money comes in.
SSI is run worse than Enron. Citizens should be allowed to invest their own earnings elsewhere.
Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
This trope has to die. SpaceX Starship design is optimized for Mars (instead of Blue Origin NG) and the gigantic Starship Factory and multiple launch pads under construction in Texas, Florida and Louisiana (plus potentially foreign countries) only make sense with Mars.
And how exactly is SpaceX going to make any meaningful ROI on getting Mars orbit capability? It's not like people and govt's are raring to get there. Scientific organizations like NASA would jump on a Mars Starship in a heartbeat, but how many missions will they want? SpaceX is a corporation first and foremost, not a research org.
They're getting ROI on other ventures and uses those returns to finance their expansion towards Mars (and other planetary) orbit capacity. It may be rare to see a company looking further than the next quarterly report but it is nothing new for either SpaceX or some of Musk's other ventures.
Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
We currently have 0 people on the moon. The Antarctica population peaks at about 5,000, which is a paradise compared to Mars, with drinkable water and breathable air. It even has naturally occurring food! You can get there with a mere boat! One million people on Mars within our lifetimes is a total fantasy. Like the Nigerian Prince emails, its main purpose is to identify marks.
Elon and his company was sued when he delivered on one of his previous compensation tied to moonshot never gonna happen things.
What does that refer to?
Re: New York, California pension leaders oppose 'extreme' SpaceX control structure
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why he (and other billionaires) are pining to get Social Security replaced with an indexed based retirement fund?
> Social Security replaced with an index Yes please! I learned just how bad of a deal Social Security is when an employer (a bootstrapped startup) offered a predatory 401k plan. It was free for my employer to setup but the employees were stuck with extremely high fees. It was so bad that John Oliver made an episode[0] about it! Yet, even for the worst 401K plan in America, the projected retirement returns were 1600%…
> Uncle Sam should sunset SSI and allow citizens to select from and move freely between a number of accredited funds.
But how does the government actually do that? This feels like one of those ideas that sounds OK right up until the point where you try to map out an actual plan with more detail beyond the word "sunset".
If current Social Security taxes fund current payouts, how do you redirect those taxes anywhere without cutting off current Social Security recipients who spent their entire lives paying into the system? Even those still working have spent some portion of their career paying Social Security tax. Do they get a lump sum payout they can invest (from where?), a limited annuity in retirement (paid for by who?), or is that just money down the drain?
I'm not even necessarily opposed to the idea of changing Social Security into something else, but I'd love for any proposal for doing so to come with something that looks even remotely like an actual plan.