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Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

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Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#131

Post by gla8 »

bmmayer1 wrote: post #46
gotodengo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to deny the (until very recently legally enforced) class difference between whites and blacks in South Africa, nor the social issues causing hiring discrepancies in the States. However, it's not a narrow reading of events. Musk is African. Head a bit out of the way in South Africa and you'll find white kids who spend all day running around with black friends with the whole group speaking fluent Zulu. T…

The problem here lies with the imprecise term 'African American', a designation which, according to customary usage, includes many native-born Americans who have never been to Africa, as well as excludes many native-born Africans (like Musk) who are also Americans.

As a thought experiment, if you define Americans as those with natural rights, then every human being on Earth could be considered African American.

Although I've met a surprising number of intelligent people who somehow do not believe we are all descended from Africa. Which I suppose is related to people failing to understand that all individuals have innate inalienable rights, regardless of their citizenship.

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#132

Post by Maarten88 »

BeetleB wrote: post #122
Maarten88 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the top 1% of US tax filers pay nearly half of all US income taxes The top 1% also own more than 50% [1], so if they would pay their "fair share" they'd still need to pay more. Much more if you think that the differences should become smaller. [1] http://fortune.com/2015/10/14/1-percent-global-wealth-credit...

Apples to oranges comparison. One is talking about the US. The other is talking about the world. I wonder how much of the world's burden those 1% actually are paying? Why do you think they would still need to pay more?

Fair. For the US, the top 1% seems to own 40% of all wealth, a little bit less but still a staggering number i.m.o.

My problem with this is not so much the wealth of the top 1% in itself, but the lack of equal opportunity in the bottom 50%. A child that is born in this demography has much, much lower chance on a successful life than a child that is born in a wealthy family. That simply can't be fair.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#133

Post by embro »

kbenson wrote: post #115
embro wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most big companies do get some form of subsidies. Tesla is nearly 30,000 jobs in the US alone. 5 Billions is not much for such a big company.

It's not even 5 billion for Tesla, it's 5 billion for Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City combined. Three large companies in what I would assume are some of the most subsidized industries in the U.S. (automotive, aerospace and power utilities).

Wow, this is impressive.

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#134

Post by youdontknowtho »

seattle_spring wrote: post #79
youdontknowtho wrote: post #73

I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should be 100%. That's still an incredibly large amount of money. After that we need the resources to tackle problems and we can't if people hoard them. I know that it sounds simple, and lots of people on this site will disagree, but I'm having trouble justifying this kind of extreme wealth to myself anymore. There are so many people in poverty an…

> I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should be 100% Not that I'm anywhere close to this problem, but I would simply stop working after hitting that mark. Why would I work for free?

That's a valid question, but I think that people would do the things that interest them. After earning 1.5 million in a year, what would be wrong with not working?

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#135

Post by youdontknowtho »

jcsnv wrote: post #96
youdontknowtho wrote: post #73

I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should be 100%. That's still an incredibly large amount of money. After that we need the resources to tackle problems and we can't if people hoard them. I know that it sounds simple, and lots of people on this site will disagree, but I'm having trouble justifying this kind of extreme wealth to myself anymore. There are so many people in poverty an…

>I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should be 100% Remember, Elon funded SpaceX and Tesla with the wealth he generated from the sale of Paypal. Where would the funding have come from for those entities if he was taxed at 100% after 1.5mm?

To be fair, he has raised money from investors to start those companies. I'm not advocating for the end of banking, so people would still be able to borrow money and invest. I'm also not talking about taxing wealth, but income.

SpaceX is interesting because we could be doing that stuff at NASA if it were funded well.

I get what you are saying though, it would have an effect on investment and speculation. Maybe we don't need as much of those things.

I'm also not saying that this is particularly well thought out.

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#136

Post by methodover »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #73

I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should be 100%. That's still an incredibly large amount of money. After that we need the resources to tackle problems and we can't if people hoard them. I know that it sounds simple, and lots of people on this site will disagree, but I'm having trouble justifying this kind of extreme wealth to myself anymore. There are so many people in poverty an…

Genuine response here:

From a strictly utilitarian/consequentialist perspective, capitalist systems has proven to be pretty good at improving the quality of life for everyone. You're suggesting essentially eliminating medium-to-large prizes for succeeding in that system. Destroying those incentives strikes me as being fairly risky. You could end up causing more harm than good.

An interesting thought experiment to go through might be to compare two worlds: One in which we do as you suggest, and another where we continue on with the current system.

In your world, we might use the extra taxes to fund a medicare-for-all style healthcare system, free college tuition for everyone, and perhaps some large infrastructure program. More people have better health care coverage, would go to school for free, and be able to subsist on government-funded jobs. However, innovators, investors and entrepreneurs would be curbed back -- we get less technological innovation, fewer improvements in communication, education, medicine, technology, food production, travel, etc. It's difficult to predict what kinds of technologies we would miss out on, but it could be massive.

Would we miss out on an important cancer drug? Or perhaps the solution to climate change? Or maybe we would miss the boat on AI-driven cars?

As a heuristic, it seems to me that the biggest improvements in the quality of life of humanity so far have come not from socially engineered programs, but have rather come from entrepreneurs and inventors. It seems unwise to take our foot of the gas in that regards.

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#137

Post by jstelly »

CocaKoala wrote: post #128
kareemm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how you can say that the rich keep their tax burden light when the topic of this thread is how Musk paid tax amounting to 44% of his income totalling over half a billion dollars.

If it were common for rich people to pay 44 percent of their income in tax, it wouldn't be a newsworthy story.

Are there people who receive millions of dollars in income via stock options who pay a lower rate? If so, how does that work?

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#138

Post by bmmayer1 »

gla8 wrote: post #131
bmmayer1 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem here lies with the imprecise term 'African American', a designation which, according to customary usage, includes many native-born Americans who have never been to Africa, as well as excludes many native-born Africans (like Musk) who are also Americans.

As a thought experiment, if you define Americans as those with natural rights, then every human being on Earth could be considered African American. Although I've met a surprising number of intelligent people who somehow do not believe we are all descended from Africa. Which I suppose is related to people failing to understand that all individuals have innate inalienable rights, regardless of their citizenship.

Sure, we're all descended from Africa. But we all know that ethnographic definitions are arbitrary, and how long ago you or your ancestors immigrated apply more or less to your demographic label depending on a host of cultural, social or economic factors. The definitions are convenient only in labeling populations in broad strokes anyway; every individual has multiple ethnic, religious, cultural, racial identities that can be sliced/defined/labeled any way that society deems 'normal'...

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#139

Post by BeetleB »

Maarten88 wrote: post #132
BeetleB wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apples to oranges comparison. One is talking about the US. The other is talking about the world. I wonder how much of the world's burden those 1% actually are paying? Why do you think they would still need to pay more?

Fair. For the US, the top 1% seems to own 40% of all wealth, a little bit less but still a staggering number i.m.o. My problem with this is not so much the wealth of the top 1% in itself, but the lack of equal opportunity in the bottom 50%. A child that is born in this demography has much, much lower chance on a successful life than a child that is born in a wealthy family. That simply can't be fair. https://en.wikip…

>That simply can't be fair.

This word "fair" keeps being thrown about in these discussions.

All such discussions are useless unless the people involved specify what they mean by "fair". And I'll give you a hint: You'll find many people will disagree with your definition (and there isn't consensus on any one definition).

A simple example: Fairness in equality vs fairness in proportion. The former is about everyone having equal services/wealth/etc (usually aligned with far left), and the latter is about everyone having these in proportion to their efforts (usually aligned with far right).

Neither is right or wrong.

High wealth inequality, while often correlated with lower opportunities, does not fundamentally imply it - it is not a causation. Using it as a metric is a poor choice. Instead, the metric should be what the lowest N% have access to, regardless of the wealth inequality. You can get low wealth inequality where everything is bad for everyone, or high wealth inequality where only a few "suffer".

Just saying something is "unfair" without explanation is merely an attempt at making an emotional argument. It is identical to just saying something is "wrong".

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#140

Post by bentruyman »

CocaKoala wrote: post #128
kareemm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how you can say that the rich keep their tax burden light when the topic of this thread is how Musk paid tax amounting to 44% of his income totalling over half a billion dollars.

If it were common for rich people to pay 44 percent of their income in tax, it wouldn't be a newsworthy story.

I think the story here was the dollar amount, not the percentage.
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