Originally published at: Musk tanks TSLA 10% to pay his taxes, then pauses to malign a US Senator | Boing Boing
…
15 Likes
Let me guess:
(a) Musk has a Shiba Inu because it’s the doge meme dog.
(b) Musk has a Shiba Inu because it’s the Dogecoin dog.
(c) Why not both?
9 Likes
I hate, hate, HATE that there is so much overlap between hugely influential, and huge sack of crap.
27 Likes
It’s all about that ROI.
2 Likes
“Having found a way to have his shareholders foot the bill,”
All his wealth is in his stocks. How else was he supposed to pay taxes other than selling stocks?
4 Likes
He’s only influential because of his wealth. 
Same reason he’s a huge sack of crap.
17 Likes
It SUCKS so much that SpaceX is doing awesome things and then they have this spoiled manbaby at the helm. Price of progress I guess?
4 Likes
No. It’s not. We got to the moon not because of a rich man baby, because we had serious public and private resources involved in the problem…
38 Likes
i assume by shouting to the world he was selling, he hoped to drive prices down, and maybe(?) that would let him claim the difference as a loss: lowering the amount he owes
you know, there’s that argument that individuals shouldn’t pay taxes on their businesses because corporations already pay taxes and are people ( or something ) - maybe only corporations should pay taxes, and lots and lots of it. especially on executive compensation
15 Likes
Only if one assumes that dick-measuring and score-settling “great-man” capitalism is the only path to progress. American society has been sold that BS story for 40 years, to the point where Musk fanboi investors who lost money because of this move will show up to defend him.
27 Likes
Fixed that for you! 
19 Likes
You forgot to mention “inheriting millions of blood-emerald money from your parents”.
18 Likes
And that line right there. Is Musk letting it slip.
Comes off like a threat. Musk believes, and wants us to believe, that the stock dip that resulted from his sale is worse than the rich not paying taxes.
That’s the whole point of “sell stock to pay taxes”, as if that’s a thing anyone needs to do. Or he’ll actually pay taxes on it in the end. He’s just manipulating markets by bully pulpit again. I give it a week before he’s all about taxes being bad for the economy because stocks.
19 Likes
He has to pay taxes on stock options he got for free. He won’t get any losses. Deliberately driving down the value of his main asset seems like a very stupid strategy, especially when it’s a big bubble that could suddenly pop.
You could as well argue tha opposite. When a founder starts selling large amont of stock, that tends to drive the price down. Maybe he knows something the rest of us don’t? By putting it to a vote on Twitter he turned it into a joke, pretending it was a bunch of anonymous people on the net who made the decision. Maybe that made the price go down less than it otherwise would have?
The valuation of Tesla is totally artificial, based on hype around Musk, not on any fundamental calculations of future profits, so who can tell? Memestocks are strange.
14 Likes
It’s been done, but I genuinely was thinking the whole time I read this:
“Christ, what an asshole.”
24 Likes
It has the advantage of being a highly accurate statement, tho.
15 Likes
I agree, however the vagaries of the US space funding system and Senate have meant that space was simply not happening (i.e. the pork cost was so high that various projects were effectively impossible).
I actually think Tesla, Space-X and even Solarcity are doing amazing things. Tesla pretty much forced the entire car manufacturing sector to start taking actual useful electric cars seriously. Space X is forcing the space ‘industry’ to actually do stuff and creating an environment where it is possible again to imagine real space exploration (nevermind the Mars colony nonsense).
Those things are true, but Musk is also a rich asshole. He should pay taxes, he should probably pay a lot of taxes. I certainly do, and I’m not a gazillionaire.
12 Likes
In this case Musk had to get cash to pay taxes for old stock options that are about to expire. The only way he could get that amount of cash is by selling stock. No reason to feel sorry for him, he’ll still end up ahead from the value of those options, but the taxes are real.
5 Likes
I don’t care. I mean, how many books about been written warning about the very real dangers turning over space explorations to self-interested corporations? Not like corporations have exactly been great for this planet and all of us who live on it… Why are we trusting them to do this?
they need to pay their fucking taxes and stop bilking the rest of us so they can have dick rockets they can put their friends on for joy rides. We got real problems here that need addressing.
18 Likes
You mean that sending probes to other planets doesn’t count?
8 Likes
