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If the fine is intended to be punitive or act as a deterrent, it surely fails. Musk's net worth is over $20B, so a $20M fine is <0.1% of that. At this rate, he
by apatters 8y ago
If the fine is intended to be punitive or act as a deterrent, it surely fails. Musk's net worth is over $20B, so a $20M fine is <0.1% of that. At this rate, he could violate securities law 999 more times and he'd still be a billionaire.
It's a joke really, most Americans are lucky to even have a positive net worth. A traffic ticket hurts your average American much more than this fine hurts Musk and he committed a much larger crime than parking in the wrong spot.
- adventured 8y ago> most Americans are lucky to even have a positive net worth The median American has a positive net worth of around $55,000. That's higher than Germany or Sweden, and just below Finland. > A traffic ticket hurts your average American much more than this The average American has a positive net worth of over $300,000 and represents the fourth richest average of any nationality. As such, the average American would shrug off a parking ticket every bit as much as Musk would shrug off a $20m fine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_pe...
- kilburn 8y agoThese net worth figures don't take into account the differences in social models. The average German has been paying more taxes for their entire life. In exchange, their net worth won't be affected if they get cancer, they will get help if they go broke, etc. Comparing net worth figures directly doesn't sound fair to me given these differences...
- adventured 8y agoYour premise doesn't explain why France - which has a far more expensive welfare state than Germany - has a median net worth roughly three times that of Germany and Sweden. Or why Belgium is nearly 4x that of Germany. Or why Italy is 3x that of Germany. And so on. It's very clearly a problem that specifically has to do with Germany. Even South Korea, which has only started to become affluent in the last two decades, is well ahead of Germany and Sweden (and the US median as well). You're also making the excellent point that Americans should be far worse off than Germans and Swedes, because they should be going broke constantly due to medical bills. And yet the American median wealth is still higher. The US spends as much on its welfare state as a percentage of its economy, as what Canada and Australia do, and is just behind Switzerland. The median American receives healthcare through their employer. That directly detracts from their income potential, and given how expensive US healthcare is (typically 60% to 80% more than other developed nations), it detracts in a very big way. By your way of thinking, we should account for that massive gap in cost of healthcare and how it impacts income figures (which impacts max savings potential). It's certainly not fair to account for Germans paying into taxes for eg healthcare, while ignoring that Americans lose out on income in the relationship with their employer due to the immense cost of healthcare in the US: that is the tax.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago> It's very clearly a problem that specifically has to do with Germany. It's not even a real problem, because the primary cause is that housing costs in Germany are much lower than they are in most other places. Correspondingly the homes people own aren't worth as much, but they don't care because they're using housing as a thing to live in instead of a thing to prop up their net worth on paper.
- kmmlng 8y agoI think part of the answer might be that Germans invest much less than most other nationalities. They do save, but in times of practically non-existent interest rates, that does not get you very far.
- cm2187 8y agoI think for France it has to do with real estate. French people like to own their property while it is much less common in Germany. As property prices have skyrocketed (to the point of becoming a social problem), lots of people are asset rich without necessarily having the corresponding revenues.
- ACow_Adonis 8y agoNot to be "that stats guy", but i think the phrase you're looking for in your second paragraph there is the "American average", which is a totally different concept from the "average American". If you must use the concept of an average American (which I'm generally against because people/entities with multiple dependent and interlinked characteristics are not numbers and so average is pretty ill defined), I think general consensus is that your first measure of median would be more appropriate.
- rlue 8y agoYou selected the mean ($388,585) instead of the median ($55,876). One is America's average net worth per person (adult); the other is the net worth of the average American. Given that these values differ by over $300,000, that's arguably even less accurate than saying that the average American's net worth is below zero. EDIT: misread original comment's mention of median figure, but given its overall assertion in the context of this discussion, I'm leaving this here.
- apatters 8y agoThis comment seems pedantic, disingenuous, and perhaps misleading all at once. By the average American I meant "a typical American," which is admittedly a murky term, but I doubt most people would take this to mean the literal mathematical average. I'm a little surprised to see that the median wealth per adult in the US is $55K. It sounds high. Does the Credit Suisse report the Wikipedia article is based on define wealth to mean actual net worth, as in assets minus liabilities? I think the average American household has around $100K in debt. You can lawyer those words all you want, none of it will change the fact that ordinary people have a lot less money than Elon, and are hit harder by a traffic ticket than he is by this fine. I think that when you made this reply you weren't making a good faith effort to understand my point. Cherry-picked pedantry of this sort doesn't advance the discussion of the larger issues.
- sitkack 8y agoAre you referring to (a) Musk or an average Musk?
- cm2187 8y agoPlus anyone else would face a criminal investigation for attempting to manipulate the market to squeeze short sellers.
- r00fus 8y agoThe fine is to be repaid to the short sellers (the ones he tried to punk by claiming the privatization deal was done). That must be particularly galling to Musk.