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All of Elon Musk's companies are heavily subsidized by the US tax payer. Solar City, SpaceX and Tesla would not be successful if it weren't for subsidies and t

by ProAm 5y ago

All of Elon Musk's companies are heavily subsidized by the US tax payer. Solar City, SpaceX and Tesla would not be successful if it weren't for subsidies and tax breaks.

atlasunshrugged 5y ago
Did SpaceX get a lot of subsidies and tax breaks? I thought they just got a lot of government contracts for their services
panick21_ 5y ago
Any large companies that make large investment in new infrastructure and factories get tax breaks. So those are really not special or interesting. People can be made about those but not specifically made about any individual company getting them. Go to a state and build a multi-billion project, you will get tax breaks. Solar City clearly profited from tax policy but the whole solar industry was basically profiting from this, nothing to do with Solar City in particular. Tesla received a 400M lone around 2010-2014 for advanced vehicle manufacture. Tesla paid this back early with profit to the tax payer. Tesla could have got this money other ways at that point (possible with more shares being sold). Unlike all the other car companies like Ford and GM who have still not paid the government back for loans from the same program (and also achieved far less with their far larger loans). Much later on the government created the EV tax break program, again for all car companies, not specific to Tesla. Tesla quickly used its 250k of cars that they could for this program and other car companies wait for years to use these (and some are still) after Tesla had done most of the hard work to make EV space happen. SpaceX actually ended MASSIVE subsidies for ULA. ULA was a monopoly that received outrages subsidies IN ADDITION to outrages launch prices they were asking for. SpaceX was never directly subsidies, they bid for competitive contracts from NASA/DoD like every other space company in the US. The only subsidy the did receive was a couple years ago when some Starlink terminals will be available for cheaper in some poor region. So yes, almost all of aerospace is connected to the government, I guess one can complain about that. Tesla has gotten less help from government then people assume and often the policies helped their competitors more then them.

by ProAm 5y ago

All of Elon Musk's companies are heavily subsidized by the US tax payer. Solar City, SpaceX and Tesla would not be successful if it weren't for subsidies and tax breaks.

atlasunshrugged 5y ago

Did SpaceX get a lot of subsidies and tax breaks? I thought they just got a lot of government contracts for their services

panick21_ 5y ago

Any large companies that make large investment in new infrastructure and factories get tax breaks. So those are really not special or interesting. People can be made about those but not specifically made about any individual company getting them. Go to a state and build a multi-billion project, you will get tax breaks. Solar City clearly profited from tax policy but the whole solar industry was basically profiting from this, nothing to do with Solar City in particular. Tesla received a 400M lone around 2010-2014 for advanced vehicle manufacture. Tesla paid this back early with profit to the tax payer. Tesla could have got this money other ways at that point (possible with more shares being sold). Unlike all the other car companies like Ford and GM who have still not paid the government back for loans from the same program (and also achieved far less with their far larger loans). Much later on the government created the EV tax break program, again for all car companies, not specific to Tesla. Tesla quickly used its 250k of cars that they could for this program and other car companies wait for years to use these (and some are still) after Tesla had done most of the hard work to make EV space happen. SpaceX actually ended MASSIVE subsidies for ULA. ULA was a monopoly that received outrages subsidies IN ADDITION to outrages launch prices they were asking for. SpaceX was never directly subsidies, they bid for competitive contracts from NASA/DoD like every other space company in the US. The only subsidy the did receive was a couple years ago when some Starlink terminals will be available for cheaper in some poor region. So yes, almost all of aerospace is connected to the government, I guess one can complain about that. Tesla has gotten less help from government then people assume and often the policies helped their competitors more then them.