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Elon Musk Becomes First Person Ever to Lose $200B

bloomberg.com

28 points by velik_m 3 years ago · 24 comments

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sschueller 3 years ago

It's shows just how pointless it is to have this much money and only bad things come from it.

Tax anything above 1 billion at 100%. If that isn't realized gains do not allow them to borrow against it. No loop holes.

The US and others managed to set a global minimum coorperate tax so this is doable.

  • papito 3 years ago

    100%? Really? Just take it all away? There must be a middle ground between the former 95% top rate and the current near-zero rate. Yes, no one paid the 95%, I realize - the loopholes have always existed.

    The point is NOT to take all of your money away, but to force you to RE-INVEST the money into growth and your employees. Otherwise you are just inviting schemes like stock buybacks and dark money flow into Washington DC, to make all of that legal.

    • sschueller 3 years ago

      Why not? No individual needs that kind of money.

      I don't want billionaires running charities deciding who gets what. I want elected governments to do that. (yes I know the US government is wasteful and incompetent but not all governments are). The wealth these people have acquired is because of the public and the public should benefit from the excess.

  • eddhead 3 years ago

    Do you really think he has that much liquid cash, and he physically lost $200 billion?

mindcrime 3 years ago

Hence the old joke that goes:

Q: How does one become a millionaire?

A: Start as a billionaire and buy Twitter

scaredginger 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/UvW0E

jqpabc123 3 years ago

Midas lost his touch once he decided to jump into politics and champion "free speech" by doing exactly what he railed against.

Who knew that the right wing version of "freedom" is really about using money to promote more bias?

Who knew that blatant right wing hypocrisy was bad for business?

imtringued 3 years ago

Why hasn't he just bought some ICE competitor and mismanaged that one to the ground?

scaredginger 3 years ago

Just $137 billion more to go

GianFabien 3 years ago

Another example of the error of conflating the purported value of some pieces of paper with real money. It's not like Elon had $200B sitting in a safe and one day it was all gone. That would be a "real loss".

Our capitalist system is more like a visiting a casino. No matter how many chips you win or lose at the tables. The only result that matters is how much money you walk out with.

  • mypastself 3 years ago

    While I agree that plenty of people (deliberately?) misunderstand how net worth is calculated, what would be the equivalent of “walking out” in this scenario? Transferring your assets to cash that’s going to be devalued by the government issuing more currency?

    It’s become extremely difficult to find an asset that’s both liquid and preserves value nowadays. Is cash the money-est money there is? I’m not so sure.

    • abudabi123 3 years ago

      Elon M speaks of things infinite money can't buy. LEO proliferated communication satellites was pretty much not available before SpaceX levelled up the game. ULA is a money magnet on the books.

      • mypastself 3 years ago

        If there’s one thing I’d consider valuable that the man is responsible for, it’s SpaceX. I’m not sure I’d invest in Tesla even at half its current price, but if SpaceX ever went public, I’d be on it immediately.

    • digilypse 3 years ago

      Perhaps, exchanging cash for some real utility.

      • mypastself 3 years ago

        For sure, and that’s the “medium of exchange” aspect of it. But it’s still not the best store of value…

sph 3 years ago

Paywalled

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