Fascist Musk, Fascist Tesla: The electric car company would have been unprofitable for seven consecutive years through 2020 without selling its phony government carbon credits to other dirty automakers

 

 Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding

... Musk is one of the greatest beneficiaries of the taxpayers’ coffers. ... He has been a big beneficiary of national industrial policy, especially Democrat industrial policy, through government funding. ...

About a third of Tesla’s $35 billion in profits since 2014 has come from selling federal and state regulatory credits to other automakers. The credits are given to automakers that meet certain standards, including selling a certain percentage of zero-emission vehicles. Tesla is the largest seller of these credits to automakers that don’t meet the standards and want to avoid paying a fine.

These credits played a crucial role in the company’s first profitable quarter in 2013 and its first full year of profitability in 2020, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Without the credits, Tesla would have lost more than $700 million in 2020, marking a seventh-consecutive year with no profits, according to an analysis of SEC filings.

With the credits, the company instead reported a $862 million profit.

While Musk has advocated for ending the EV tax credit for consumers, he has said little about these regulatory credits. ...

Nearly a tenth of government money that has benefited Musk’s companies comes from agencies in eight states, including California. ...

In 2016, SpaceX’s success in securing federal contracts prompted rival Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin (and owner of The Washington Post), to say in a company meeting: “Elon’s real superpower is getting government money,” The Post reported. “From now on, we go after everything that SpaceX bids on.”

More.

Musk's many government subsidized businesses are just the currently most prominent examples of American fascism. For bigger ones simply look into the defense industry, the energy industry, or healthcare, or Amazon's early no-sales-tax arrangement which allowed it to become the retail behemoth that it is. President Eisenhower warned us about this long ago, but we're so used to it now that we just take it all for granted.

Real capitalism is swallowed up by the combine between the taxation authority holding a gun to your head, taking your money, and giving it to the corporations.

That's the racket. That's the American way.

Welcome to the 55th anniversary of Peak America

 

 

long term return from stocks peaked in 1969, 36 years after 1933 (always buy low)

Dwight David Eisenhower: Peak America on this day in 1944, and Peak $SPX Return in 1969 when he died

 America also landed on the moon in 1969.

The woke general on the right was made Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by Donald Trump effective Oct 1, 2019

He was US Army Chief of Staff 2015-2019 and Commander of III Corps at Fort Hood 2012-2014.

 

Stock market performance under Trump has been good in comparison with his predecessors, but best ever remains Eisenhower by far, followed by Truman

The post-war boom was almost inevitable and had little to do with the individual man and his policies. The income tax code's punitive elements at the time drove money into domestic investment, which received favorable tax treatment.

For America to be great like that again we must punish foreign investment and reward domestic. That's what creates jobs for Americans and expands markets for housing, autos and everything else here at home, with the result that companies make money and stocks do well.

But everyone in both parties, it seems, still want everything for themselves, investing abroad where labor is cheaper and regulation lax.

The only person in politics even remotely open to reversing the status quo remains Trump.

Eisenhower would have called this a coup attempt against Trump by the military-industrial complex

The Deep State: Eisenhower knew it as the military-industrial complex

The military leadership is shot through with liberal neocons bent on perpetual war to keep the warriors busy.

What interest does its intelligence network have in telling the truth to a civilian commander in chief about who did what with which to whom in Syria?

They all lied about WMD in Iraq, as surely as Obama & Co. lied to us about Obamacare.

Trump's just their latest patsy to keep the money flowing to the underlying businesses.

Inflation Was Worst Under Carter, Best Under Eisenhower Since WWII

Average of the annual inflation percent change December over December using CPI from here, with Obama's 2012 August over August (1.7 percent) counted as the fourth full year:

1948-1952 Truman                   2.65 percent

1952-1960 Eisenhower           1.4 percent

1960-1968 Kennedy/LBJ           2.2 percent

1968-1976 Nixon/Ford               6.4 percent

1976-1980 Carter                   10.4 percent

1980-1988 Reagan                    4.3 percent

1988-1992 Bush The Elder        4.2 percent

1992-2000 Clinton                     2.6 percent

2000-2008 Bush The Younger   2.4 percent

2008-2012 Obama                     2.2 percent.

Democrat presidents do slightly better on inflation than do Republican: 3.55 percent per annum vs. 3.69 percent, which is about 3.8 percent better on average.

But this isn't saying much, except that when it comes to your money, there's hardly a dime's worth of difference between the two political parties. Both have agreed on policies to trash the buying power of the dollar. That's the real enemy: the liberal consensus to impoverish the people through monetarism.

On average, post-war presidents have done a terrible job managing inflation, which is up 841 percent in the 64 years between 1948 and 2012. You might even say that inflation is their policy. By contrast, inflation jumped 146 percent in the 35 years between 1913 and 1948. The post-war liberal consensus has been nearly 6 times harder on the American people than the prior period.

Both parties need to be neutered.