Elon Musk Income Taxes

[gounion]

In the 50’s manufacturing was king and the big manufacturing enterprises were long well established. Steel, paper, aircraft, aluminum, oil, gas, fuels, were all very well established and ruled the 50’s.

Actually, while Alcoa was the main producer of aluminum before the war, post-war several companies arose, including Reynolds and Kaiser.

Unionization and the growth of the middle class, which led to new fortunes in housing, and rampant consumerism, and the birth of the advertising age. The boom in retail sales.

The maturity and growth of the military industrial complex and the entire aviation industry. With jet travel, the airline industry came of age and expanded greatly. The jet engine revolutionized the nation.

The Highway Act of 1956 and the Interstate Highway System? That changed our nation so damned much and birthed whole new industries. Trucking companies. Holiday Inn and hotel chains. Entire new Leisure industries. Las Vegas. The travel industry. The birth of the suburbs.

The idea of food franchising was born in the fifties and transformed the nation. Ever hear of McDonalds? Whataburger? Burger King? Jack-in-the-Box? Sonic? Kentucky Fried Chicken? Church's Chicken? Pizza Hut? Shakey's? Denny's? IHOP? Pancake House? Waffle House? Perkins?

Television and electronics. The entire TV industry, both manufacturing and programming matured in the fifties. TV sports come of age.

Huge discoveries and advancements in medicine and health care.

Also, in the fifties, small business was really king in communities. Chains and big stores like Sears were there, but MOST people shopped in local businesses.

Need I go on?

[ProfX]

Stop arguing facts; it really doesn't seem to matter with the pigeon who's just going to ignore them, and strut around the board.

[gounion]

Stop arguing facts; it really doesn't seem to matter with the pigeon who's just going to ignore them, and strut around the board.

It's never stopped YOU from arguing facts, my friend!

What we do simply shows how worthless GreenGrass's arguments are.

[ProfX]

It's never stopped YOU from arguing facts, my friend!

Oh, I know, that's just me being rhetorical. Don't stop. Facts benefit everyone, even for those who ignore them.

Look, if he's somehow arguing there was less entrepreneurialism in the 50s then there is now - BTW IS that what's he arguing, sometimes he doesn't make a lot of sense - again - some data?

[gounion]

Oh, I know, that's just me being rhetorical. Don't stop. Facts benefit everyone, even for those who ignore them.

Look, if he's somehow arguing there was less entrepreneurialism in the 50s then there is now - BTW IS that what's he arguing, sometimes he doesn't make a lot of sense - again - some data?

Well, you destroyed his argument, so he's flailing, trying to come up with something, and it doesn't bother him to come up with a fantasy version of the past.

In the modern era, EVERY decade has been full of technological and social change. It's hilarious to watch him make a fool of himself.

Heck, I even forgot to mention the HUGE changes that air conditioning brought to our nation. Window units came to homes in the fifties, followed by central air in the sixties. Without it, the south would still be lightly populated.

[ProfX]

As somebody who lives in South Florida, you do not need to tell me twice.

Most of this state would be uninhabitable without AC. And that was even before the onset of recent climate change.

Look, I don't want to over-romanticize the 50s either. It was a time of great economic equality, but not for everybody. Women were still stuck in lives that forced Betty Friedan to write a book about it. Rosie the Riveter quickly faded away as there was pressure to force women back into homemaker roles. Segregation of education and so many other things, including the workplace and unions, was still a thing. It was a time of McCarthyism and great pressures toward conformity that led to that next epoch we call "the Sixties" and its counterculture.

It's just that, at least in strict economic terms, Reich and Krugman and Piketty and Galbraith and other economists are not wrong, the Great Compression was a thing, an experiment that worked - progressive taxation, Keynesian policies, a better economy with more equality for MOST. Although again I will also grant, the U.S. had a benefit in that Europe was more economically devastated from WW II than we were, so we had global markets to expand into that they didn't, but this still doesn't explain the situation fully. The success of Keynesian policy does.

Then came, in the 70s, this ass named Milton Friedman, and in the 80s this POTUS named Reagan who put a lot of his Chicago school dorks in charge of economy policy, and ever since ...

[Bludogdem]

The average home size in the 50’s was 1,000 sq ft with 1 bathroom. Few had showers. Central wasn’t a thing until the 70’s. Mostly one car per families. Franchising started in the 20’s but didn’t really boom until the late 60’s early 70’s. Individual wealth information was not readily available as it is today. The incredibly wealthy. Could easily hide the wealth. Reynolds’s was a major player that started in 1919. Kaiser was a well established construction business , dam builder, shipbuilder that expanded into aluminum by acquiring unused government war facilities. Interstate system in the 50’s was negligible. Telecom was hindered by monopoly. Sure the middle class grew. But there was a wealth class that was largely unmeasured. Wealthy family trusts hid and protected the wealth.


I lived the 50’s.

[gounion]

The average home size in the 50’s was 1,000 sq ft with 1 bathroom. Few had showers. Central wasn’t a thing until the 70’s. Mostly one car per families. Franchising started in the 20’s but didn’t really boom until the late 60’s early 70’s. Individual wealth information was not readily available as it is today. The incredibly wealthy. Could easily hide the wealth. Reynolds’s was a major player that started in 1919. Kaiser was a well established construction business , dam builder, shipbuilder that expanded into aluminum by acquiring unused government war facilities. Interstate system in the 50’s was negligible. Telecom was hindered by monopoly. Sure the middle class grew. But there was a wealth class that was largely unmeasured. Wealthy family trusts hid and protected the wealth.


I lived the 50’s.

Oh bullshit. Prove it.

You're just making shit up that you don't know about. We're onto you, Hap.

[ProfX]

So did my parents. May they both RIP.

All that said, living through a decade doesn't make you an expert on whether it had more or less economic inequality than the present.

Research does. All the economists I've named in this thread have done it.

Also, BTW, it is EASIER today in 2021 to hide your wealth in offshore tax havens than it was in the 1950s - not harder.

[gounion]

If he'd lived through it, Hap wouldn't be making shit up about it.

[Bludogdem]

I'd ask for a source, but I know that's pointless.

How it’s done and been done.

https://www.propublica.org/article/the- ... enerations

These hidden fortunes permeated the 50’s.

[Bludogdem]

So did my parents. May they both RIP.

All that said, living through a decade doesn't make you an expert on whether it had more or less economic inequality than the present.

Research does. All the economists I've named in this thread have done it.

Also, BTW, it is EASIER today in 2021 to hide your wealth in offshore tax havens than it was in the 1950s - not harder.

Well, research can only be done on available data. Today we know the data on Bezos and Musk. In the 50’s that data was hidden.

It was pretty easy to hide in the 50’s.

Not so much today. Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg. Public filing requirements on stock and business transactions.

[gounion]

Well, research can only be done on available data. Today we know the data on Bezos and Musk. In the 50’s that data was hidden.

It was pretty easy to hide in the 50’s.

Not so much today. Forbes, Fortune, Bloomberg. Public filing requirements on stock and business transactions.

Still lots of hiding. See Propublica article.

[ProfX]

In fact, all one needs to do is read the article, with full reading comprehension of course, to see that it argues the wealthy families and heirs are using many of the same strategies throughout the decades, and are merely doing the same thing today, but more effectively.

I guess one might skip over the ending of the article:

[from the above]

Despite the settlement and a hefty state inheritance tax bill, there still was plenty of money for Scaife’s anti-tax causes. Even from the grave, Scaife’s hand continues to influence the debate over how much America will tax the wealthy. He donated more than $736 million to two charities, one of which has given millions of dollars in recent years to the Heritage Foundation, Tax Foundation (*) and FreedomWorks. A cartoon on FreedomWorks’ website shows the grim reaper, with an IRS briefcase in one hand and a scythe in the other, stalking a businessman at a bus stop.

The estate tax is now on life support. Annual revenues from the estate and gift taxes as a proportion of household wealth in the country have fallen more than 80% since the early 1970s, according to economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez. (**)

Barring a major shift in tax policy, the number of self-perpetuating Mars, Scripps or Mellon-style dynasties will likely multiply and gain dominion over ever more areas of American life. Even the humdrum corners of capitalism are spawning intergenerational windfalls. ProPublica’s tax data shows family fortunes flowing to heirs of the founders of Public Storage, Family Dollar and even the company behind the microwaveable turnovers known as Hot Pockets.

For a brief moment this fall, it looked like the tide might finally turn against the ultrarich. Dynastic wealth faced a real threat for the first time in years. Congress was considering a special tax on billionaires, and expanding the estate tax and clamping down on the trusts that super wealthy families use to avoid the tax.

Elon Musk, then the world’s richest man, complained to his 61 million Twitter followers: “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.”

Adding ammunition to the debate was the publication, once again, of the private tax information of the wealthiest Americans. ProPublica reported that Musk didn’t pay any income tax in a recent year. Financier George Soros paid zero federal income taxes three years running. And Amazon’s Jeff Bezos reported so little income one year that he qualified for a child tax credit, the tax records show.

But they needn’t have worried. The very same groups that fought the estate tax in the 1990s had never disbanded. With names like the Family Business Estate Tax Coalition, they mobilized to fight the proposals targeting dynastic wealth. A real estate company hired a former top aide to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a crucial swing vote on the bill, to lobby against the changes. And the old arguments were dusted off. Hard working families would have to sell their farms and businesses.

Even the American Horse Council cantered in: horse farms would be paved over for Walmarts, a lobbyist warned.

Just weeks after they were introduced, the tax proposals targeting dynastic wealth were gone, as dead as a fox eviscerated by hounds.

[snip][end]

(*) I believe you just quoted the Scaife family's supported website. Well done.
(**) Those are the co-authors of the Piketty paper it seems you still have neither read nor understood.

Claiming that that article is intended to show tax evasion was worse in the 50s (or any other decade) than today, rather than focusing on how they're doing all the same shit today, but worse and with better organized lobbying effort, is totally misreading the article. Assuming one read it at all.

[ProfX]

Still lots of hiding. See Propublica article.

That assumes he actually read it, or was capable of comprehending it.

Yeah, I loved that line from Fish Called Wanda, also. I often repeat it in class.

BTW, global billionaires plus are currently hiding around $21 TRILLION in offshore tax havens.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... ax-havens/

Not that I'm saying we could or should, but that amount of hidden wealth could pay off the entire U.S. debt. Not deficit: total debt. (Those are not all U.S. citizens, so I'm not even saying there would be any right - it's just a hypothetical.)

Tell me again more wealth isn't being hidden in the 21st century. Bull phreaking shit.

[Bludogdem]

In fact, all one needs to do is read the article, with full reading comprehension of course, to see that it argues the wealthy families and heirs are using many of the same strategies throughout the decades, and are merely doing the same thing today, but more effectively.

I guess one might skip over the ending of the article:

[from the above]

Despite the settlement and a hefty state inheritance tax bill, there still was plenty of money for Scaife’s anti-tax causes. Even from the grave, Scaife’s hand continues to influence the debate over how much America will tax the wealthy. He donated more than $736 million to two charities, one of which has given millions of dollars in recent years to the Heritage Foundation, Tax Foundation (*) and FreedomWorks. A cartoon on FreedomWorks’ website shows the grim reaper, with an IRS briefcase in one hand and a scythe in the other, stalking a businessman at a bus stop.

The estate tax is now on life support. Annual revenues from the estate and gift taxes as a proportion of household wealth in the country have fallen more than 80% since the early 1970s, according to economists Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez. (**)

Barring a major shift in tax policy, the number of self-perpetuating Mars, Scripps or Mellon-style dynasties will likely multiply and gain dominion over ever more areas of American life. Even the humdrum corners of capitalism are spawning intergenerational windfalls. ProPublica’s tax data shows family fortunes flowing to heirs of the founders of Public Storage, Family Dollar and even the company behind the microwaveable turnovers known as Hot Pockets.

For a brief moment this fall, it looked like the tide might finally turn against the ultrarich. Dynastic wealth faced a real threat for the first time in years. Congress was considering a special tax on billionaires, and expanding the estate tax and clamping down on the trusts that super wealthy families use to avoid the tax.

Elon Musk, then the world’s richest man, complained to his 61 million Twitter followers: “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.”

Adding ammunition to the debate was the publication, once again, of the private tax information of the wealthiest Americans. ProPublica reported that Musk didn’t pay any income tax in a recent year. Financier George Soros paid zero federal income taxes three years running. And Amazon’s Jeff Bezos reported so little income one year that he qualified for a child tax credit, the tax records show.

But they needn’t have worried. The very same groups that fought the estate tax in the 1990s had never disbanded. With names like the Family Business Estate Tax Coalition, they mobilized to fight the proposals targeting dynastic wealth. A real estate company hired a former top aide to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a crucial swing vote on the bill, to lobby against the changes. And the old arguments were dusted off. Hard working families would have to sell their farms and businesses.

Even the American Horse Council cantered in: horse farms would be paved over for Walmarts, a lobbyist warned.

Just weeks after they were introduced, the tax proposals targeting dynastic wealth were gone, as dead as a fox eviscerated by hounds.

[snip][end]

(*) I believe you just quoted the Scaife family's supported website. Well done.
(**) Those are the co-authors of the Piketty paper it seems you still have neither read nor understood.

Claiming that that article is intended to show tax evasion was worse in the 50s (or any other decade) than today, rather than focusing on how they're doing all the same shit today, but worse and with better organized lobbying effort, is totally misreading the article. Assuming one read it at all.

Now you’re pulling a Gounion and distorting. What a shame. My point is simply that fond references to the 50’s 90% tax rate are flawed. The rich didn’t pay those rates. I’ve provided sufficient sources to show they paid an effective tax rate not to far above what they pay today. I obviously understand these things far better, as I can extrapolate from these sources what the 50’s tax playing field really was. And it wasn’t 90%.

And I hope you’re at least smart enough to understand that if ProPublica says they have data from 2006 on and that Musk didn’t pay income tax in 2018 that means he did pay income taxes in all the other years.

[Bludogdem]

That assumes he actually read it, or was capable of comprehending it.

Yeah, I loved that line from Fish Called Wanda, also. I often repeat it in class.

BTW, global billionaires plus are currently hiding around $21 TRILLION in offshore tax havens.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... ax-havens/

Not that I'm saying we could or should, but that amount of hidden wealth could pay off the entire U.S. debt. Not deficit: total debt. (Those are not all U.S. citizens, so I'm not even saying there would be any right - it's just a hypothetical.)

Tell me again more wealth isn't being hidden in the 21st century. Bull phreaking shit.

Once the money has been taxed you can invest it pretty much anywhere you want.

[carmenjonze]

Once the money has been taxed you can invest it pretty much anywhere you want.

Apartheid cannot be reformed. It must be eliminated.

[Libertas]

That assumes he actually read it, or was capable of comprehending it.

Yeah, I loved that line from Fish Called Wanda, also. I often repeat it in class.

BTW, global billionaires plus are currently hiding around $21 TRILLION in offshore tax havens.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... ax-havens/

Not that I'm saying we could or should, but that amount of hidden wealth could pay off the entire U.S. debt. Not deficit: total debt. (Those are not all U.S. citizens, so I'm not even saying there would be any right - it's just a hypothetical.)

Tell me again more wealth isn't being hidden in the 21st century. Bull phreaking shit.

What line from Wanda?

[ProfX]

The one GoU quoted earlier.

Wanda: But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?
Otto: [superior smile] Apes don't read philosophy.
Wanda: Yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it! Now let me correct you on a couple things, okay? Aristotle was not Belgian! The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself!" And the London Underground is not a political movement! Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked 'em up,

[gounion]

Now you’re pulling a Gounion and distorting. What a shame. My point is simply that fond references to the 50’s 90% tax rate are flawed. The rich didn’t pay those rates. I’ve provided sufficient sources to show they paid an effective tax rate not to far above what they pay today. I obviously understand these things far better, as I can extrapolate from these sources what the 50’s tax playing field really was. And it wasn’t 90%.

And I hope you’re at least smart enough to understand that if ProPublica says they have data from 2006 on and that Musk didn’t pay income tax in 2018 that means he did pay income taxes in all the other years.

His effective rate in 2018 was ZERO.

So I paid more in income taxes than Elon Musk in 2018. There's something wrong with that.

Because he obviously did have income in 2018.

[Glennfs]

Actually, while Alcoa was the main producer of aluminum before the war, post-war several companies arose, including Reynolds and Kaiser.

Unionization and the growth of the middle class, which led to new fortunes in housing, and rampant consumerism, and the birth of the advertising age. The boom in retail sales.

The maturity and growth of the military industrial complex and the entire aviation industry. With jet travel, the airline industry came of age and expanded greatly. The jet engine revolutionized the nation.

The Highway Act of 1956 and the Interstate Highway System? That changed our nation so damned much and birthed whole new industries. Trucking companies. Holiday Inn and hotel chains. Entire new Leisure industries. Las Vegas. The travel industry. The birth of the suburbs.

The idea of food franchising was born in the fifties and transformed the nation. Ever hear of McDonalds? Whataburger? Burger King? Jack-in-the-Box? Sonic? Kentucky Fried Chicken? Church's Chicken? Pizza Hut? Shakey's? Denny's? IHOP? Pancake House? Waffle House? Perkins?

Television and electronics. The entire TV industry, both manufacturing and programming matured in the fifties. TV sports come of age.

Huge discoveries and advancements in medicine and health care.

Also, in the fifties, small business was really king in communities. Chains and big stores like Sears were there, but MOST people shopped in local businesses.

Need I go on?

Mom and pop's hired nobody and the few they did hire had no benefits and were paid very little. The nostalgic notions around mom and pop's paints a picture that just isn't true.

As for the unionization of the 50s well that is true.....except there was no competition from any foreign government and the rest of the world was rebuilding from WWII. Also the USA work force was limited to white men only.

The interstate highway system was paid for by federal bonds which in turn were paid for by an increase in gas taxes. Plus states were expected to bear up to 70pct of the costs. Compare that to how it would be proposed today. Hey we are going to increase spending by 5T but tell it it is only 2T and it isn't going to cost you a dime.

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/hi ... ay_Act.htm

[ProfX]

Why the Three Biggest Economic Lessons Were Forgotten
https://robertreich.org/post/76339971895

Why has America forgotten the three most important economic lessons we learned in the thirty years following World War II?

Before I answer that question, let me remind you what those lessons were:

First, America’s real job creators are consumers, whose rising wages generate jobs and growth. If average people don’t have decent wages there can be no real recovery and no sustained growth.

In those years, business boomed because American workers were getting raises, and had enough purchasing power to buy what expanding businesses had to offer. Strong labor unions ensured American workers got a fair share of the economy’s gains. It was a virtuous cycle.

Second, the rich do better with a smaller share of a rapidly-growing economy than they do with a large share of an economy that’s barely growing at all.

Between 1946 and 1974, the economy grew faster than it’s grown since, on average, because the nation was creating the largest middle class in history. The overall size of the economy doubled, as did the earnings of almost everyone. CEOs rarely took home more than forty times the average worker’s wage, yet were riding high.

Third, higher taxes on the wealthy to finance public investments – better roads, bridges, public transportation, basic research, world-class K-12 education, and affordable higher education – improve the future productivity of America. All of us gain from these investments, including the wealthy.


In those years, the top marginal tax rate on America’s highest earners never fell below 70 percent. Under Republican President Dwight Eisenhower the tax rate was 91 percent. Combined with tax revenues from a growing middle class, these were enough to build the Interstate Highway system, dramatically expand public higher education, and make American public education the envy of the world.

We learned, in other words, that broadly-shared prosperity isn’t just compatible with a healthy economy that benefits everyone – it’s essential to it.

But then we forgot these lessons. For the last three decades the American economy has continued to grow but most peoples’ earnings have gone nowhere. Since the start of the recovery in 2009, 95 percent of the gains have gone to the top 1 percent.

What happened?

For starters, too many of us bought the snake oil of “supply-side” economics, which said big corporations and the wealthy are the job creators – and if we cut their taxes the benefits will trickle down to everyone else. Of course, nothing trickled down.

Meanwhile, big corporations were allowed to bust labor unions, whose membership dropped from over a third of all private-sector workers in the 1950s to under 7 percent today.

Our roads, bridges, and public-transit systems were allowed to crumble under the weight of deferred maintenance. Our public schools deteriorated. And public higher education became so starved for funds that tuition rose to make up for shortfalls, making college unaffordable to many working families.

And Wall Street was deregulated – creating a casino capitalism that caused a near meltdown of the economy six years ago and continues to burden millions of homeowners. CEOs began taking home 300 times the earnings of the average worker.

Part of the reason for this extraordinary U-turn had to do with politics. As income and wealth concentrated at the top, so did political power. The captains of industry and of Wall Street knew what was happening, and some played leading roles in this transformation.

But why didn’t they remember the lessons learned in the thirty years after World War II – that widely-shared prosperity is good for everyone, including them?

[snip][end]

[ProfX]

From those rabid leftists at Fast Company:

How U.S. taxes on the wealthy have taken a 70-year slide away from progressive taxation
A new push by Democrats to increase taxes on the wealthy would only make a small dent in the overall trend.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90678054/ho ... e-taxation

In 1950, when looking at all federal, state, and local taxes, the top 0.01% of earners paid almost 70% of their income in taxes. In the postwar decades, corporate profits—the main source of income for the rich—were subject to an effective corporate tax rate of 50%. Meanwhile, the rich were subject to high tax rates on wages, dividends, interest, and income from partnerships.

The progressivity of the U.S. tax system has dramatically declined over the past seven decades. The upshot is that, for most income levels, the U.S. tax system now resembles a flat tax that becomes regressive at the very top end, meaning the super-rich pay proportionately less. Today, virtually all income groups pay roughly 28% of their income in taxes—except for the 400 richest Americans, who each own more than $2 billion in wealth today and pay around 25% in taxes.

[snip][end]

Gabriel Zucman is an associate professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley and Emmanuel Saez is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

If you're gonna cite Zucman, Saez, and Piketty, might want to be honest about what they actually say. But maybe it's better to complain about how the Scaife family has been hiding its fortune while citing Tax Foundation, the RW anti-progressive tax org that their family funds, largely to shape policy so as to ... hide its fortune.

There is a really great table on this page I'd like to copy and paste but it's interactive so I can't. Suffice to say, look at it.

BTW, nobody's yet mentioned the corporate tax rate, but I will.



Corporations are also paying a much lower tax rate than they did decades ago. I may not be a math whiz, but I can see a decline from '68.

Notice: once again, highest during what Piketty, Reich, Krugman, et al. call The Great Compression.

[gounion]

Mom and pop's hired nobody and the few they did hire had no benefits and were paid very little. The nostalgic notions around mom and pop's paints a picture that just isn't true.

Yes they did. The local grocery stores hired people. The clothing stores hired people. Plus minimum wage back then was worth far more than today's minimum wage.

As for the unionization of the 50s well that is true.....except there was no competition from any foreign government and the rest of the world was rebuilding from WWII. Also the USA work force was limited to white men only.

Not in the fifties. Except in the south, the unionized workkplaces of the fifties were integrated to a large degree, at least at the entry level, there was no way for blacks to move up at the time. And companies paid for their own factories - they didn't demand that Uncle Sugar give it to them for free.

The interstate highway system was paid for by federal bonds which in turn were paid for by an increase in gas taxes. Plus states were expected to bear up to 70pct of the costs. Compare that to how it would be proposed today. Hey we are going to increase spending by 5T but tell it it is only 2T and it isn't going to cost you a dime.

https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/hi ... ay_Act.htm

I think you're just wanting to be a contrarian. You aren't really making a point at all.