Especially if you take into consideration how much Musk has personally benefitte...

koreyb · on April 21, 2017

Here is a good breakdown of that $4.9bn number https://electrek.co/2015/06/02/complete-breakdown-of-the-4-9... Incentives for creating jobs & tax credits.

Not bad compared to the $12 billion cost for the GM bailout and $4 billion+/yr for oil & gas subsidies.

nojvek · on April 22, 2017

If you look at money invested, govt should have let GM go under the bus. Bailouts aren't a great long term fix. They just encourage shitty management

abalone · on April 21, 2017

And that's just direct subsidies! Don't forget that rockets, autonomous driving[1] and solar power[2] were developed by the government.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Renewable_Energy_Labo...

mason240 · on April 21, 2017

The idea that he personally used $593M, much less $4.9B worth of government services in 2016 is pretty silly.

He is far from being the sole owner of those companies.

csallen · on April 21, 2017

The idea isn't that he personally cost the government that much money in service fees. It's that, without those services, he could never have made his money in the first place.