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Tag: Elon Musk

The Chevrolet Bolt EV electric car is unveiled at CES International Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016, in Las Vegas.

Requiem For the Electric Car: Titanic Subsidies, Miniscule Sales

We are all forced, at gunpoint, to lavishly subsidize the manufacture and sale of electric cars, which tend to be a boutique product for very rich people. Every step of production and sale is juiced with subsidies. No one is selling electric cars for their actual market price, and even with all that subsidy sugar to help the medicine go down, hardly anyone is interested in buying them. It’s one of the biggest forced transfers of wealth from middle-income taxpayers to rich people ever conceived.

Elon Musk (Scott Olson / Getty)

Elon Musk, SpaceX Launch Era of Space Militarization

The December 21 reusable recovery of a SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has improved the economics of commercial activity in space, but it has fundamentally changed the military balance of power and, perhaps inadvertently, launched the era of space militarization.

LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images

Twitter Braces For Company-Wide Layoffs Under New CEO

Company co-founder Jack Dorsey, recently installed as CEO, has promised “big changes” for Twitter, and “has been vocal about the need to shake things up at the company, as user growth and engagement has stalled and the company’s stock has been battered,” according to Business Insider. Dorsey described the company’s flagging performance as “unacceptable” and promised to “ensure more disciplined execution” in a June conference call.

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Silicon Valley Is Headed for Disaster, and No One Can Save It

As much as global financial concerns are going to hit tech companies harder than other sorts of enterprise, so too will their own lack of ambition. The ugly truth is that Silicon Valley has largely given up trying to fix big problems and has retreated into photo-sharing apps and productivity tools.

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Tesla Receives 30% of Cal Tax Credits for Promising 4500 Jobs

The Silicon Valley Business Journal is reporting that “Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors is on track to win $15 million in new tax breaks as part of the final round of this year’s California Competes tax credit.” According to Governor Brown’s GO-Biz website, tax credits are awarded to businesses that come or stay and grow in California. With much of his $13.3 billion net worth coming from tax subsidies, Musk may celebrate his latest gift of “government cheese” from Reno, where Tesla’s highly-subsidized $5 billion giga-factory is being built.