>> Elon Musk has some strong feelings about whether Congress should pass another stimulus
bill in order to provide economic relief to both companies and to average Americans. And
so through a Twitter thread he argued that, another government stimulus package is not
in the best interests of the people imo.
Fascinating, okay, that's great, so he continues, I wanna be fair. I'm gonna give you all of
the tweets in this thread, so all the Elon Musk stands don't have a temper tantrum with
me. He also says as a reminder, I'm in favor of universal basic income. Goal of government
should be to maximize the happiness of the people.
Giving each person money allows them to decide what meets their needs, rather than the blunt
tool of legislation, which creates self-serving special Special interests. He also says these
are jammed to gills with special interest earmarks. It's fascinating that he's complaining
about that. He also says if we do a stimulus at all, it should just be direct payments
to consumers.
Now look, this is a small thing, but I have to mention, that his use of the word consumers
is important when you wanna understand why people like him and why a lot of these Silicon
Valley CEOs love the idea of universal basic income. Because they see the working class
as consumers.
And in order for them to stay afloat, consumers need money, but at the same time, they often
also advocate for guarding the social safety net, right? So Medicaid for instance or Social
Security, and they wanna simplify everything by maybe handing everybody $1,000 a month
or whatever the number is.
With the hope that that'll keep people satisfied enough, so they don't riot. But anyway, let
me tell you why I have a problem with this argument, because the way that he has presented
it, might seem awesome on the surface. But in reality these stimulus bills aren't just
about giving money to corporations or giving money to average citizens.
We were clear in our criticisms about previous stimulus bills. I did not like the fact that
there was a lack of transparency when it came to the $500 billion that Steve Mnuchin could
hand out to all his corporate buddies. I do not agree with the Federal Reserve printing
money and bailing out big banks, who then turn around and refuse refinancing to average
Americans who are looking to tap into lower interest rates.
So there's a lot of criticism to go around. But the stimulus bill actually provides funding
for all sorts of things that we desperately need, including funding for hospitals, funding
for desperately needed PPE's for these hospitals. Even the Republican draft for the upcoming
stimulus bill, provided some funding for mental health care and suicide prevention, which
is incredibly important right now,,considering how many people are suffering from anxiety,
depression and people have committed suicide in the middle of this pandemic, it's a serious
problem.
Also, it includes assistance for small businesses or at least, it's supposed to include relief
for small businesses. And that's important, because there are people who have spent their
entire lives building their small business whether it's a hair salon or a restaurant.
And they have been negatively impacted by this and they're likely to lose everything
unless Congress acts.
So to just simply say, I don't agree with the stimulus bill, I think it's all about
earmarks, I think is ridiculous, cuz that's not really the case. But if you have nuanced
criticisms, I would love to hear it. >> So the folks who say, small government
is what we need, really?
I mean, that's so unsophisticated small government for what, what's the project? So if you say,
you know who's for small government, progressives who want to defund the police, right, that
is smaller government. Progressives are in favor of smaller government when because we
don't want endless wars in the Middle East or all over the world.
What is the job at hand? So if we're trying to rebuild the energy infrastructure of this
country, then we need a big government or when Eisenhower both in World War II and rebuild
and building the highway system in this country needed big government. Sometimes you need
big government, sometimes you need small government.
And what you always need is a brain to figure out which is which. So these simplistic ways
of looking at it are unsophisticated, to say the least, and it's disappointing to see Elon
Musk, who's very smart in other ways, be this politically obtuse, let alone hypocritical.
So when he says in that tweet, a legislation is a blunt district instrument.
Universal basic income would also need to be legislation. So that doesn't make any sense
at all, the question is what should be in the legislation? So are we concern about special
interest? There's literally no one in the country who's more worried about special interest
than we are. I start a whole pact called the wolf pact to get money out of politics, cuz
these guys are picking us apart.
And all the politician serve it, but that doesn't mean you should never pass any legislation
to help Americans. Please, for God's sake, use your brain. Now, let's get to his hypocrisy.
>> So, of course, he's a hypocrite, because he's received so much in government stimulus
in order to launch his businesses, his multiple businesses.
But there was a story out of Buffalo, New York that really caught my attention. I wanna
share the details of it with you, it was written in 2019. And the headline is Tesla's Buffalo
plant gate gets $884 million write-down. What does that mean? Well, it turns out that the
state of New York actually offered Tesla a giant amount of money to build its plant.
And then later that plant was appraised and let me give you the details on what the appraisal
indicated. New York State spent $958.6 million to build Tesla's solar panel factory in South
Buffalo and buy a big chunk of the equipment inside. Now, auditors are saying the building
and all that equipment is worth just under $75 million or just 8% of what the state put
into the RiverBend factory, but we're not done it gets worse.
In a series of contract revisions, the state dropped the provision included in earlier
agreements that mandated the creation of another 1,440 jobs at suppliers and service providers
effectively cutting the job impact from the state's $959 million investment in half. Hopes
that the project would spur the creation of a solar energy research hub in Buffalo and
Rochester also failed to pan out.
The agreement also failed to set any type of pay standards for the river bend jobs for
nearly $1 billion in taxpayer subsidies. It certainly would have been reasonable for the
state to insist that the factories jobs pay well. Maybe mandating that 80% of the positions
pay at least 33% above the area's median wage or around $59,000 a year.
Instead, Tesla's entry-level wage is around $16 an hour or around $33,000 a year. Oof,
sounds like a great investment, good job state of New York. I mean, just absolute garbage.
I have no interest hearing any political commentary from people like Elon Musk people. People
who have milked the system for their own advantage, and then they turn around in a moment of crisis
when people need economic relief to argue that maybe a stimulus bill doesn't make any
sense.
Maybe we can give the monkey some peanuts and they'll shut up and they won't complain
anymore. Because we need consumers of course, I just-
>> Yeah. >> I have more but go ahead Cenk.
>> So look, we did a fun poll on another TYT show Elon Musk, yes or no.
You can vote at tyt.com/polls/elon or you do just slash polls Elon and you'll get all
of them, there they are. So right now, no is winning 70-30, okay, I actually voted yes.
And so I think Elon Musk is a complicated, interesting character. I think that too many
people buttonhole him and and so I think he's wrong about this and I wanna be clear.
So New York made a major mistake in giving a billion, not a million, a billion dollars
to that project and it was money that was wasted. So that's big government that didn't
work. But the Federal Government gave less money to Tesla, but at the time that they
desperately needed it in 2008, and that did work.
So at that time they'd given Tesla $465 million and Tesla pay that loan back. The government
made interest on it, and it wound up helping create a car company that is getting off of
fossil fuels on the issue of subsidies and earmarks for special interests. Elon Musk,
who is a complicated and interesting person, deserves a tall glass of shut up juice after
taking billions of dollars in subsidies.
You don't get to talk about subsidies when it goes to other people. Now, I mean, if you
wanted to give full context in that tweet and say, by the way, I'm taking a billion
from New York, I've taken half a billion from the federal government. I paid some of it
back, I didn't, others were a disaster.
Sorry, taxpayers, I totally screwed you on that, I mean, I can't begin to tell you how
much I screwed you on that. Okay, but in this case, I think these particular subsidies are
wrong. Well, that's an interesting nuanced position that he would have. So because of
subsidies, man, I don't like the legislation.
Proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can be really smart in some areas and a total
moron in others. >> Elon Musk's, businesses have received a
total of $4.9 billion in government subsidies. So, Cenk, you mentioned the 465 million that
Tesla received from the Obama administration in 2009.
But overall, Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies
>> Look in the postgame, I want to give you guys even more context, cuz the federal government
has to spend a lot of money on promoting green energy. Did it work? I'm gonna give you the
numbers, the numbers are actually really interesting and a little surprising.
So I was surprised by them. So the post games for the members TYT.com/join or if you're
watching on YouTube, you just hit the Join button underneath. Make sure you get at least
a 499 level, so you can get the post games, cuz that's really important lesson for all
of us to learn.
It's not just about Elon Musk, it's about what the government can and can't do. So we'll
talk about it for the members.