Amid Elon Musk’s whirlwind campaign to cut thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in government services in the name of efficiency, a bombshell report Wednesday revealed a staggering amount of taxpayer cash that goes directly to him.
The richest man in the world is one of the biggest earners paid from public money, the Washington Post found.
A deep dive into government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits found the South African billionaire has reaped $38 billion dollars of government cash.
The Post reported the payments started more than 20 years ago, as Musk secured a low-interest loan from the Energy Department as CEO of the then-struggling Tesla. That department is one of many now hit by mass layoffs and cuts led by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The Post spoke to unnamed sources from inside the government to back up its story.
Almost two-thirds of the cash came in the past five years, according to the report. Just last year, at least $6.3 billion was committed to Musk’s companies. They included cash to build a Tesla factory and NASA contracts to his company SpaceX to aid the moon program.
“The total amount is probably larger: This analysis includes only publicly available contracts, omitting classified defense and intelligence work for the federal government,” the Post reported.
It went on, “The Post found nearly a dozen other local grants, reimbursements and tax credits where the specific amount of money is not public.”
The report also found 52 contracts with seven government agencies that are set to pay another $111.8 billion over the next few years. All seven agencies have come under DOGE’s microscope.
While Musk is not a paid government employee, he was a massive funder of now-President Donald Trump’s election campaign and is now a central part of his advisory team. He also heads DOGE, which he claims will slash trillions of dollars in government waste.
Musks’s part in the Trump administration has raised many red flags among onlookers about major conflicts of interest.
“Not every entrepreneur at this scale has been this dependent on federal money — certainly not Nvidia, not Microsoft, nor Amazon, nor Meta,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management.
Corpos always use socialism to their full advantage, and then they privatize their resulting profits. This is Business 101 now, in the US at least.
The shocking part is that the rich have been able to convince so many that they take no corporate handouts, or at least that they don’t rely on them, so that some people genuinely believe you can get that rich by hard work alone.
The reality is, the only way to get that rich (aside from starting as a nepo-baby, which so often is the case) is by stealing from others. Whether that theft is wage theft or taking corporate handouts (=taxpayer dollars) without paying equally or more back into the system – it’s all still theft.
We already know that dude is the biggest govy welfare queen. This is about directing as much funding to himself as possible while simultaneously destroying the US.
Elon Musk sucks the government teat at level of 525 000 average welfare receipients (6.3B/yr divided by $1000/mo for an average welfare recipient). Hey Republicans, the King of Welfare Queens is right in front of you!
Socialism for billionaires, not for regular citizens…
“Every billion saved is a billion for me” - Musk
I believe it is entirely true.
But can you really call this a bombshell? Didn’t everyone already know this? A bombshell should be shocking, shattering, or impactful. This is like dropping a match into a forest fire.
I dunno. $38 billion buys a lot of bomb shells.
For context, the GDP for the entire state of Vermont is $40 billion. Not tax revenue, either - GDP. So imagine a state’s entire economic profit for a year being paid to just one person… and that person then proceeds to use the money to overthrow our government.
So yeah, dunno about you, but it certainly made my head explode when I read it.
I’m sure he’ll feel entitled to any “savings” he finds.
Bombshell suggests shocking. I’m bored.
Cool, can I have $228 then?
Because that’s how much you’ve given (on average) to Musk in taxes thus far over the years. It’s going to go up to about $600 when you file for 2025, because that phat $38 billion is set to grow to $117 billion. I mean, if you don’t mind giving the world’s richest man a couple of hundred bucks, why not your friendly neighborhood Lemming Man?
My venmo is [email protected]
These articles are trash.
There’s obviously a lot to hate about Musk, but Nasa says we want someone to build this, SpaceX bids for a contract and wins. This isn’t welfare queen stuff.
SpaceX is saving the government 10s of billions of dollars compared to if anyone else was doing it as they can bid lower due to their reusable first stages.
Also that DOE loan Tesla got, paid back in full early. Wanna talk about auto oem bailouts (not loans) that weren’t paid back?
Also a lot of money that comes from building a factory isn’t actually cash in hand, it’s tax benefits. If you build this billion dollar factory we’ll charge you less property tax for 20 years if you employ 15,000 people in 5 years kinda thing. It’s less revenue but it’s not money out of hand.
