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Comment by submeta | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand this: "Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies"

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...

Sounds like money better spent to me than the 5 trillion dollars in global fossil fuel subsidies in 2015, or 500 billion just in the US[1]

That 5 billion number for Musk I think is a grand total of all subsidies, spanning all time.

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16...

The "subsidies" that your link talks about seem to be mostly about externalities. Ignoring for a second that it seems extremely hand-wavey, the biggest "subsidy" is "46%, broader vehicle externalities", which would apply to Tesla as well?

I don't have to click any like to know that the US did not spend $5t on fossil fuel subsidies. I'm pretty sure the US only spent like $5t total in 2015, and most of that is in medicare and social security.

That $5 trillion figure isn't actually spending at all. It's entirely an invented figure, meant to supposedly cover all estimated environment damage for example. Really what it's meant to do, is be massive enough to enable people to throw it around when arguing in favor of obliterating the fossil fuel industry.

Why does the invented aspect matter? Because it's comical. It leads to the premise that over just the next 10 years, the subsidies are a likely cumulative ... $56 trillion or so (about 20%-25% of all wealth on earth). Aka, greater than the combined profit of every oil company in world history going back ~140 years.

Imagine you ran a small, successful business. Imagine, as part of that business you killed someone every year.

Now, we could look at your tax returns and see that you have a successful business. Or we could "invent" some figure to represent the lives you ended.

Is it really crazy to imagine that the total we invent would be higher than your yearly, or even total profits?

Just scale that up to the point that you're starting wars, causing a crime epidemic with lead poisoning, overheating the planet, etc.

"GLOBAL fossil fuel subsidies"

I'm not sure in what other case it's considered appropriate to lump all the subsidies together in a total just because one person happens to be involved in each. On a case by case basis, each company is fairly large, and possibly not even unusual in the amount of subsidies it gets. Large companies often get lots of subsidies, because they target them, strategically. In this respect, Tesla is no different than GM or Ford, SpaceX is no different than Boeing, and Solar City is no different than General Electric. Each of those non-musk companies were in the top five of total Federal, State and local subsidies recently[1].

Calling out Musk's companies as exceptional in this regard makes for a nice narrative, but isn't necessarily supported by the facts.

1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/03/17/t...

Most big companies do get some form of subsidies. Tesla is nearly 30,000 jobs in the US alone. 5 Billions is not much for such a big company.

It's not even 5 billion for Tesla, it's 5 billion for Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City combined. Three large companies in what I would assume are some of the most subsidized industries in the U.S. (automotive, aerospace and power utilities).

Wow, this is impressive.

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