Originally Posted by
Marcus_Ti
Elon can be an utter twit....but he is a razor-sharp-car-salesman, and I mean that in the slightly pejorative sense of "car salesman". The reason he can have those high profit margins, is in no small part because (we) taxpayers are literally paying it. His Tesla facilities have gotten massive millions- and billions-dollar tax breaks from cities and counties and states and the federal government--because he's a "job creator". Specifically things like property taxes--that pay specifically for things like firefighters and roads and so on....when the property tax pool is dry and there's no money to pay for paving roads, that is why....BTW can say the same thing about churches too, since they and their lands are tax-exempt; which causes massive problems in places like Utah where 50% of city land is Mormon Church property.
Don't get me wrong...Tesla's EV project is a cool bit of engineering and better for the planet.
I don’t know the numbers but oil subsidies for job creation are significant too.
and many of the car manufacturers went bankrupt or got bailed out by the tax payers in their history.
I guess tax breaks is mandatory to be able to successfully start an automobile company these days.