Musk loves to sneer at working-class people who rely on food stamps or unemployment benefits, claiming they’re lazy or entitled. But what’s more entitled than using regulatory credits to boost your company’s stock price and then leveraging that stock for loans to keep your cash flow steady? The hypocrisy gets even more grotesque when you look at Musk’s role in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency—the dystopian fever dream where he’s now helping Trump dismantle social programs under the guise of “cutting waste.” While he’s ensuring billionaires like himself keep their tax breaks and loopholes, he’s working to slash food assistance, disability benefits, and Social Security. The plan is clear: If you’re rich, the government will help you get richer. If you’re poor, you’re on your own.
Meanwhile, Musk has strategically positioned himself to undermine public infrastructure alternatives to his products. Musk has started targeting public transit and infrastructure projects, claiming they are bloated and inefficient—while his own half-baked ideas, like the Las Vegas “Loop” (a glorified tunnel for Teslas), receive public subsidies and fizzle out into tech-world vaporware. He is claiming that government spending on social good is a waste, while positioning himself as the one true visionary who should receive those taxpayer dollars instead.
Here’s how Tesla’s legalized scam works: Under California’s Zero Emission Vehicle, or ZEV, mandate and the federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards, carmakers are required to meet emissions targets. If they don’t, they have to buy carbon credits from companies that produce cleaner vehicles. Tesla, which only sells electric cars, racks up a surplus of these credits and sells them to gas-guzzling automakers that don’t want to invest in real change.
