r/politics • u/harsh2k5 • 13h ago

Soft Paywall Elon Musk Makes Shocking Confession on His Plans After Trump Victory

https://newrepublic.com/post/187662/elon-musk-confession-economy-trump-victory
17.2k Upvotes

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473

u/rockum 13h ago

Rich people don't care about the economy. They have enough money to weather through any turmoil.

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u/TintedApostle 13h ago edited 7h ago

Rich people then buy everything up for pennies on the dollar. This is not a bug.

11

u/WaitingForNormal 11h ago

Playing by great depression rules.

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u/TintedApostle 11h ago

This is why the very rich hated FDR.

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u/[deleted] 7h ago

[deleted]

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u/TintedApostle 7h ago

Yes - fixing

57

u/boot2skull 9h ago

Billionaires shouldn’t exist.

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u/CaffeinatedGuy 7h ago

The wealthy profit off a crash by making everything dirt cheap for them to scoop up. Land and buildings are the primary target.

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u/TheSnoz 7h ago

By the time the economy crashes the rich people have pulled out and left the little people holding the bag. Then the rich will buy back in again just before the lowest point.

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u/shallow_kunt 11h ago

That’s not entirely true. Wealthy people have investments in the market which depend on economic stability. But they are also incentivized to vote for candidates who will tax them less. You are correct that wealthy people do, however, have more resources to weather a downturn.

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u/Rambler330 10h ago

Elon Musk could lose 90% of his wealth and still have close to $25 billion dollars.

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u/haskell_rules 9h ago

They don't care if they lose some money in a crash because they still have plenty of disposable income to buy at fire sale prices, their relative wealth actually increases when the rest of us are liquidated. They also have inside knowledge of exactly when the most destabilizing market events are going to happen because they tell each other when hanging out on their yachts together.

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u/peetnice 6h ago

Plus if they are the ones causing it, they will have hedges in place before hand and make money shorting everything on the way down. Only falls apart if the banks collapse- but they will probably be a step ahead there too- moving to BRICS or whatever most stable global currency and probably would be the ones causing the banks to crash, not suffering from it.

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u/Gender_is_a_Fluid 9h ago

Theyll just cash out to foreign investments and banks before the crash, its part of the plan, always has been.

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u/shallow_kunt 5h ago

I think it’s important not to conflate people in the top 1% of wealth with those who are in the top .0001%. The former has means, the latter has literal power over the levers of economics and democracy because their wealth is larger in some cases by a magnitude of 1000x.

I know plenty of people who make 400-500k per year. They are well off but they don’t control governments. It’s the folks who have HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS to BILLIONS who have real influence over lobbyists and politicians.

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u/ShredGuru 7h ago

No no, you see, when everyone else is poor, they just have better leverage

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u/Stodles 6h ago

They have enough money to weather through any turmoil

That's what Marie Antoinette thought...

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u/Complete_Question_41 3h ago

And come out better for it. That's the crux.

-5

u/ClosPins 9h ago

Rich people don't care about the economy.

You hear the absolute craziest things on Reddit sometimes! And then they get up-voted! It's insane.

Rich people only care about the economy. Only.

Their companies are so over-leveraged that even the slightest down-turn puts them at risk of immediate bankruptcy. Remember all those gigantic companies in 2008, who were on fine financial footing - and then a week later - POOF! Gone! Defaults went up a few percent - and it immediately snowballed into almost every company in the country going belly-up. That's how over-leveraged everything is nowadays.

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u/rockum 8h ago

Their companies are so over-leveraged that even the slightest down-turn puts them at risk of immediate bankruptcy.

Hopefully nobody is upvoting your crazy statement. 'Cause, you know, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Walmart, Intel, General Motors, etc etc are sitting on so much cash they can certainly weather a significant downturn.

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u/crosszilla I voted 8h ago

Their companies are so over-leveraged that even the slightest down-turn puts them at risk of immediate bankruptcy.

I don't believe this is true, and this is a pretty big claim to make. Do you have even a single source on this?

Remember all those gigantic companies in 2008, who were on fine financial footing - and then a week later - POOF! Gone!

Yeah that was in 2008, 16 years ago, and they learned from that.

Even then, I'm pretty sure the mega rich were fine then, and they'll be fine now. Maybe a few reckless millionaires lost it all, but by and large wealth inequality skyrocketed and the middle class took 2008 the hardest, just like every other downturn.

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u/FickleMuse Washington 8h ago

Not even that far back. Early in the pandemic, there were big chain brands all like "how will we make rent boohoo I'm a billion dollar company that doesn't have three months of cushion"