Bernie Sanders Vs Private Space?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Flyaway

Flyaway

ACCESS: USAP
Senior Member
Joined
21 January 2015
Messages
10,695
Reaction score
12,364
Op-Ed by Bernie Sanders.

If we are going to send more humans to the Moon and eventually to Mars, will the goal be to benefit the people of the US and the world, or to make billionaires even richer?
Click to expand...
www.theguardian.com

Jeff Bezos is worth $160bn – yet Congress might bail out his space company | Bernie Sanders

If we are going to send more humans to the Moon and eventually to Mars, will the goal be to benefit the people of the US and the world, or to make billionaires even richer?
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Oh please. Billionaires will become richer. That's as certain as death and taxes. The asteroid belt and mining the moon will provide raw materials and proof of concept technology to do so.
 
He could just as easily go into space with his huge, undeserved salary, so he better shut up.
 
We need AI to mine-develop space for us during political distractions. Once all assigned a robotic share/basic-income...it won't matter what you call it.
 
Good on Bernie for highlighting the following:

At this moment, if you can believe it, Congress is considering legislation to provide a $10bn bailout to Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space company for a contract to build a lunar lander. This legislation is taking place after Blue Origin lost a competitive bid to SpaceX, Musk’s company.

Bezos is worth some $180bn. In a given year, he has paid nothing in federal income taxes. He is the owner of Amazon, which, in a given year, has also paid nothing in federal income taxes after making billions in profits. Bezos has enough money to own a $500m mega-yacht, a $23m mansion in Washington DC, a $175m estate in Beverly Hills and a $78m, 14-acre estate in Maui.

At a time when over half of the people in this country live paycheck to paycheck, when more than 70 million are uninsured or underinsured and when some 600,000 Americans are homeless, should we really be providing a multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailout for Bezos to fuel his space hobby? I don’t think so.
Click to expand...
and

In other words, the taxpayers of this country who made it possible for these private enterprises to go into space will get a 0% return on their investment.
Click to expand...

His final statement sums the argument up perfectly:

When we take that next giant leap into space let us do it to benefit all of humanity, not to turn a handful of billionaires into trillionaires.
Click to expand...
 
Mr. Sanders is apparently unaware of the guiding philosophy for the very wealthy: "There's no such thing as too much money."

Also, the odd confusion between private and government funded space programs. In the 1960s, the U.S. government financed the race to the moon and that money did come from taxes. But, after launching the "Just Books" Amazon years ago, no one was required to buy anything from Jeff Bezos. He lost money in the early years until finally convincing people that they deserved a discount on their books. Then he began selling everything else. The U.S. government has no money of its own. It is funded by taxes.
 
I don’t mind my taxes going to space. But Bezos’s lawsuits helped nothing.
 
Let face it
Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, what have they achieve?
Blue Origin handful suborbital flights, there launch rocket is in Limbo and it's engines are 7 year behind Schedule
Virgin launch Space ship one in 2003, now almost 20 years later, one flight with Branson on board to beat Bezos...

SpaceX on other hand, transformed the Space Flight in last 20 years (also Tesla for Car Industry)
150 launches, with in 2015 first ballistic return of First stage and 2018 the launch Falcon heavy...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0FZIwabctw


in 2007 a reporter ask Musk if he is afraid of competitions (Arianespace, ULA, Russians etc)
Musk replied "We have no serious competition..."
https://twitter.com/x/status/1517622711014494208
View: https://twitter.com/teslaownersSV/status/1517622711014494208


In 2022 TED interview in Gigatexas, Musk say "“I don't care about the economics at all.”
That say someone who became riches man on the planet ! (or he became the riches because he don't care about economics)

now to Bernie...
I my option he his a leftist Hypocrite, first Attacking Musk as Superrich, Demand that Musk has to pay his Tax.
what Musk did he payed $11 billion to IRS, only to sanders criticise Musk again that is Media Stunt..
Now is Bernie Sanders whine around that Musk could (and he will) reach the Moon and Mars bevor NASA.
This is absolute Hypocorism of worst kind by mr Sanders

The USA had 50 year time to bring a US Astronaut to Mars, they din't, Capitol Hill not care
There were several attempt, but congress murder them all...
Space Shuttle was slaughter by Congress with help of Walter Mondale
in end NASA cut down the Shuttle program to a contraption that was expensive to fly and killed 17 Astronauts and engineers
Today SLS is a job creation program of Senat, it must create job, not fly mission...
In Mean time Elon Musk SpaceX builds the biggest Rocket to rule them All...
 
So why doesn't Musk just buy out Bezos? $10bn is a quarter of what Musk wants to shell out for Twitter...
 
TomS said:
Hood said:
So why doesn't Musk just buy out Bezos? $10bn is a quarter of what Musk wants to shell out for Twitter...
Click to expand...

Why would Bezos sell?
Click to expand...
Dunno, for $10bn sweet sweet dollar bills maybe? I mean he wants the state to cough up that dough rather than finding it from his own pocket so he obviously can't see much future in it to keep his shareholders happy can he?
 
Hood said:
TomS said:
Hood said:
So why doesn't Musk just buy out Bezos? $10bn is a quarter of what Musk wants to shell out for Twitter...
Click to expand...

Why would Bezos sell?
Click to expand...
Dunno, for $10bn sweet sweet dollar bills maybe? I mean he wants the state to cough up that dough rather than finding it from his own pocket so he obviously can't see much future in it to keep his shareholders happy can he?
Click to expand...

There are no public shareholders in Blue Origin.

Bezos doesn't want that Congressional plus-up because he needs the cash, he wants it because that's the money NASA would use to add a second source for a lunar lander. Bezos could pay for it on his own, but at that point it's not part of the NASA mission plan, he isn't getting any input from the agency, and whatever he built would not fly NASA missions. That's what Bezos wants -- to be doing real space exploration with a real space agency. The problem is, he has apparently hired the wrong people to make that happen.
 
Last edited:
Michel Van said:
Let face it
Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, what have they achieve?
Blue Origin handful suborbital flights, there launch rocket is in Limbo and it's engines are 7 year behind Schedule
Virgin launch Space ship one in 2003, now almost 20 years later, one flight with Branson on board to beat Bezos...

SpaceX on other hand, transformed the Space Flight in last 20 years (also Tesla for Car Industry)
150 launches, with in 2015 first ballistic return of First stage and 2018 the launch Falcon heavy...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0FZIwabctw


in 2007 a reporter ask Musk if he is afraid of competitions (Arianespace, ULA, Russians etc)
Musk replied "We have no serious competition..."
https://twitter.com/x/status/1517622711014494208
View: https://twitter.com/teslaownersSV/status/1517622711014494208


In 2022 TED interview in Gigatexas, Musk say "“I don't care about the economics at all.”
That say someone who became riches man on the planet ! (or he became the riches because he don't care about economics)

now to Bernie...
I my option he his a leftist Hypocrite, first Attacking Musk as Superrich, Demand that Musk has to pay his Tax.
what Musk did he payed $11 billion to IRS, only to sanders criticise Musk again that is Media Stunt..
Now is Bernie Sanders whine around that Musk could (and he will) reach the Moon and Mars bevor NASA.
This is absolute Hypocorism of worst kind by mr Sanders

The USA had 50 year time to bring a US Astronaut to Mars, they din't, Capitol Hill not care
There were several attempt, but congress murder them all...
Space Shuttle was slaughter by Congress with help of Walter Mondale
in end NASA cut down the Shuttle program to a contraption that was expensive to fly and killed 17 Astronauts and engineers
Today SLS is a job creation program of Senat, it must create job, not fly mission...
In Mean time Elon Musk SpaceX builds the biggest Rocket to rule them All...
Click to expand...

Elon Musk is super rich. The U.S. government has to deal with homelessness and other domestic issues.
 
Michel Van said:
I my option he his a leftist Hypocrite, first Attacking Musk as Superrich, Demand that Musk has to pay his Tax.
...
This is absolute Hypocorism of worst kind by mr Sanders
Click to expand...
I think someone needs to take a deep breath and calm down.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
i have take deep breath and calm down now...
 
GTX said:
Michel Van said:
I my option he his a leftist Hypocrite, first Attacking Musk as Superrich, Demand that Musk has to pay his Tax.
...
This is absolute Hypocorism of worst kind by mr Sanders
Click to expand...
I think someone needs to take a deep breath and calm down and also learn the meaning of hypocrisy/hypocrite before throwing such words around lest they look foolish.
Click to expand...
Given that Bernie *is* in the top one percent of the top one percent with regards to wealth, "hypocrisy" is a relevant descriptor.

Musk has done a perfectly good job of explaining why his "tax rate" has seemed so low: his actual income is trivial. His wealth is not in the form of income, but stock. Stock isn't income until he sells it.
 
And as soon as he sells a lot of it, it turns worthless. Taxes can destroy wealth.

Which is why I don’t mind Bernie going after Bezos. What has he done? Nothing. Senator Warren needs to leave Musk alone. Here is an idea. Hit Bezos, Branson, Zuckerberg, and Gates with a 99% tax. That money goes to the poorest Americans to pay for Teslas. Cash if they can’t find charging stations.

Bezos, Gates and Zuckerberg quit playing God. You have a cash for clunkers plan. Musk is helped.

Now, if you raised taxes on Musk in a general fashion…half that goes to the military—think F-35…and the other half to…social security checks or whatever. Blah. That’s what Buffet’s for. He says he pays too little in taxes—so soak him and playboy Branson who left investors holding the bag.

My plan should be bipartisan. I am a centrist. Musk is one of the few billionaires who doesn’t remind me of that creep from the movie FOXCATCHER, so I say he should pay zero taxes. Let him put that money into Space X.

As far as his Twitter venture goes…I’ll second the words of Jett Black from COWBOY BEBOP:

“Don’t know and have no opinion.”
 
publiusr said:
And as soon as he sells a lot of it, it turns worthless. Taxes can destroy wealth.

Which is why I don’t mind Bernie going after Bezos. What has he done? Nothing. Senator Warren needs to leave Musk alone. Here is an idea. Hit Bezos, Branson, Zuckerberg, and Gates with a 99% tax.
Click to expand...

How about no. Apart from being unethical, that violates the equal protections clause. You can't pass laws or create taxes specifically for certain individuals just because you don;t like them. And the horrifying results of giving the government the power to tax at 99% should be obvious:
1: If you can tax the super-rich at 99%, then you can tax the rich at 99%. Then the well-off. Then the middle class.
2: If you try to tax the super rich at 99%, they will, as happened after FDRs ridiculous tax increases, simply find ways around it. You will create an industry of tax dodging. You will *incentivize* tax dodging. The only people who will end up paying anythign like those rates will be the unclever and the morally upright, whom you will quickly impoverish.

The US used to have max tax brackets over 90%. What happened when Kennedy and the Reagan dropped the tax rates drastically? Revenues stayed the same, then rose. because essentially nobody was paying those 90% rates anyway.

If you somehow got your way and Bezos, branson, etc. got hit with a 99% tax rate, how long before billionaires you *do* like pull up stakes and offshore? Because *you* may like them, but the next President/dictator to follow you may not. Best to skedaddle and take their goodies with them while the gettings good.
 
Dilandu said:
Hood said:
So why doesn't Musk just buy out Bezos? $10bn is a quarter of what Musk wants to shell out for Twitter...
Click to expand...
Because having an unpopular bumbling competitor (Bezos) is quite beneficial for SpaceX public image.
Click to expand...
And because Blue Origin is Bezos's baby... he probably doesn't *want* to sell his hobby away. And what does Blue Origin have that Musk would want to buy?
 
Dilandu said:
Orionblamblam said:
And what does Blue Origin have that Musk would want to buy?
Click to expand...

Well, Musk may be interested in first stage LH2/LOX engines.
Click to expand...

The BE-3? 110Klbf is nice, but it's relatively *tiny.* not really sure it's worth buying Blue Origin for, when SpaceX would do better to use the funds to develop their own tribal knowledge with their own engine development program. Buying BO would presumably bring all the people who developed the BE-3 (at least those still there), but integrating BO's tribal knowledge into SpaceX might not be feasible.
 
Locking this thread down as it touches on the political side too much and will end up spiralling out of control.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom