Elon Musk, By far the richest man on Earth is pouring tens of millions of dollars into getting Donald Trump elected. In addition to the enormous value of publicity (if any, in-kind donations) for Trump’s message about I lost. And the legally questionable $100 payouts and $1 million lottery-style prizes he’s offering to registered swing state voters who sign the following petition:
The First and Second Amendments guarantee freedom of speech and the right to bear arms. By signing below, I pledge my support for the First and Second Amendments.
Isn’t it strange? But if Trump wins, and if he manages to profitably nurture Musk’s companies and give them more power over the very government they continue to rely on, the return on Musk’s investment could be enormous. Also, remember that this guy has tens of millions of dollars worth of pocket money to all of us. Musk’s net worth of $50 million is:
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But what about his charity work? Didn’t Musk sign Bill Gates’ ‘Giving Pledge’ and pledge to donate at least half of his wealth to charity?
Yes, he joined in 2012. But he’s falling behind on donations. In 2022 alone, he donated $160.5 million to philanthropy, according to the foundation’s most recent tax filing. Musk made more than that yesterday.Much more.
you’re right. Musk’s net worth increased by $2.7 billion on Friday, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires. This database is a reminder of how far the egalitarian American experiment has devolved into plutocracy or oligarchy. It was a situation that our founder, John Adams, hoped we could avoid (although he wasn’t very confident we would).
Put another way, the amount Musk donates to charity in a year is the same amount he earns in a day.
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6 percent! But Musk is now about 100 times richer than when he signed the pledge. It’s a scenario that Andrew Carnegie would have found bizarre. He’d best act like MacKenzie Scott. Because a trusted advisor to industrialist John D. Rockefeller once warned his boss:
You need to deploy faster than you can grow! Otherwise, it will trample on you, your children, and your grandchildren!
Now, Musk has donated nearly $2.3 billion worth of Tesla stock to his foundation in 2022, securing a huge tax break and massive tax-free capital gains at the expense of American taxpayers. But our rules regarding philanthropy are so strict that he only has to spend a small portion of these “charitable” assets. His foundation’s nest egg (about $7.2 billion at the end of 2022) generated $309 million in investment returns that year, with unsold assets valued at at least $373 million. However, the amount donated to charity was about the same as the previous year.
Federal law requires private foundations to spend 5% of their assets each year (this includes: overhead). Musk’s 2022 debt was about $358 million, and he didn’t contribute even half of that. The government allows foundations to average their spending over five years, but he will have to speed up the pace significantly.
I didn’t expect Musk’s foundation’s tax documents to reveal any sinister causes he may have donated to, so I’m sorry to disappoint. There is no room to object to his public donations. One thing to watch out for, though, are transfers to donor advised funds. His foundation has moved more than $75 million into Fidelity Charitable’s funds since 2018. For some unknown reason, the government allows such transfers to be included in the foundation’s mandatory charitable contribution payments.
Donor-advised funds are much more problematic than private foundations. Although both cost taxpayers a lot of money and are fundamentally undemocratic, as I explain in my must-read The Problem with American Oligarchies. Creators are not required to donate a minimum amount of assets each year, nor are they required to disclose to whom they are donating. In other words, it’s convenient for anyone willing to secretly donate to hateful non-profits, including those seeking to subvert the democratic process, if it helps put a particular candidate back in the White House.
