Especially if you take into consideration how much Musk has personally benefitted from a well funded government.

>Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...

Here is a good breakdown of that $4.9bn number https://electrek.co/2015/06/02/complete-breakdown-of-the-4-9... Incentives for creating jobs & tax credits.

Not bad compared to the $12 billion cost for the GM bailout and $4 billion+/yr for oil & gas subsidies.

If you look at money invested, govt should have let GM go under the bus. Bailouts aren't a great long term fix. They just encourage shitty management

And that's just direct subsidies! Don't forget that rockets, autonomous driving[1] and solar power[2] were developed by the government.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Renewable_Energy_Labo...

The idea that he personally used $593M, much less $4.9B worth of government services in 2016 is pretty silly.

He is far from being the sole owner of those companies.

The idea isn't that he personally cost the government that much money in service fees. It's that, without those services, he could never have made his money in the first place.

I think there's a big flaw in this argument, because it doesn't get applied universally. In my opinion people who would have starved to death or died from some medical problem except that the government stepped in and took care of them gained far more than Musk did. I'm not saying I know what Musk's tax rate should be, but the argument that it's somehow related to the benefits provided to him by government seems spurious. If that were the case then surely you'd support a pay-as-you go funding plan for all government services, right?