Musk is technically great, he has OK business sense, he has really bad social interaction skills and really needs to work on developing a better filter.

He's an idiot in the sense that Trump is an idiot. Made billions (sure, not started from scratch, but they still made billions more than you and me), says stupid things all the time but they still can get away with it and win (the presidency, the most valued car company in the word, whatever it is they want).

Trump started out with 100's of millions. Musk started off significantly lower on the ladder.

Musk's father owns a ruby mine in Africa.

I thought the narrative was a $1 million dollar loan from his father? Do you have a source for "100's of millions"?

Sure, a $1 million dollar loan from family is pretty generous, and an amazing starting place - certainly not a "from nothing" tale. However, it's not outlandish money for a business loan to a top-rated business school graduate with extensive industry experience either.

I'd also wager if you gave most people $1 million dollars, they would not turn it into billions within their lifetime.

You cannot really trust a source as biased as NYT on anything about Trump.

Classic ad hominem. They write an article, list their sources and you dismiss it out of hand because of which entity wrote the article. Surely you can do better than that?

> but a Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s

Donald Trump had already taken over the business in 1971.

Seriously disingenuous to call it "his father's real estate empire" 30 years later.

Even more disingenuous to claim he received $413 million in today's dollars through tax dodges - it's not like you get paid by paying less taxes; that was money earned regardless. Not to mention the framing of "tax dodging" vs "paying the minimum amount the government required by law". (Taxes are due tomorrow - did you decide to pay more than you were required just out of generosity? I'd bet not.) It's also unclear what "records" the article is citing, since Trump's tax returns famously have never been released. I'd like to think, by now, if something nefarious was up with the Trump tax returns, the IRS would have taken notice...

Clearly the NYT has an axe to grind. Their word choice, and decision to lump a decade into one monetary number, and represent earnings earned while serving as company president as some sort of fatherly gift is clearly a misrepresentation of reality.

> Trump started out with 100's of millions

Flatly, this is wrong. Ran the company for 30 years before earning that money. That's not "starting out" no matter what way you want to frame it.

So, in short, this myth is busted.

> I thought the narrative was a $1 million dollar loan from his father?

A few thoughts: there are other sources that say there were significant other inputs, up to and including someone going to a Trump casino and buying $3.5M in chips and not playing. And there's the inflation value - a $1M loan in the 1960s is a lot more than $1M now.

> business loan to a top-rated business school graduate

Numerous people (including the faculty at said business school) have said that Trump was the worst student they'd ever seen, and at least one has made the claim that if it weren't for significant donations, Trump would never have graduated.

> I'd also wager if you gave most people $1 million dollars, they would not turn it into billions within their lifetime.

Quite possibly true. But in Trump's case he could have done absolutely nothing with the money he inherited and relied on earned interest and be richer than he is now.

> Quite possibly true. But in Trump's case he could have done absolutely nothing with the money he inherited and relied on earned interest and be richer than he is now.

Also a myth that's been busted numerous times. You don't live an extravagant life, gold plated everything, private jets, numerous high-rise towers, restaurants, golf courses, hotels and more without spending a single penny - which is the premise of that assertion. That assertion also assumes Trump inherited hundreds of millions of dollars, which isn't true, and would have had to make near perfect stock market investments over 50+ years, which nobody can achieve. So, essentially, the premise is total garbage.

> Trump casino and buying $3.5M

The casino's came way after Trump took over the organization. So zero impact on his inheritance, which was the initial claim.

Look, I know a lot of people don't like Trump, and have a serious vested interest in seeing him fail or knocking him down several pegs... but this is just petty and an untrue representation of reality. There's plenty of real things to knock him with... but this isn't one of them.

>But Musk as a human isn't so great.

I would be very hesitant to criticise someone who has arguably done/will do more for the continuation for humanity than anyone else who has ever lived.

Maybe it's your definition of "isn't great" that needs re-calibration.

>who has arguably done/will do more for the continuation for humanity than anyone else who has ever lived.

Because he's building some electric cars? How low is your bar?

Presumably they mean "populate Mars and thus avert human extinction" but that's definitely counting chickens before they hatch.

maybe the billionaires could actually do something about climate change instead of trying to flee to mars. i doubt musk is saving space for me in his escape pod

But you don't understand. Car analysts since the early 90s have been saying that electric cars would become profitable and become a serious chunk of the market by 2020 because they all knew that musk was going to come along and show us how great electric cars are and save the world.

Impressive case of Poe’s Law here.