After selling much of his real estate portfolio in the past year and listing his final property earlier this month to focus on his mission to Mars, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO is taking the phrase “Live below your means” to another level.
Musk, who turned 50 in June, revealed in a tweet that he is now living in a humble $50,000 home that he rents from SpaceX on its launch site in Boca Chica, Texas.
— The New York Post
The house comes from a Las Vegas-based company called Boxabl. The company aims to “significantly lower the cost of homeownership for everyone” with foldable, 375-square-foot prefabricated ADU called Casitas that have developed a significant following online since the Tesla founder’s Twitter announcement in June.
Musk had previously gotten rid of his real estate holdings following another series of bizarre Twitter posts days before the birth of his child. Curbed has more on his modest new trappings here.
22 Comments
That's a piece of very irresponsible advice.
Rich people are able to borrow money anytime they want. Jeff Bezos earns only $80,000 a year, according to his tax return. All his assets are acquired by debt. It's because banks know the ultra-rich are good for their debt.
For muggles, we use their homes for leverage. If you are a small business owner, you put your home as collateral because the bank doesn't know if you can pay it off. It's not necessarily wise to own a cheap home if you want to grow assets.
"Living below your means" appeals to the American idea of pulling yourself up your bootstrap, it works to look down on the poor for their individual failing. In reality, debts (and education, and health care) are much more accessible for the rich. So they are able to grow rich even faster.
While the home is technically cheap, he bought a large area of land to provide himself security and privacy. It's actually a luxury 99.99% of people can't afford. He also bought multiple homes for his mom, his wives, and 6 children. For tax purposes, it's not under his name.
The word "humble" use with Elon Musk is just infuriating.
He rents it from his own $74b company ...
Celebrity worship culture is pathetic.
The quantity of people who will white knight for this man is an embarrassing indication that the ultrawealthy's lies are being accepted as truth. They earned it. (No.) They deserve it. (No.) They add more to the world than they take out. (No.) They're smart if they bilk the government out of taxes. (No.) You can become just like them but you do not work hard enough. (No.)
The idea is to sell it to government(s) who will then try to shove it down the throats of the modest income people in their communities.
Hate when the government tramples on my freedom to not afford a home.
Rule one of public housing is that it must look cheap (not necessarily be cheap to the taxpayers when all the kick-backs are factored in) and have the lifespan of a fruit fly.
Republican Rule Numero Uno: Break every government program, don't fund programs for the masses, then claim government has failed.
So blatant it has its own wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
'We can't afford it' is half of the con. The other half is that government requires tax revenue to fund spending. The reality is that government is the creator of money and can never run out. The "debt" is one side of a balance sheet, the other side is money in circulation (or socked away in billionaire's offshore accounts).
Government can never run out but hyper-printing will make it worthless. The admitted inflation rate for the 12 months ending June 2021 is 5.39%, it is probably much higher.
Where inflation is defined as too much money in circulation the fix is raising taxes, which takes money out of circulation. Interest rate manipulation just rewards banksters and the investment class.
Inflation now is the result of the pandemic, specifically the choking of global production and opportunistic price increases that profit on it, and is a welcome respite (for the investor class) to pre-pandemic deflation. The trade war with China also played a significant role in multiple respects.
Inflation is too much money chasing too few goods and services. The fix is to increase the supply of goods and services. Taking money out of circulation by increasing taxes will just make the problem worse. In Biden's $4 trillion plan the increase in taxes is not remotely enough to cover the increased spending which means the deficit will explode. It now already takes $1 to equal the buying power of five cents back when the Federal Reserve was created in 1914.
You're missing the point, the deficit is irrelevant. It's one side of a balance sheet - they pretend the other side (surplus: money in circulation) doesn't exist. "Pay off" the debt and the economy ceases to exist.
Your proposed fix - increasing a consumption-based economy for financial purposes - is the road to extinction.
Cuban communism= gas guzzling cars from 1950’s…American capitalism = sexy Tesla
Those 1950's cars are sexier than a Tesla and always will be.
Also a Tesla Model S is more expensive than Musk's ADU and sits parked for like 95% of the time and is something like 75% empty when being used ... so not sure what to make of that.
Auto dependence is auto dependence.
It’s still best electric car on the market no? I don’t know very much about cars, so their may be something more advanced…
True, though the average Cuban's carbon footprint due to transportation is MUCH smaller than the average American's ... so I'll let them get away with the gas-guzzlers at the moment. I'm also not under any illusion that EVs are going to save us. As you say, auto dependence is auto dependence.
Relevant: https://twitter.com/christofspieler/status/1415496090015698944
tesla float
Is it even technically an ADU/granny-flat, if it isn't on a residential lot with existing home and is just a fancy "trailer" on a "launch site in Boca Chica, Texas"?
No, but technicalities are Musk's bread and butter. TECHNICALLY Tesla isn't a company he started, but you'd never know it to read any articles by the press.
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