ROBERT REICH:
Elon Musk used a stock option deadline to make a political point, and it exploded in his (and other Tesla investor's) faces.
Bear in mind that billionaires like him pay almost no income tax because they have almost no income. Their wealth is in shares of stock -- which they borrow against to pay for their lavish lifestyles.
I don't know a better argument for why we need a wealth tax. But Musk -- now the richest person in America -- thinks a wealth tax would be unfair because it would force him to sell shares if he had to pay any significant taxes. Poor baby.
Over the weekend, Musk surveyed his millions of Twitter followers about whether he should sell a portion of his shares in Tesla. “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock,” he tweeted, and committed to abide by the results of the poll.
When he closed the poll yesterday, nearly 3.5 million votes had been cast, with 58 percent in favor of selling.
The sale caused Tesla shares to tumble Monday -- at a time when some say it is already overvalued. Musk owns roughly 17 percent of Tesla’s stock, worth about $200 billion.
Musk has thereby created another legal headache for himself. He and Tesla previously settled a lawsuit by the S.E.C. over one of his tweets saying he had secured money to take the company private; part of that agreement included having Tesla-related tweets vetted by company lawyers.
I very much doubt this weekend's tweet was vetted (what sane lawyer would approve such a bizarre tweet poll?) even though the poll and its outcome have had a material effect on the market value of Tesla shares of stock.
Poor Elon.
What do you think?
