Tesla Motors To Pay Off Government Loan 5 Years Early 243
fredan sends word of a post at the Tesla Motors blog detailing how the company will be paying off its $465 million government loan 5 years early. Quoting:
"This is a significant announcement both for Tesla and for the DOE. It is a marker of the successful launch of the Model S and the incredible market reaction to this award-winning car. And it is a tribute to the success of the DOE's Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program (ATVM), a program which was chartered by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush, to accelerate the market for a broad range of promising automotive efficiency technologies — electric vehicles (EVs) principal among them. ... Following more than a year of thorough due diligence by commercial auditors, automotive consultants and lawyers, on January 20, 2010, Tesla became the recipient of one of three initial DOE loans announced by Secretary Chu, along with Ford and Nissan – good company for a start-up automaker. Tesla’s loan of $465 million was to be paid back over ten years following the start of production of the Model S. Months later in a separate announcement, an ATVM loan was announced for Fisker. It is worth noting that in comparison with these three other recipients, Tesla had the smallest loan. Ford’s loan was for $5.9 billion, Nissan’s was for $1.4 billion, and Fisker’s was for $529 million. ... We expect to generate sufficient cash and profitability in our business over the next five years that it gives us confidence to proceed with this early repayment of the loan. Moreover, it is also consistent with Tesla’s mantra of speed that we would, as Elon announced last week, accelerate the repayment of our loan, a full five years earlier than required under the original loan terms, making our last payment in 2017."
Reads like a press release (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait, it *is* a press release.
Long trips (Score:2)
They should make a long trip adapter like a generator that you tow behind you or strap on the roof that takes gas. I think that would really widen the cars appeal.
rent a car for long trips (Score:2)
If you spend most of your time doing short trips, and occasionally do long trips, it makes perfect sense to rent a car for the longer trips.
I lived for multiple years owning no vehicle...I could bike to work (or bus in the winter) and on weekends I could rent a small car for $15/day. Hard to beat that.
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The original design or concept actually called for a small generator being part of the internals of the car, but they scrapped the idea to stick with the 100% electric concept. I agree that it's a good idea and have brought it up in discussions before. If plugin electrics continue to gain in popularity I expect we'll start to see third parties making aftermarket solutions like this. The mini trailer or platform that hangs on the trailer hitch appeals to me the most. I wouldn't even be surprised if there wer
eh hang on (Score:2)
If the loan was at an expensive interest rate or included specific terms for what it could be used for, then being able to repay the loan early is good news for Tesla and anyone with an interest in their success.
However if this was a cheap loan that was not tightly restricted, its an odd choice to repay cheap finance early. Didn't Tesla have anything good to put the cash on?
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If the loan was at an expensive interest rate or included specific terms for what it could be used for, then being able to repay the loan early is good news for Tesla and anyone with an interest in their success.
However if this was a cheap loan that was not tightly restricted, its an odd choice to repay cheap finance early. Didn't Tesla have anything good to put the cash on?
It's good PR, whether it was cheap or not.
They could buy marketing with it, or they could use the early repayment as good PR about how well they are doing.
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Yeah this is what I was thinking. It's not neccessarily a smart accounting move to pay off your loan early, and usually comes with an opportunity cost. I however am not Elon Musk, so... good I guess?
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This is so astounding... (Score:2)
That it actually made the news. Obviously, this is the exception not the standard.
Misleading headline (Score:2)
As usual, the truth is buried deep in the summary, and even deeper in the article.
Tesla is not paying off the loan early - they're *intending* to pay off the loan early because they *expect* to generate "sufficient cash and profits" to do so.
So far they've (with great effort) managed to get one model into production - but it's selling at a price such that their planned delivery rate cannot possibly generate enough cash. They've got some sidelines, but as above, the production rate is almost
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First off: They have 2 car models: the first was the Tesla Roadster (which was based on a Lotus Elise) which was a testbed for their engineering. The Model S is designed from the ground up as an electric car.
Currently they're only using about 20% of their manufacturing plant to build the Model S and plan to expand it for faster production of a lower priced car. That will also take huge capital costs, but the success of the Model S should reassure outside investors who passed on Tesla the first time aroun
What the government should really do (Score:2)
If the government is going to spend money on innovation I think they should use it for scientific grants and make the discoveries public domain. That way it is not single companies that benefit from proprietary knowledge paid for with government loans, but rather humanity benefiting from royalty free technology. You also wouldn't need to worry about loans being repaid.
For technologies where the government has no idea the direction research needs to go, this may not work. But for electric cars? It's obvi
Re:Jackpot? (Score:5, Funny)
If I win the Powerball Saturday, I may buy one. If I can afford it...
Re:Jackpot? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I win the Powerball Saturday, I may buy one. If I can afford it...
Let's be realistic, Tesla has never released an economy car for good reasons so the same comments could be made of any higher end car. Tesla has focused on range and top end performance. They can't win this argument because if they release an economy car it will still be fairly pricey and people will complain about range and performance. It's an early adopter company and we will all benefit in the end as costs drop. They want to make money and at this point Elon Musk needs to make money because he invested most of his cash in these high end risky ventures so they would make an economy car if they could. Most of the talk I hear is it's less convenient so it should be cheaper. That's unlikely to ever happen and it ignores the other advantages. You might as well say I won't buy a gasoline car unless I can refuel it at home and gas cost less than a $1 a gallon, just to be fair. Most electric car owners love the fact they can refuel at home and electricity is cheaper not because it's a better fuel source but internal combustion engines are really inefficient when they don't run at a constant speed. It's why hybrids running an undersized gas or diesel engine to charge batteries has been my favorite. The truth is all the Tesla cars have been on par or better with the performance you'd expect for the price range. That is impressive. If you are holding out for a 15K Model S then you might as well hold out for a 15K Mercedes Sedan!
Re:Jackpot? (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't actually that expensive. Fairly comparable to a similarly equipped BMW or Lexus. Thing is you save money on fuel and even get it for free some times, so over the car's lifetime it is cheaper.
Re:Jackpot? (Score:5, Insightful)
From my understanding, this was the business plan all along. Let's build really expensive bad ass sports cars that are all electric. Once they made enough money on those, they could start adapting the technology to be cheaper and cheaper. All the while still selling an expensive bad ass sports car for the same price.
Its seems the Model S is part two of this plan.
Seemed genius to me.
Re:Jackpot? (Score:5, Interesting)
In addition to your excellent reply, it should be worth noting that the route manufacturing companies get cheap consumer prices (like Henry Ford did with the Model T) is to have massive production where you make up profits through volume sales and scales of efficiency. That is something incredibly hard for any start-up company to perform, where it costs roughly a couple billion dollars just to start a major new low-cost automobile with production runs in the hundreds of thousands of editions.
Elon Musk was incredibly intelligent to start out with the high end automobiles, especially the niche market of performance sports cars with a little bit of a twist. The Model S is really aiming more toward the luxury sedan market... again a very astute move on his part where the Model S clearly compares well with a Lexis or Mercedes Benz (or the Lincoln branded cars by General Motors). Volume of the vehicle production line doesn't have to be quite so high for these kind of vehicles and ultimately doesn't take as much cash to get them started.
The original approach that Tesla was going to take was to simply buy off the shelf components already being made by several automobile manufacturers and simply assemble a new automobile. Unfortunately because of quality control and inventory issues Tesla has been forced to increasingly build more and more components "in-house". One example was the transmission needed for the Roadster that very nearly bankrupted the company (and forced Elon Musk to double down and dump essentially all liquid assets that he had into Tesla as well as make a whole bunch of phone calls to friends with money to help out). And yes, Tesla automobiles do have a transmission... even if it is pretty simple in its design.
It is in the announced product line of development that eventually Tesla is going to be building economy automobiles, but that the original plan was to wait until they had both the manufacturing facility (that they now have with the NUMMI plant in California) and the working capital needed to get it all to happen.
The only thing that I am a bit surprised at myself is not the cheap low-end automobiles, but rather why Tesla hasn't moved into the all-electric delivery van market (aka FedEx trucks) or even the short haul semi-trailer tractor market where people routinely dump more money on vehicle purchases that would make a typical sports car enthusiast look twice at the price tag and doubt they could foot the bill. There are electric vehicles in those markets, and having corporations set up charging stations for a fleet of vehicles would be even a bonus (on site refueling without having to deal with petroleum companies). The drawback might be the existing competition as well as the fact that such companies are less likely to be hung up in the "green energy" hype.... and that Tesla can only do so many things at the same time. There are also a bunch of patent trolls hanging out in those markets with patents for electric vehicles of those types as well.... that might be causing some additional problems.
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Your car knowledge pains me. Lexus, not Lexis. And Ford owns Lincoln. GM owns Cadillac.
Those errors aside, I agree with you.
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Well, seeing as they're the only real competitor in the electric marketplace, they can price as a monopoly would until their success drives competitors into the same market. That's one of those things in supply and demand that quietly gets glossed over in econ 101 but is really important.
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Well, seeing as they're the only real competitor in the electric marketplace, they can price as a monopoly would until their success drives competitors into the same market. That's one of those things in supply and demand that quietly gets glossed over in econ 101 but is really important.
But there's still competition you don't need an electric car, you can get a normal one.
Just like Amtrak has competition on New York - Washington transport from Greyhound and the planes.
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Only approximately. There's an opportunity cost associated with an inferior(from the purchaser's perspective) product and the monopolist(which is not the right word, because Musk isn't TRYING to maintain a monopoly, our language lacks the correct word) is free to engage that entire range above basic economic profit.
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It would be silly for Tesla to price their vehicles out of the budget for middle class families. As an employee of an auto manufacturer, the money is made on server parts, not unit sales. That being said, the best option for Tesla long term is to sell more units. They may want the hipster image like Apple currently has... making a $400 impulse buy is sli
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There are not a lot of parts to sell on the Tesla. Unlike a traditional car there is also a lot less maintenance. I for one can't wait until I own a car like that. Oil changes suck, parts suck, lead acid batteries suck.
Re:Jackpot? (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason for this is because variable RPM internal combustion engine with all its peripherals is very complex structure and requires a lot of maintenance and spare parts.
This is not true for electric engine, which is a very simple in design and as a result far more reliable. This is the simple reality of engine technology, and a known limitation of internal combustion engines, which is why hybrids run a constant RPM internal combustion engine to charge the battery rather then variable RPM internal combustion engine to actually run the car. Former is simply more efficient and requires less complexity and as a result maintenance.
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Hmmm. I guess that Musk has better knowledge considering that GM has this AM announced that they will produce several new electric cars that are high-end cars and get 200 MPC.
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Re:Jackpot? (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't have to bribe anyone. The Model S is a highly acclaimed car from everyone else's perspective:
Not bad for a car company that didn't exist 10 years ago
Re:Jackpot? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Volt is widely acknowledged to have been started explicitly because the CEO of General Motors took a bunch of marketing literature from Tesla Motors and threw it down on the desks of his engineers asking why a California start-up company could make a successful electric automobile but they couldn't. The rest, as they say, is history.
Mind you, the Volt is a pretty good automobile and deserves its own kind of kudos. The GM engineers made some compromises that I don't agree with, but I'm not exactly a professional automotive engineer nor have been put into their position to design a new automobile from scratch. Doing such things isn't as easy as it sounds.
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I'm not sure how it's outclassed. It accelerates 0-60 in around 4 seconds which is faster then most high-end sport sedans you can get for around $100K, and it's made for urban and suburban folks that typically drive less then 250 miles a day (which is a vast majority of people) while seating 5 adults+2 kids.
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But Intentions are all that counts. Not results. Unless we need to get better results from under performing, then it means we need more money (but the results don't matter even then)
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The headline doesn't claim they did. So how is it a "lie"?
It isn't, of course. So either you're lying, or you are grossly deficient in reading comprehension. Which is it? Those are your only possible choices, and any other response (including nothing) is an irretractable confession that it's "both".
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Everyone with a loan intends to (or claims to intend to) pay off their loan. That is not newsworthy. So announcing it as news implies a newsworthy aspect above and beyond just "they're going to pay off the loan sometime in the future". Typically it means that paying off the loan is a certainty because the only remaining obstacles are procedural ones such as not having some bureaucrat's approval.
Making such a statement when the obstacles are not procedural, and they don't have the money, and the "5 years
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What Tesla has done is to file formally with the loan agency (in this case the federal government.... thus the move is a matter of public record) to increase the rate at which it is repaying the load so it can pay the loan off in half the time. The problem is that except for some extreme circumstances Tesla is now committed to making this payment schedule as it was forced to file the paperwork with the federal government to make this increased level of payments.
Most companies, especially with the low inter
Re:Headline is a lie (Score:5, Insightful)
What? The headline is not a lie. It says quite clearly what the future intent is: "Tesla Motors To Pay Off Government Loan 5 Years Early"
Not:
"Tesla Motors Pays Off Government Loan 5 Years Early"
or even:
"Tesla Motors Paid Off Government Loan 5 Years Early"
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Not really? They're merely discussing their projections for the next 5 years. They feel they will be sufficiently profitable to repay the loan within 5 years. There is nothing wrong or morally ambiguous with their claim.
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The headline "Tesla Motors To Pay Off Government Loan 5 Years Early" is a statement of intent, not something that already happened. How is that a lie?
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"Tesla Motors *Intends* To Pay Off Government Loan 5 Years Early" is a statement of intent. The headline makes it sound as though they're just about to sign the check.
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They've already paid one year of the loan--- and now they're doing well enough to pay it back in an accelerated rate within 4 more years (rather then 9 more years). I still don't get how that's hard to comprehend.
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Tesla has not paid off their loan five years early. All they have done is announce that they INTEND to pay off their loan five years early, four years from now. So, before we jump up and down and talk about how this vindicates the loan program, let's wait and see if it actually happens. That does not mean that this is not good news, but only time will tell if it actually works out.
Okay bad headline but can we at least throw the company a bone and give them credit for doing better than expected and it looks likely they will pay off the loan soon when most claimed they'd default?
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Do you have reading comprehension issues? Or did the editors stealth update the title?
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Re:Meanwhile.. (Score:4, Funny)
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What oil is in Afghanistan?
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This oil:
"Afghanistan has 3.8 billion barrels of oil between Balkh and Jawzjan Province in the north of the country.[40][41] This is an enormous amount for a nation that only consumes 5,000 bbl/day.[42] The U.S. Geological Survey and the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Industry jointly assessed the oil and natural gas resources in northern Afghanistan. The estimated mean volumes of undiscovered petroleum were 1,596 million barrels (Mbbl) of crude oil, 444 billion cubic meters of natural gas, and 562 Mbbl of na
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OIl is finite. The more that's used now, the less will be available in the future.
Obamacare does not fully begin until 2014 (Score:2)
I am opposed to "Obamacare" but you are full of shit.
Pulling numbers out of Fox's ass/mouth again?
It is not even fully implemented yet so the impact can't be realized; even then, you have to use the system before/after to notice any change - so right there that rules out most people and makes it easy to appeal to people's ignorance and gullibility.
Obamacare doesn't solve the drug cost problem, it doesn't solve the 30% of all costs being wasted by the insurance "industry" but it doesn't make those problems w
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Oh really now? [yahoo.com] So I missed a number and Obamacare is going to cost the US over $700 million per day.
Is it already working? (Score:2)
http://money.cnn.com/2012/11/14/pf/health-insurance-premiums/index.html [cnn.com]
Nice troll, there AC.
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It's kind of the same thing here; if you consider all the subsidies for electric cars, the government is still paying a LOT of money to Tesla. It will be more interesting to see the Bush lovers try to justify the fact that their president was 'distorting the market' and driving up the debt with subsidies to private industry. If there are any Bush lovers still around.
Good
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Bush was a Republican. He was not anything close to a conservative though.
The only thing worse than Bush since Jimmy Carter was Obama.
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The crazy thing about the TARP funds was that many banks were essentially forced at gunpoint (well, more correctly forced by having their corporate charters revoked if they failed to cooperate) to take the money on the pretense that there were a couple of banks that were in danger of insolvency... and the government didn't want to advertise which ones were most in danger by loaning only to those banks which needed the money.
Since the money that most of these banks were given wasn't wanted or needed, they "p
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He borrowed government money to create a bunch of luxury cars for the rich.
He has not actually paid it back yet, he still has four years to bankrupt the company.
We had hope that rising gasoline prices and tightening emissions controls would lead to development of public transportation and people-focused instead of car-focused infrastructure design in the US, but these electric car pushers are damning us to a future where we are cursed by subsidized parking space, clogged expressways, and coal plants instead
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------
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Yup, that green meat is really healthful.
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What did I write that made you think I supported subsidized parking space?
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Actually an electric car that isn't $100,000 and doesn't suck would be great for me. I pay about $3/mo more for electricity because I signed up for "100% Renewable" here. A few places were cheaper, but 100% WIND power and I want Wind/Solar/Hydro/whatever-magic-is-best. I live near a ton of coal plants--15 mile wide city with 13 coal plants IN IT--so I have some interest in clean air. I do accept wood, but we can't generate enough power via wood; even fast-growing pine (and let's face it, pine burns like
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Elon is suck a jerk! I hear that the batteries he uses in his cars are manufactured from ground up puppies and baby seals. This story is the last straw, and proves that he also has it in for the economy. Can you believe he's going to deny banks and the government an additional 5 years of loan interest? What a douche....
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Re:Bad news for Elon haters (Score:5, Insightful)
Oil companies aren't getting loans--they're getting huge piles of cash for free. If those who believe that Government has no right to pick a company to loan money to, they should start with the loans that don't get paid back.
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Thought I made clear that such people should start complaining about the massive cash handouts to the oil industry first.
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And GM's loan payback more than offsets, blah blah blah...
These are investments in the economy that pay off in more way that mere bank-style loans.
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That is a valid position. The problem is that the vast majority of people taking it (like most political positions currently) are disingenuous. They're absolutely fine taking the position when it suits their needs (IE they don't like research into alternative fuels) and forgetting about their "firmly held belief" when it doesn't (for instance corporate welfare to their oil contributors). It's worse when these same people have a constituency that allow them to get away with it.
I respect people who hold no
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In fairness here, the government really didn't have to pick companies for this particular loan program. It was open to any company producing automobiles in America and using that money to expand automobile production domestically.
If you want to say that it was unfair that the government decided to single out the automobile industry over other industries like steel manufacturers or shoe cobblers, I'd have to agree more with your sentiment.
The problem with Solyndra, General Motors, and some of the more contr
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It'll be interesting to see how the reflexive, knee-jerk Elon haters spin this one
It's the reflexive, knee-jerk anti-government types I think will be more amusing. Here we have a company (and potentially an entire industry) jump-started by a government loan, turning out to be a success, and actually repaying the loan. That sort of thing goes against all their beliefs.
They'll claim that early repayment will cost the government money or something.
Somehow they'll spin it in a poor light, it's just a question of how. No knot is too twisted.
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It's the reflexive, knee-jerk anti-government types I think will be more amusing. Here we have a company (and potentially an entire industry) jump-started by a government loan, turning out to be a success, and actually repaying the loan. That sort of thing goes against all their beliefs.
Oh come off it.. Tesla was doing fine selling the Roadster prior to the government loan. The only reason Tesla got a loan at all is because the government was handing them out to all American auto-manufacturers.
The reason Tesla is succeeding is because they sell everything they make as fast as they can make them, and their profits arent just the cars that they make as they are also selling power trains through both Toyota and Daimler.
And no, the government did not have the moral authority to give a loa
Re:Bad news for Elon haters (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh please spare us the tears. The government has around 2,110,221 Civil Servants. They earn an average salary of $76,358. That comes out to $161,132,255,118 a year. That is only 4.55% of the Federal budget. WOW, those government employees sure are hogging the spending all right. I'm pretty sure that excedes the efficiencies achieved in most private companies. Is there room for improvement, always, just like everyewhere else.
I won't even touch the complaints about the horrible injustice of venture capitalists having to pay taxes, or government helping to prop up the free market with subsidies.
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I'm sorry, AC, what fuzzy logic world are you living in? It is done already. The cars are being produced, sold and used...they are making money and will continue to do so. It's done.
Re:Gee, (Score:5, Funny)
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"Misson Accomplished!"
-- GW Bush May 1st 2003
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Bush certainly was.
"Bush stated at the time that this was the end to major combat operations in Iraq."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_Accomplished_Speech [wikipedia.org]
Oops.
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Re:Gee, (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you suppose the money just up and vanishes when the government spends it?
That money goes to individuals or companies, and if to companies then ultimately to individuals via salaries. The point of discussion should not be if government spending is good or bad since, economically, government spending is indistinguishable from any other entity spending the same amount of money on the same things... being "government" does not do anything magical to the money. Rather, the discussion should focus on if the money is spent wisely, for the maximal benefit of the country and its citizens. Obstinately the government is a product of the people collectively organizing their resources for the purpose of serving the public.
Defense spending, as an example, does not appear to have maximal benefit at the amount we are spending. Building battle tanks certainly employs many thousands of people, but we don't need or want battle tanks. Therefore building tanks the army explicitly said they do not want is the military-industrial complex equivalent of paying people to dig holes and fill them in again; money and resources are spent but nothing of real value is created.
On the other hand, spending public money on basic research has extremely high value. Just about everything we enjoy in a technological society has the fundamental principles rooted in government funded research. The DoE should get more funding, not less.
Incidentally, Sandia National Laboratories, like ALL national labs, are part of the Department of Energy. DARPA, on the other hand, is part of the Department of Defense. Just thought you might want that clarified...
So I, for one, have no problem using public money to help a new business developing a new technology with a loan. In the long run, if successful, such a business will pay massive returns in economic activity long after the loan itself is repaid. And even if the loan is never repaid, most of that money ends up right back in the economy anyway since it would have been used to buy materials and pay workers. Unless there was some kind of scam going on, even the worst case is still not that bad economically... and if someone did try to walk off with the cash in their pocket, I'd fully support stringing them up by their entrails in a public square as a cautionary example :)
=Smidge=
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being "government" does not do anything magical to the money.
Yes, it does, because the government taking that money and spending it means I work less hard because I know that if I become one of the 'evil 1%', the government will do whatever it can to take all my money.
Certainly there's a level of government spending that is required, but beyond that it's a drain on the economy even if they're taking money from me to spend on things you would otherwise have bought and taking money from you to spend on things I would otherwise have bought.
Re:Gee, (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I like bashing the gov't, at 36-40% marginal income tax bracket is a long, long, LONG way from "take all my money".
Get a grip.
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I Learned two things about you from reading this post.
1) You have no idea how the tiered tax rate structure in the US works.
2) You are a shortsighted idiot.
The evidence of (1) is that you appear to believe that if you are making, say, $32K/yr (15% marginal income tax rate), that working a bit harder and getting that raise to $33K/yr (25% marginal tax rate) would mean your tax bill would go from $4,800/yr to $8250/yr. This is nonsense since you still pay 15% on the first $32K and the 25% rate only applies to
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Do you suppose the money just up and vanishes when the government spends it?
Pretty much. The problem with having the government spend money is that you need to have a whole bunch of bureaucrats that supervise how the money is allocated, how the money is spent (once it has been actually given to some organization or group of people), how the money is returned (through taxes or from the loan agencies involved) as well as accountants that make sure the money is actually used in the way that was claimed. Absolutely none of those bureaucrats who are watching over all of that money bei
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We need to put the majority of our money into investments like this and make the entry into manufacturing and engineering low. Make laws that promote open technology and avoid patent trolls.
If you really believe this, you should simply encourage the repealing of laws, not the drafting of new ones. I'd start with simply repealing patent law altogether, which would go a long way to putting patent trolls out of business and making it much easier for start-up companies to compete with established players.
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Musk put up $70M of his own money, as had to bust his ass to gather up financing from many others friends and investors, since traditional investors stayed away from his companies since they were brand new and had no track record.
Meanwhile, the US bailed out a LOT of very established banks/mortgage/insurance/autos manufacturers, and each of them got WAY more money then a paltry $465M, and much of it was not a loan.
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Yep. You're entirely correct. And the Federal Government had no business bailing out the banks and the rest, either.
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With the banks, I mostly agree (although I think a better complaint would be that the government got itself in a position where it felt it had to bail out banks to prevent another Great Depression. A situation that I don't believe has been rectified)
With the automakers, this is pretty clearly hookum. Without the auto bailout GM, and possibly Chrysler would be gone today. While from a market purist standpoint that might have been an OK result, from the standpoint of someone who cares about things like jobs
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That is, frankly, sheer stupidity.
The Constitution gives Congress the right to pass laws reguarding the disposition of Federal funds, and nothing in there says they can't use those funds to loan (or heck, even give) money to individuals or businesses. Both are done all the time, and in fact have been since the days of the very first Congress. Not only have both parties done this, but every party in US history that had a majority in Congress has done it, going right back to the Federalists.
From a finianc
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Not that we ever were, but you have just neatly reversed cause and effect.