“Billionaires don’t actually have cash.”
“If you taxed them they’d have to sell stock and it would crash the market.”
Musk doesn’t have hundreds of billions in cash, but he does have hundreds of billions in buying power.
The way the CEO/elite stock-holding class does this is by borrowing against the stock as collateral. That way they incur zero tax for capital gains, have zero direct exposure, and since banks specially cater to the ultra-wealthy with relationship managers, they basically have concierge-like access to whatever funds they want correlated perfectly with that magical “imaginary” wealth valuation.
Which means they could pay taxes using the same trick.
5 years ago he reckoned he’d solve world hunger for the paltry sum of $6b.
Money is wasted on billionaires.
