You assume my ignorance incorrectly.

I have followed Musk since he was a very privileged guy (not everyone’s family owns half an emerald mine) able to use massive debt to get Paypal into a near monopoly position.

Like all billionaires, Musk doesn’t give a fuck about average people, the rights of people to pick their own governments (“We’ll coup who we want”), or the rights of his workers (anti-union and a horrible labor record).

I also live in Europe and the fewer rapacious oligarchs we have here the better. I like the attitude of Dieter Mateschitz. He lives near the beautiful Fuschlsee near Salzburg with his Red Bull billions. He was told he could move to Switzerland and save a shitton of taxes (true). He said (I paraphrase), “Why would I want to do that? It is beautiful here where I live, and I can’t spend the money I have now.”

Even though I’m a business owner going on 3 decades, I prefer social democracy way more than the preditory capitalism I left behind in the US a few decades ago. It has gotten much worse since I left.

I have no problem with people getting wealthy. I’ve done so myself building a company. But ALL my workers have good wages, full health care, pensions, sick leave, etc. You don’t “earn” the wealth that a Musk, Bezos, or Gates has. You steal it from your employees and the taxpayers by doding taxes. It is not a debate.

Musk does not need to sell his assets to retrieve money. No billionaires do. They take out loans against their assets and live off that money. So they have no real income — because “conveniently” the money they get from these loans against their own assets are not taxed as income — and thus they pay virtually or no income tax. Jeff Bezos in 2018 (in)famously got money BACK from the US government for his kids. A guy worth over $100,000,000,000 who just bought a $500,000,000 boat had “no taxable income.”

If you want those kind of assholes in Europe, I disagree 100%.