81 points

Imagine if you will, Elon writing a check to twitter so they have the funds to cover all of his mistakes.

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55 points

Elon, like Trump, has no money. He has credit and idiots willing to give it to him.

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11 points

Oh yeah, definitely doesn’t have literal billions in Tesla/SpaceX stock that he could liquidate.

I’m so sick of people who clearly don’t understand how money works giving their opinions. I don’t like Elon any more than the next guy but the internet has truly shown me how hatred of someone leads to the smoothest brain takes imaginable.

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19 points

He has credit and idiots willing to give it to him.

For which they usually use their stocks as collateral, right?

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18 points

That would mean Elon admitting he made mistakes

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14 points

Now imagine suing the company that hired the employees that you refuse to pay.

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53 points

How’d his family get rich again? 🤔

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47 points
  • emerald mines
  • in South Africa
  • during the Apartheid
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4 points

Ah right rolled a nat 20 😂

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7 points

I mean… does exploiting a systematically subjugated racial majority for profit in a country that was at the time unabashedly and notoriously racist really fall under “luck”…?

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50 points

I dont understand how can people get away with not paying their employees

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26 points

It’s the US. If there is a country that hates its citizens more than this one, I haven’t heard of it yet.

Any time they can take things from you and give it to companies, they will.

So it shouldn’t really be a surprise.

But if you forget to pay $1 to a company, all hell breaks loose.

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10 points
*

It’s the US. If there is a country that hates its citizens more than this one, I haven’t heard of it yet.

Russia has been in the news cycle for over a year because of the war they started.

They imprison anyone critical of the government or the war. They imprisoned a man and deprived him of his fatherly rights because his daughter made an anti-war drawing at school.

They conscript men from poor ethnic regions by offering them a salary that’s 10x of their current one. Then they send them to the front with no training or equipment to be cannon fodder.

They are stealing from the pension fund to support their war, which will have catastrophic consequences for the elderly population in the future.

I mean shit. Have you never heard of North Korea?

I guess none of that counts. US bad.

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9 points
*

Yeah but it’s too easy to compare with non-democratic countries and regimes. You know from the start they are not fair to citizen.

You should compare with the best (if any) not the worst.

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6 points
Deleted by creator
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3 points

Good contrasting points but the bar is set really low. Maybe Europe is a better comparison?

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4 points

They ought to rename “US citizens” to “US consumers” or “US production units”, then they wouldn’t have to sue all the time.

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1 point
*
Deleted by creator
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13 points

Do you want the real answer? Its because workers rights in this country have been slowly eroding over the last 70 years. So now we’ve ended up in a situation where everyone keeps their head down and does as their told because they have no power to do anything about it.

Then the companies pay millions to prevent unions by telling us that unions are worthless. But if unions are worthless, why are they spending millions to prevent them …?

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3 points

Agreed. Unfortunately, recently fired people are vulnerable and tired, and in financially precarious situations. Does anyone know who’s pursuing this, if it would cover everyone who wasn’t paid, and what happens if Twitter doesn’t follow through?

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41 points

I think we’ve established that Elon, in fact, cannot run Twitter better if he owned it.

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3 points

He can sink it though, just like he said with his viral picture.

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15 points

$500m to Elon is like $500 to the average American

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38 points

Not so much at the moment.

He borrowed 44 bn to buy Twitter and has a 1.5 bn payment coming up.

He is of course more liquid than any of us, but the fact that he keeps not paying various bills seems to indicate that he’s having cash flow problems and is having to scrounge for his loan payment.

This is just one of many multi million dollar payments that musk and/or Twitter are fighting.

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29 points

Eh. He can sell his tesla stock anytime he wants cash, he just would have to pay taxes on it and instead would likely borrow against it. Oh the sad pitiful life of our beleaguered oligarchs.

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14 points

That, and selling $1.5B of Tesla stock would tank the stock price. Especially if he does it every single time he has to make a payment.

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-6 points

At least in Russia you have to be Russian or a closely affiliated state to attain that level of influence

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15 points
*

He did not borrow 44 billion to buy Twitter.

He put about ~13 billion dollars of debt on Twitter itself, so he had to come up with about 31 billion in equity. He was able to secure third party equity commitments of around 7 billion (Larry Ellison, the Saudis, etc.). He also held a minority interest of about 4 billion in Twitter. He funded the remaining 20 odd billion with a combination of cash (from cash holdings and selling Tesla shares in early 2022) and equity margin loans on his remaining Tesla shares. It is understood that he likely paid off most of his margin loans as he continued to sell further Tesla shares in late 2022.

The 1.5 billion interest expense you mention is just for the bank debt (that the banks still hold, and have been unable to sell), and is Twitter’s responsibility, not Elon’s.

This is a long way of saying that I think the banks will own Twitter within 6-12 months. They will not roll over like landlords, and its far more clear cut for a missed loan payment.

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