Elon Gated: Billionaires and Their Toys.
Unf*cking The Republic
UNFTR Media
4.9 • 683 Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2022
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The second installment of topical cream peers into the petty world of the billionaire class and the purchase of Twitter by racist enabler and inventor of nothing Elon Musk.
Resources
Good Jobs First: Los Angeles Times Stirs Debate: Elon Musk’s Use of Subsidies at Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity
The New York Times: Judge reduces $137 million penalty against Tesla over factory racism.
Time: How Elon Musk Built His Fortune—And Became the Richest Private Citizen in the World
The Wrap: Elon Musk Dragged Hard After Saying He’s a ‘Socialist’ – and Marx Was a Capitalist
The New York Times: Elon Musk details his plan to pay for a $46.5 billion takeover of Twitter.
Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality: 20 Facts About U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know
Economic Policy Institute: CEO pay has skyrocketed 1,322% since 1978
Public Citizen: Citizens United 10 Years Later: 25 Ultrarich People Have Spent $1.4 Billion on Elections
UNFTR Episode Resources
Fuck Milton Friedman: The Chicago School of Economics.
Manufacturing Dissent: How We Let an Aussie Destroy the U.S.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Topical cream, a pod listener's dream, unfucking the news and current events, topical cream. |
| 0:13.7 | Yeah, you know what I mean. |
| 0:16.5 | A quarter of an hour gets you our two cents topical cream. |
| 0:27.6 | Hey, it's Max. Welcome to the second installment of Topical Cream, the disgustingly titled feature where, as the man said, |
| 0:39.6 | a quarter of an hour gets you hour to cents. |
| 0:43.2 | To support this show, go to UNFTR.com slash shop to purchase some unfucking brand coffee |
| 0:48.8 | or become a member at buy me a coffee.com slash UNFTR. |
| 0:53.0 | We developed this feature, Topical cream, to weigh in on current |
| 0:56.9 | events in a timely manner, and we actually didn't intend to have something for this week, until |
| 1:01.9 | Elon Musk is taking over Twitter to the tune of $44 billion. So I don't like Elon Musk. You may not either. Musk is a bundle of inconsistencies. He's a shameless |
| 1:15.0 | self-promoter and an asshole. But none of this matters. However, we should review the tale of the tape for a |
| 1:21.9 | moment. His companies have received an aggregate of $4.9 billion in subsidies over the years, and his SpaceX company only hit the big time when it received a $1.6 billion contract from NASA. |
| 1:35.9 | Yet he maintains he's a libertarian, decidedly against any form of government intervention in business. |
| 1:43.0 | His companies are known to be hotbeds of racism. |
| 1:46.1 | After multiple reports of the horrific treatment of ethnic minorities in his organization, |
| 1:51.0 | and seeing a jury award a single plaintiff $137 million in damages for how he was denigrated in the workplace, |
| 2:00.0 | Musk sent a memorandum to his employees |
| 2:01.9 | telling them to develop, quote, thicker skin. And by the way, that 137 million was a reflection |
| 2:09.8 | of the jury's horror at the proven allegations, though it was later reduced to 15 million |
| 2:15.3 | by a federal judge, because, you know, we have to protect our billionaires. |
| 2:18.9 | The environment has reportedly been so toxic for so long that a class action lawsuit was filed back in 2017 against the company on behalf of 1,000 black workers. |
| 2:30.6 | Musk's detractors like to say that he's far from self-made, having come from a wealthy South African mining family. |
... |
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