Is Elon Musk’s philanthropy just a form of self-help?
Contributing columnist, The Washington Post
March 18, 2024 at 5:45 a.m. EDT
I miss the good old days, when impetuous-genius, entrepreneur-chief executives such as Steve Jobs acted out in relatively charming ways. He parked his car in forbidden spots and drove on the freeway without license plates. He humiliated people, typically the ones who worked for him, the old-fashioned way: in private. Even when Jobs skirted the law — by backdating stock options for his employees, for example — his transgressions were more arcane and tedious than outrageous and infuriating.
All that has changed with the reigning bad boy of the technology industry and Jobs’s sole heir as multi-company founder and world changer, Elon Musk. He publicly insults all manner of impressive people, generally behaves as if society’s rules were written for others and might have run afoul of tax laws in a way that’s relatively easy to track.
The tax matter has to do with how much — or how little, rather — Musk appears to be giving to charity. It’s particularly galling because the tech titan is availing himself of a section of the tax code that encourages rich people to be philanthropic in exchange for lowering their taxes.
Continue here. (paywall)