Today in the petulant foot-stamping of the obscenely wealthy:

Hey so get this, Elon Musk is moving to Texas. Enough is enough. The multi-billionaire and second richest man on Earth is finally taking a stand against California's crushing personal income tax and stubborn refusal to classify employees at his Tesla plant as essential workers. Which they ultimately did, classify them as essential I mean. But he's rich and they didn't do it right away, so you can see why he's leaving the state.

His is a tragic tale of having to pay taxes
and obey laws like a common poor.

We probably should have seen this
coming when he named his car
company after a famous eugenicist. 

Or, put another way, a man who nearly tripled his net worth while the rest of the country was-and still is-spiraling into economic depression is petulantly stomping his foot because the state in whose tech industry he made his fortune in the first place didn't immediately capitulate to his outrageous demand that his company be exempt from the vitally important measures designed to save lives. And so now Musk, in an effort to punish both the State of California and the people whose lives he valued less than his bottom line, is packing up his factory and going somewhere willing to give him anything he wants.

Specifically Texas where Travis County voted back in July to give the automaker $14.7 million in tax breaks to build a plant there. To put that into perspective, Musk's now worth $98 billion-with a "B"-so $14.7 million is .18 percent of his personal worth. I don't know how this move affects his employees, but there are ten thousand factory workers at Tesla's Fremont plant who are either losing their jobs or having to uproot. And I'm not saying that $14.7 million isn't not a lot of money, but I am saying that it's not a lot of money to Elon Musk.

"If there's anything else we can do to sweeten the pot, you just let me know.
Sports tickets, a park named after you. Oh! Tell you what, move to Texas and
you can have one free murder per year. Whatta you say? Can I get a ye-haw?"

-Texas Governor Greg Abbott

Pictured: how most of us feel
about Elon Musk's problems.

And ok, fine, California does have high taxes. The highest in the country in fact. That's fair. And I know I keep harping on how much money he's already got, but he did manage to become the second richest human on Earth and pay to huck an electric roadster at Mars all while living in the socialist paradise that is the Golden State. Oh, and $68.2 billion of that fortune? He made that this year while the rest of us are waiting for Congress to get together on stimulus package. A package we only need because some selfish assholes don't think the rules should apply to them.

Although the more delicious among
the wealthy should probably watch out...

Anyway, I'm not saying "eat the rich" or anything, but you can see why people say "eat the rich," right? Like, making record profits in the middle of an economic crisis right before moving to the libertarian wasteland that is Texas, displacing thousands of workers and their families in the process just so he can save a little (again, to him) on taxes is the kind of thing that makes people grab the pitchforks and torches. Don't get me wrong, I'm not pro-pitchfork or anything, I'm just suggesting that someday, when just two or three people are sitting on all the wealth in the world, pitchforks are inevitable. 

You know, there used to be something called a windfall tax, whereby Congress and I think even state governments could levy a tax on outsized profits. I don't think it's been done since the Carter administration, but then we haven't done global pandemic like this since the Spanish Flu and Elon Musk is kind of a dick, so I don't know, maybe before he moves, the State of California could turn him upside down and fund vaccine distribution with whatever falls out of his pockets?

What? Would you prefer the pitchforks and torches?