United States Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has called tech billionaire Elon Musk “a hypocrite” for his recent tweet opining that another government stimulus package would not be in people’s best interests.
Bernie claims Musk received billions from the government as corporate welfare from taxpayers, but wants to stop ordinary Americans from receiving unemployment benefits.
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Musk on July 24 tweeted: “"Another government stimulus package is not in the best interests of the people imo", which Sanders on July 25 replied with:
"What a hypocrite. Elon Musk has received billions in corporate welfare from US taxpayers. Now he wants to stop 30 million Americans who lost jobs from receiving $600 a week in unemployment benefits, while his wealth has gone up by $46.7 billion over the past 4 months. Pathetic." (imo is in my opinion)
Musk later through the day followed up his original tweet with what seemed like clarifications of his stance.
Adding: "As a reminder, I’m in *favor* of universal basic income"; "Goal of government should be to maximise the happiness of the people. Giving each person money allows them to decide what meets their needs, rather than the blunt tool of legislation, which creates self-serving special interests." and "These are jammed to gills with special interests earmarks. If we do a stimulus at all, it should just be direct payments to consumers."
The United States announced $600 a week unemployment benefits for citizens under the Cares Act. While the official expiry date of the benefit is July 31, technicalities mean the effective last date for benefits is July 25.
Congress can choose to continue benefits by various means such as introducing gap measures or cutting down the sum given out.
Musk has famously pushed for businesses and companies to restart completely, going as far as tweeting: “the coronavirus pandemic is dumb” and that virality and fatality rates have been “over-stated.”
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