Elon Musk Tweets That Potential Recession Would Be A ‘Good Thing’

Elon Musk wrote some oddly flippant Tweets about a potential financial recession, calling that possibility “actually a good thing” in reality.

Musk was responding to a follower who asked him if he believed a recession was still imminent. Musk confirmed yes but then explained that it could be positive because “it has been raining on fools for so long. Some bankruptcies need to happen.”

He also downplayed past COVID-19 lockdown orders as “all the Covid stay-at-home stuff,” and claimed without evidence that remote work makes employees lazier since it has “tricked people into thinking that you don’t actually need to work hard. Rude awakening inbound!”

In another tweet, Musk estimated that the recession would last anywhere from a year to a year-and-a-half. He then said in this period “companies that are inherently negative cash flow (ie value destroyers) need to die, so that they stop consuming resources.

You may assume by these tweets that since Musk is pro “natural selection” in a business sense and given that a company providing no value should just die, he would proudly let his companies crash and sink at the opportunity. But Musk’s companies like Tesla and SpaceX have been some of the largest beneficiaries of government money.

Tesla receives government credits for its creation of zero-emission vehicles, and according to its annual income filings, the company made over $1.4 billion in selling off those credits to mostly overseas manufacturers just in 2021 and around $6 billion altogether.

Some online critics have even noted that Tesla received a low-interest loan totaling $465 million in 2010 to stay afloat as the effects of the 2008 financial crisis were still being felt.