On Tuesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a virtual appearance at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Summit where he called for the government to end subsidies for something that might seem surprising—electric cars. But that opposition to supporting a product sold by his own company seems a lot less puzzling when expressed in these terms: Now that he has climbed to the top, Musk is extremely anxious to burn the ladder below him. The Build Back Better bill which passed the House and is now under consideration in the Senate, with hopes of final passage before the end of the year, provides as much as $12,500 in incentives for the purchase of an electric vehicle. That bill would also provide monies for building out the charging infrastructure that give consumers the confidence to replace gas-powered vehicles with electric alternatives as their primary means of getting around. But Musk is against both of those things. In fact, he calls for an end to all government subsidies … which is a quite a statement considering that Tesla built its business on subsidized vehicles. Not to mention that the company itself was built on a government loan that it received at a critical point in the company’s history. Without government funding and subsidies, there would be no Tesla. The same is true of Musk’s other company, SpaceX, which not only developed its rockets on the back of government funding, but is still getting subsidies for it’s Starlink space-based internet service and seeking even more.  In both cases, Musk did what America so often applauds entrepreneur for doing—he took tremendous risks and succeeded, making himself enormously wealthy in the process. But Musk was only able to succeed because of government loans and subsidies. Without them, he would be Elon who? Read more