Elon Musk, Bernie Sanders, and What Socialism Has Already Cost Us
What two generations have “lost in space" is a foretaste of Sanders’ Socialist vision for healthcare, innovation broadly, and all of civilization.
by Rod D. Martin
February 12, 2016
Elon Musk just announced he’s going to Mars within 10 years. This isn’t one of those “America is going to invent warp drive and defeat the Klingons within this decade” kind of announcements we’ve gotten from President after President throughout my lifetime. If Elon says it, he means it. And given his track record, he’ll do it.
That may sound crazy. We know that Apollo cost (in current dollars) $108 billion. I realize that seems trivial in an era where the Fed just prints money and the President runs up $1 trillion deficits without a thought (recall that in 2008, the proposed cost of TARP -- $700 billion – was thought to be crippling; Obama has run up $10 trillion in debt since then, or half of all debt incurred by the United States since 1776). But it certainly wasn’t trivial in the 1960s, with a radically smaller economy and a dollar tied to gold. It’s not trivial to Elon either: its many times his entire net worth. And he doesn’t get to print money.
At…