> The weird thing is that none of it is terribly surprising or unexpected.
Have I been living under a rock? I think we may have suspected that the ultrawealthy was not paying their fair share, but paying nothing? Using elaborate loopholes to actually get out of any tax burden at all? I found that to be shocking.
This is disingenuous. ProPublica pointed out that, regardless of the individual transaction, he amassed so much wealth that the .5B in taxes were a drop in the bucket.
PP isn't accusing Musk of cheating the system. They're pointing out that the system is broken.
For example, the $1,249 air is very similar to the $1,299 pro. The MBA has a bigger SSD, but the MBP has a bigger battery, isn't throttled (i.e. has a fan), and also has the touchbar (which may be controversial, but for the sake of comparison, remember that it comes with a manufacturing cost).
It seems reasonable that these are priced similarly. Of course, the machine I want is the MBP with the bigger SSD and no touchbar :)
Handling the burden of hardware fragmentation will reduce their quality and velocity. It's not in their DNA and definitely not in their strategy to make this happen.