Elon Musk Says ‘Only Way’ the U.S. Deficit Will Actually Get Paid Is by ‘Taxing the Living Daylights Out of Everyone’

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says when it comes to America's growing deficit, the final invoice won't land only on billionaires—it will eventually reach everyone. "The only way the deficit actually gets paid is taxing the living daylights out of everyone," Musk wrote in a post on X in September 2023. His Own Tax Bill Doesn't Change the EquationMusk has also pointed to his own tax payments to illustrate the point. "I have paid over $10B in taxes in a single year, more than anyone in history," he wrote in an X post in May. Those figures, Musk said, demonstrate that even historically large tax payments from individual billionaires don't fundamentally change the nation's fiscal trajectory if annual deficits continue to pile up.