President Joe Biden on Friday signaled a little patience with the world’s richest man wringing his hand over the US economy, dismissing comments from Tesla CEO Elon Musk about job cuts at his electric car maker.
According to a Reuters report on Friday, Musk said in an email to Tesla executives that he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy and would cut 10% of paid jobs while increasing the number of hourly workers.
He also ordered the company, which employs about 100,000 people, to “pause all rents around the world”.
Asked by a reporter about Musk’s comments, Biden listed a number of American carmakers that have managed to increase their investments “extremely”, especially in the production of electric cars. Unlike Musk, who strongly opposes labor, Biden noted that many of the new jobs in the industry are union.
“I think Ford is stepping up investment in building new electric vehicles: 6,000 new employees – union employees, I might add – in the Midwest,” the president told a news conference on the May job report on Friday. “The former Chrysler Corporation, Stellantis, they also make similar investments in electric vehicles.”
“You know, good luck on his trip to the moon,” Biden added, referring to Musk’s space research company SpaceX.
SpaceX is currently charging $ 62 million for launches with its Falcon 9 rocket, and Musk has promised to resume moon landings and send a crew mission to Mars.
The Ministry of Labor’s May Jobs Report showed that employers had added 390,000 jobs and the unemployment rate was 3.6% for the third month in a row.
Tesla’s CEO had previously noted inflation, which is currently at its 40-year high. Last month, he joined Amazon founder Jeff Bezos – also one of the richest people in the world – in claiming the pandemic relief packages were to blame.
As Common Dreams reported in April, corporations shifted consumer spending and reversed small increases in wages given to workers during the pandemic by raising prices.
As economist and former Labor Minister Robert Reich said in a publication published by Common Dreams earlier this week, the real problem in the economy right now is neither inflation nor rising wages.
“The real problem is the increase in corporate power and the decline in the power of workers over the last 40 years,” Reich said. “Unless we tackle this growing imbalance, corporations will continue to suck the profits of the economy into the pockets of their CEOs and shareholders – until the daily Americans are shattered.
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