Dude was born and raised in South Africa pretending to be an American (much like Ted Cruz who was born in Canada) interfering in US elections. It’s fucked.
Probably tax deductible. Also, aren’t Tesla employees happy their owners gave their billionaire CEO a $50 billion bonus instead of sharing it with all their employees? Now they are just passing the bullshit bonus onto Trump instead of the middle class employees that work there.
There were liberal billionaires holding purse strings about college students protesting the killings in Gaza. This isn't a one-party problem. Though Repubs are more blatant about their corruption because they no longer have any shame.
I'm not saying that this is a good thing, but the meme really wants you to believe that ordinary people have donation limits and rich people don't. This is an oversimplification.
The limit is still $3,300 in individual donations directly to a campaign, no matter who you are. There is no limit on individual contributions to a PAC, so long as the PAC doesn't work directly with any candidate or campaign when spending the money, and this also doesn't matter who you are.
There isn't a literal rule that separates the rich from the poor here. You too can donate your entire savings to a PAC without limits.
The real inequality is how much we can afford to donate. I won't ever have $45,000,000 in my life, so I won't ever get the level of political influence that people like Elon Musk can buy. I can try to exploit the same systems he does, but he'll always be able to exploit them more.
I see, it's not as designed then... I'm not from US and I'm so confused every time I hear about rich people funding your politicians like it's perfectly alright and absolutely not fucked up.
Regardless of donation limits, election is an innately oligarchic feature. Election strongly favors candidates with money and time to spare. Elections also favor those with wide and influential social networks.
When you want to choose a candidate from amongst the elite, elections are great. If you want a democratic choice, you have to use sortition - choosing at random from the whole eligible pool, like we do for juries.
I really wonder why so many of the super-rich back Trump. He has a really bad track record when it comes to honoring contracts, let alone promises. Add to it that he already tried to overthrow democracy, in which case your campaign contributions would become worthless the moment he manages to seize power.
I understand the general sentiment, but this whole "we're no longer a democracy" is at best bullshit and at worst a dangerous statement to repeat. There's a lot to fix in the US democracy (and somehow money involved isn't even the most critical issue right now), but simply stating it doesn't exist could empower some really destructive behaviour. Try living next to Russia for some perspective.
"Elon Musk says" not a Elon fan but where did he say that? I have only seen them say "Sources close to". If he actually does it and we have records yes it is bad. But right now it's just a rumor.