Can’t wait until the next Chapo reading series!
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I’ll agree that I would much prefer president Bloomberg to president Biden. He’s more capable by a huge margin. And since he doesn’t really pull lefty voters I’m totally fine with this development.
Just no. People in need of help are our collective responsibility. As such we need to help them through a democratically accountable organ of collective action - - i.e. government. Leaving them to the whims of billionaires is fucking barbaric.
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Agreed. I think his comment this week is being attacked too much.
Sure the voting for trump part is pure insanity but a pretty strong case can be made that if you had a choice between all rich people doing what Gates does or simply taxing them for redistribution you would pick the former every time. It pretty likely dollar for dollar his money is doing more good now than it would in government coffers.
Of course this is a fantasy world. In the real world it needs to be taxed because too few people are doing what gates is doing with his money.
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I reject both of these assumptions. There is no accountability for him in giving away this money, and there is no democratic input into where the money goes. Additionally, he uses his money and his prestige to launder his reputation through favorable media platforms with fawning interviews that never critically examine anything he does.
(Additionally, implicit here is the assumption that government spend is inefficient and private industry is efficient, which is a common right wing trope and again is an assumption I reject.)
We should not and cannot let Bill Gates (or any billionaire) off the hook just for using his money for presumably good causes if we hope to continue to champion the working class and labor in general. The wealth Bill Gates has accumulated is on the backs of the system he has operated in and the labor of those who participate in it; these people should have a say in the use of that wealth, and the mechanism for that is to tax him.
(We can have a separate discussion on the amount of foreign aid that should be funded with US taxpayer dollars.)
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Who do these DISCOURSE people think is actually going to vote for Michael Bloomberg? He’s a new york jew midget with the charisma of a bagel.
The “social liberal fiscal conservative” types are clustered in like 6 zip codes in 4 cities. So despite enjoying lots of nods at Bari Weiss’ dinner parties, they have zero electoral support.
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Note how he, Buffet, etc. are (allegedly) giving away all of their money AFTER they die. Of course these billionaires can logically deduce their heirs don’t need the money and that it may even be counterproductive to their heirs’ happiness, but what they won’t tell you is that they themselves do DESPERATELY NEED the money and that’s why they are hoarding it until the day they die.
Because they are sociopaths that have a deep desire to accumulate power and influence, and dominate and control others. Watch some of “Bill Gates Mind” on Netflix, dude is clearly a psychopath and it’s all a little game to him.
When he is in control and getting the glowing press and adulation for charitable work, then his sociopathic mind is satiated, you are right in a sense that we were lucky that was the solution he deduced after being rightly vilified in Microsoft’s antitrust lawsuit. But the second he is even remotely challenged by someone like Warren then his vicious, malevolent true nature comes out. The same vicious nature that allowed him to accumulate the wealth in the first place.
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Exactly this. “You don’t need to tax me. I am going to give away all my money. Just wait a few decades.”
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Just to pile on Bill Gates and others, let’s not forget that private charities are not terribly efficient. In fact, a fair number of charities have incredibly high expense ratios for marketing and fund raising. There’s a fairly large market in places like San Francisco and New York for large events and parties for rich people, paid for with charitable donations, ostensibly to raise more money for more charities. To some extent, the millionaire/billionaire charity market is largely a scheme to fund tax-assisted galas for the wealthy. The trickle to poor people is somewhat incidental.
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I never understand this. If you are going to give virtually all your wealth away, then don’t you get more satisfaction from doing it when you are alive? Not to mention that you have 100% say in where it goes.
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They get off on power. It’s why every monster family business owner ruins their kids dangling false promises.
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Charity and philanthropy is not the private sector in the way to mean.
This is just wrong. Not debatable. Just wrong. He is giving away his money right now. As we speak and had been for a decade.
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But…
Somehow he has more money than ever though.
If they wanted to give away more they could. Chuck Feeney gave away 8 billion dollars and lived off a few million dollars in an apartment. And didn’t tell anyone about it until a court case forced him to reveal it.
the next line being
— voluntarily giving up a huge chunk of our business and all international deals to avoid the appearance that we were ‘profiting off of the office.’
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Also “giving away” money to a foundation that you have full control over isn’t giving in the way us mere mortals would understand the term.
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