Tag: Bill Gates

So, Elizabeth Warren has a two percent wealth tax plan with three percent on people with more than a billion dollars. She’s suggested raising the over a billion percentage to six percent… And Bill Gates says….

I’m all for super-progressive tax systems,” he said. “I’ve paid over $10 billion in taxes. I’ve paid more than anyone in taxes. If I had to pay $20 billion, it’s fine.

“But when you say I should pay $100 billion, then I’m starting to do a little math about what I have left over,” he added. “You really want the incentive system to be there without threatening that.”

Mr. Gates is the second-richest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine, with a net worth of $106.2bn.

Well, of course, she didn’t say that, she said six percent. A little over six billion in the first year. Bill’s 64, and of course, the actual nominal amount will decrease each year unless he can grow his money faster than six percent, in which case, what’s the problem?

Elizabeth Warren

He’ll never, ever be anything less than a multi-billionaire, in other words. His bullshit about 100 billion is just that, fear-mongering bullshit.

And if he’s paid ten billion on 106 billion, well his tax rate was about ten percent. Most middle class families would love to have that low a tax rate. (Yes, I know it’s on income, not wealth, but the point is he obviously paid very low income taxes. Which, actually, is what the data shows–the middle and working classes pay a higher percentage than the rich.)

Bill, of course, is the “good” billionaire.” But he’s the guy who gave straight-up fascist Modi a reward. He’s the guy who spent millions to change the educational system in the US, then admitted that the model he successfully pushed doesn’t actually work. He’s the guy who used brutal, monopolistic practices to build Microsoft.

And he doesn’t want to pay a six percent wealth tax that will be used to provide universal healthcare.

Billionaires are bad, and, as an even more radical and willing-to-take-on-billionaires candidate, Bernie Sanders, said, they shouldn’t even exist.

As for Billy, he thinks he deserves to be one of the richest people in the world because he created the Wintel monopoly and crushed rivals with practices which were, under black-letter law, illegal.

But one can understand why he might prefer a Republican president. After all, it was George Bush, Jr. who withdrew the anti-trust suit which would have broken up Microsoft and left Bill worth a lot less than a 106 billion dollars.

Trump, of course, massively dropped tax rates on the rich.

Money comes first, ethics come second. Bill’s always understood that.

Republicans have been pretty good to Bill. Performative wokeism and his good image aren’t worth a six percent wealth tax. As for people without healthcare, welll, better they die than he pay taxes which would leave him a multi-billionaire for the rest of his life.

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Money Is Power and Billionaires Can Subvert Democracy

By Ian Welsh

On November 27, 2017

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Money is the ability to tell other people how to spend their time: what to make, what to do. It is that simple.

The Washington Post has a story about how the Gates Foundation pushed the Common Core curriculum. The details are there, but the bottom line is that once they decided to do it, it happened fast:

The result was astounding: Within just two years of the 2008 Seattle meeting, 45 states and the District of Columbia had fully adopted the Common Core State Standards.

This wasn’t done “democratically,” it was done with money, which bought officials.

The biggest problem with vast wealth isn’t that it directly makes other people poor, it is that it makes rich people disproportionately powerful. They have so much money that they can buy the state.

When they do so, they usually do so in their self-interest. Sometimes, as with the Gates’s in this case, they do so out of a desire to good.

But their idea of good may not be the same other people’s idea of good. They have vastly more weight than ordinary people, and in an unequal society, they can buy people.

It is that simple.

One way vast inequality corrupts is that it makes some people powerful enough to overthrow democracy; in general (as with Citizen’s United), and in particular cases.

Most rich people are not good people. It is well established now, in the academic literature, that rich people have an empathy deficit, that they give less as a percentage of their wealth and income, and that (to put it unscientifically) they tend to become assholes. They don’t need to care what other people think, or about others’ welfare.

And even when they do try to do good, well, they don’t need to go through normal democratic processes; they just buy the results.

Nor are they effective. There is a weird myth that “the private sector” is why solar power is cheap now. That’s effectively a lie. Solar power is cheap now because countries subsidized the markets for years (Germany in particular), and because China pushed it as a policy as well.

The Internet exists because of the public sector. Also, for decades, the US government bought the vast majority of all low-to-high-end computers. If they had not, you would not have cheap, modern electronics. Anyone who says otherwise is either a liar or doesn’t know the actual history.

Money is power. When the government relies on rich individuals and corporations to do what should be done by government, it takes longer and produces less welfare than it should, and it leads to the capture of the government by the rich.

A 90 percent top marginal tax rate and punitive capital and estate taxes aren’t necessary because “government needs the money,” they are necessary so that the rich don’t become so rich they buy the State.

And that includes the ones who try to do some good, like Gates.

(More on rich states vs. rich individuals soon.)

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: Bill Gates

There Are No Good Billionaires (Bill Gates Edition)

Money Is Power and Billionaires Can Subvert Democracy