It’s ironic how some of the richest people in the world have the most uncanny, nuanced ideas about money, yet they continue to chase the dollar.
In a recent town hall meeting at Facebook headquarters, CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded to inquiries on how he feels about Senator Bernie Sanders’ perspective on billionaires.
As a part of Sanders’ campaign, the Democratic presidential candidate proposed a tax that would apply to the super wealthy. The wealth tax, which could go up to 8 percent per year, would cut the wealth of billionaires in half over 15 years, according to Sanders. By doing this, Sanders hopes that this would balance the wealth inequality in the U.S. and decrease the amount of billionaires.
Billionaire Zuckerberg agreed with Sanders sentiments that the world shouldn’t have billionaires. “I don’t know if I have an exact threshold on what amount of money someone should have, but on some level no one deserves to have that much money, “he said at the town hall. “I think if you do something that’s good, you get rewarded, but I do think some of the wealth that can be accumulated is unreasonable.”
This is coming from someone who is the fourth richest American and has a net worth of $67B. Though the sole purposes of companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and the like, is to make money, many of the billionaires have vowed to give away most of their wealth. These billionaires include Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner and Elon Musk.
Most of the give away would be to funding research initiatives, indirectly impacting the lower and middle class, but not actually improving the stakes of income inequality or poverty.
The town hall meeting that is usually reserved for internal staff was released via Facebook in response to leaked audio of a previous session that exposed Zuckerberg’s thoughts on Senator Elizabeth Warren’s plans to break up giant tech companies. In the leaked audio, he said he would fight any plans to break Facebook up.
Warren responded with a tweet. “If Facebook finds my scrutiny uncomfortable, here’s what Mark Zuckerberg and his team could work on,” she tweeted. “Ending his company’s illegal anticompetitive practices, protecting consumers’ privacy instead of Facebook’s profits and ensuring Facebook isn’t undermining our election security.”
