Article condemns Zuckerberg for deciding for himself to whom to give his money.
Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years ago to Business
The author, Mr. Eisinger, seems to start from the premise Mark Zukerberg's money is not his. Zukerberg pledged to donate most of his wealth to humanitarian causes. I think this is a good thing if he wants to do it. It's unfortunate that Mr. Eisinger condemns the move because no one else gets a say in whom he gives it to. “The money isn't really 'his',” Eisinger says.
He created something that people want to pay money to advertise on. My wife used it to promote her business, but never paid for advertising. She got more business than she could handle and hired another attorney and an assistant. They served customers. Eventually her firm started some minimal paid advertising. All those people worked and benefited, created something that wasn't there before. All that stuff belongs to people. Zukerberg earned his money, employees earned their money, my wife earned her money, the customers earned the service they paid for. If this had happened ten years earlier before Facebook, it would have been harder. All these people benefited from what Zukerberg created.
It's offensive when he pledges it to charity for someone to say he could have given it to infrastructure projects. It's ironic to say this about someone who created an amazing new infrastructure to connect producers with consumers.
Read the excerpts below to see something that could have come from AS.
How Mark Zuckerberg’s Altruism Helps Himself
But what this means is that he amassed one of the greatest fortunes in the world — and is likely never to pay any taxes on it. Anytime a superwealthy plutocrat makes a charitable donation, the public ought to be reminded that this is how our tax system works. The superwealthy buy great public relations and adulation for donations that minimize their taxes.
Instead of lavishing praise on Mr. Zuckerberg for having issued a news release with a promise, this should be an occasion to mull what kind of society we want to live in. Who should fund our general societal needs and how? Charities rarely fund quotidian yet vital needs. What would $40 billion mean for job creation or infrastructure spending? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a budget of about $7 billion. Maybe more should go to that. Society, through its elected members, taxes its members. Then the elected officials decide what to do with sums of money.
In this case, it is different. One person will be making these decisions.
But I think I might do a good job allocating $45 billion. Maybe even better than Mr. Zuckerberg.
Mega-donations, assuming Mr. Zuckerberg makes good on his pledge, are explicit acknowledgments that the money should be plowed back into society. They are tacit acknowledgments that no one could ever possibly spend $45 billion on himself or his family, and that the money isn’t really “his,” in a fundamental sense. Because that is the case, society can’t rely on the beneficence and enlightenment of the superwealthy to realize this individually. We need to take a portion uniformly — some kind of tax on wealth.
He created something that people want to pay money to advertise on. My wife used it to promote her business, but never paid for advertising. She got more business than she could handle and hired another attorney and an assistant. They served customers. Eventually her firm started some minimal paid advertising. All those people worked and benefited, created something that wasn't there before. All that stuff belongs to people. Zukerberg earned his money, employees earned their money, my wife earned her money, the customers earned the service they paid for. If this had happened ten years earlier before Facebook, it would have been harder. All these people benefited from what Zukerberg created.
It's offensive when he pledges it to charity for someone to say he could have given it to infrastructure projects. It's ironic to say this about someone who created an amazing new infrastructure to connect producers with consumers.
Read the excerpts below to see something that could have come from AS.
How Mark Zuckerberg’s Altruism Helps Himself
But what this means is that he amassed one of the greatest fortunes in the world — and is likely never to pay any taxes on it. Anytime a superwealthy plutocrat makes a charitable donation, the public ought to be reminded that this is how our tax system works. The superwealthy buy great public relations and adulation for donations that minimize their taxes.
Instead of lavishing praise on Mr. Zuckerberg for having issued a news release with a promise, this should be an occasion to mull what kind of society we want to live in. Who should fund our general societal needs and how? Charities rarely fund quotidian yet vital needs. What would $40 billion mean for job creation or infrastructure spending? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a budget of about $7 billion. Maybe more should go to that. Society, through its elected members, taxes its members. Then the elected officials decide what to do with sums of money.
In this case, it is different. One person will be making these decisions.
But I think I might do a good job allocating $45 billion. Maybe even better than Mr. Zuckerberg.
Mega-donations, assuming Mr. Zuckerberg makes good on his pledge, are explicit acknowledgments that the money should be plowed back into society. They are tacit acknowledgments that no one could ever possibly spend $45 billion on himself or his family, and that the money isn’t really “his,” in a fundamental sense. Because that is the case, society can’t rely on the beneficence and enlightenment of the superwealthy to realize this individually. We need to take a portion uniformly — some kind of tax on wealth.
He has an opportunity to establish a place to nurture individual liberty and free markets. Those have been the fountainhead of better life for billions of people. No charitable donation has ever been comparable, and never will be.
That legacy could be as important as the Industrial revolution and the creation of America. It is the opportunity of millennia. To waste it is the antithesis of production.
However, since he created the wealth, it's his decision.