This post first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
A tax “system” only the filthiest rich can love.
And shamelessly game.
Someone should start a GoFundMe account to bitch slap this piece of shit. And I say that with no disrespect intended to any other pieces of shit out there.
IIRC, Willard “Mitt” Romney did the same thing, putting lowball vulture capital stock into his IRA and reaping massive untaxed capital gains.
A marriage made in…? Oligarchs, the guys that really run the usable portion of the planet deliver the funding to lobbyists and legislators to write legislation that ensures a profitable symbiosis and maintain a stranglehold on power simultaneously…we look on in askance…
Classic US taxation outcome. The rich pay little, and the poor pay little… The difference is for the rich it’s .01% of their actual income and for the poor its closer to 30%
Remember…the Don once said…“I don’t pay taxes…I’m smart…”
What does that make the rest of us…
"Taxing the rich seems to have become an end in itself,”
Why shouldn’t it be? The very existence of billionaires is, a priori, unethical.
The most revolting aspect of this is that the very rich believe they got that way through the virtues of hard work and sacrifice; they deserve what they have because they’re ethically and intellectually superior.
Thiel is not only an extraordinarily bad person, he’s a bad reader of Lord of the Rings. He named his “analytics” company Palantir–a private spying company, really–after the “seeing stones” of Middle Earth, forgetting the little detail that Sauron, the most powerfully evil being in Middle Earth, had his own seeing stone, and that anyone else who looked into a seeing stone would be seen by Sauron, who would eventually take over and control the seers will, turning him to evil.
On the other hand, maybe Thiel just thinks he’s Sauron.
Greed - that is all it is. How much money does one need to live a comfortable life? Enough is never enough with these oligarchs.
People celebrate this asshole. He actually proposed building a floating Libertarian paradise in international waters, with its own untaxed banking system and high-tech military. This guy can go fuck himself.
Well, the good news in the piece is not mentioned. He will die, and he can’t take it with him.
That still leaves abuses of pass through trusts and other financial vehicles.
Once more showing how the GOP is pro criminal, when the criminals are their supporters.
They have no problem with “Defund the IRS” or “Defund the AFT” or “Defund the FBI”
Pro Criminal.
Leona Helmsley (“Only the little people pax taxes”) never should have been sent to prison. Instead she should have been listened to and called before Congress.
A confiscatory tax policy for the likes of Thiel would be Job 1 in any sane political system.
Thiel makes my skin crawl. His insidious sense of entitlement and righteousness is a slap in the face of us all.
“Floating Libertarian paradise in International waters”
Galt Geyer
Based on his public statements alone, Thiel would have no problem being Sauron whatever he currently thinks.
Twin Towers of greed and social division.
Social division distracts from greed.
Social Stratification is an under-appreciated endeavor.
Of the three–wealth, power, prestige–which counts the most?
Since numbers 2 and 3 can be easily bought if you have enough of number 1, the answer is simple.