Worth 1/2 a billion. Worked for Obama. Complains about wealth inequality.
Insists everyone else pay for his guilt.
Posted on 07/06/2018 10:32:16 AM PDT by ATOMIC_PUNK
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes thinks the government should give cash handouts to people with the lowest incomes in order to fight income inequality. And he thinks the money should come from higher taxes on wealthy individuals and even big tech companies, like Facebook.
Hughes, 34, was one of Facebook’s co-founders, along with Mark Zuckerberg and three of their Harvard classmates, in 2004. He was Facebook’s spokesperson for the company’s first three years, before leaving to finish his Harvard degree and then to work on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign as a media strategist.
He says he's made "half a billion dollars for three years of work" based on the value of his initial stock in Facebook, and his "lucky break" is exactly what's wrong with America today.
“That is indicative of a fundamental unfairness in our economy. Income inequality in our country has not been this bad since the Great Depression. And even though we’re reading the headlines that unemployment is at 3.9 percent and the stock market is at record highs, what’s actually happening is that the median incomes in our country haven’t budged in nearly 40 years. At the same time stories like mine create an illusion of economic opportunity," he told Techcrunch contributors Adriana Stan and Tom Goodwin on their "Interesting People in Interesting Times" podcast.
Hughes, author of “Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn," is not necessarily a believer in the idea of universal basic income (UBI) — championed by entrepreneur Andrew Yang and also supported by billionaires such as Richard Branson and even Facebook’s Zuckerberg — which would see a standard cash payment handed out to all citizens no matter their employment status. UBI “is infeasible in America today,” Hughes explained on the podcast, because making payments to everyone in the U.S. is an “unaffordable” proposition.
However, Hughes believes a reconfigured U.S. tax code could effectively transfer money from wealthy people like himself to those in need, from the unemployed to American workers struggling to make ends meet. He says on the podcast that the "most urgent thing we can do" is roll back tax code changes that lowered rates on corporations and the 1 percent and instead give a $500 monthly tax credit to every working American who currently earns less than $50,000 per year to create an “income floor” — a minimum amount of money that people earn.
The plan would cost roughly $290 billion a year in total, Hughes said in April. He proposed that the government pay for the handouts by imposing a 50 percent tax rate on both income and capital gains for any Americans who earn more than $250,000 per year. (Individuals who earn more than $200,000 per year currently have their income taxed at 35 percent, based on the latest tax overhaul.)
By giving low-income workers $500 a month, Hughes contends, you would guarantee they would not earn less than $6,000 per year. “That’s not enough money to live on. That's not enough money to put up your feet and, like, watch video games — the fear of a lot of folks out there. But it is a massive amount of money in the lives of many working people in our country,” he said on the podcast.
Hughes also proposed further changes to the U.S. tax code that could generate enough money to guarantee an income floor for working Americans. “You could tax data and distribute a check to everybody,” he said, which would see the government tax companies on the data they collect from customers, which is often sold to third parties such as marketers and advertisers.
From social media platforms, like Facebook, to e-commerce giants, like Amazon, large companies collect reams of data on their users and customers that can be put to use in myriad ways — either sold to third parties or used to improve the companies’ own services. “We all create immense amounts of data,” Hughes said. “Not just your Facebook post, but your phones know where you are physically, your Fitbit knows your heart rate, your calendar knows where you’re going to be.”
If those companies are making billions of dollars in profits, in part thanks to data collection, Hughes argues, then “there is an opportunity to say: Our collective data is powering these profits, we should all share a little bit in the upside.”
“You could ask these companies to pay a small tax into a sovereign wealth fund and have that be distributed as a data dividend,” Hughes said on the podcast. “A check to every single citizen as a recognition of the value they’re creating.”
Why not just confiscate the wealth of everyone at Facebook?
That sounds good when you have a billion dollars.
How about he give up 90% of that and spread the rest across his employees.
Charity begins at home.
I am tired of the communist billionaires calling for more communism.
How about a stupid tax. Tax stupid 100%.
Worth 1/2 a billion. Worked for Obama. Complains about wealth inequality.
Insists everyone else pay for his guilt.
Love the picture and the caption.
EXCELLENT video!
Has the guy written a check to the Treasury for half his net worth?
Top marginal rate in the bad old days was 90%. How’d THAT work out?
Tax the rich, feed the poor
‘til there are no rich no more...
Still would leave him $100 million at 90%, I guess he can scrape buy on that but only if his boyfriend works and picks up the health insurance of course...
Ben Shapiro used this sort of math regarding the $20 million a year CEO of Wal-Mart. He gave the number of employees and said that if he took zero salary and divided it up among all of his employees, everyone would get $10 for the entire year.
i.e. the whole “eat the rich” thing is a diversion. It’s nothing but politicized/weaponized envy.
If he thinks this a good idea, let’s start with his money.
Economic ignoramus with more money than brains.
Well ithn’t that thpecial. Who’s the “wife”?
With an economic “school” that produced such luminaries as Gallbraith, do you actually think this moron can think that through?
If this idiot would give most of his money to other people, until he has left in his bank account the exact amount that I have. Then I might believe him.
They don’t get it. Prosperity is created by people who invest their time and money and hard work. They get rich, as they should, and provide the impetus for other, less industrious people, to earn a lot of money.
If you take money from the geniuses, like Bill Gates, you will not have any more Bill Gateses!
I have been a big fan of Bill Whittle from the day I first saw him...I joined his organization and got a set of unbelievably good DVDs titled “What we Believe”.
I was so impressed I was going to buy 20 or 30 sets at $20 a pop to distribute to people, only to fortunately find you can watch them all for free on his YouTube Channel!
Hehehehe...what did he call Michael Moore, “The Mendacious Michigan Manatee of Malevolence, Michael Moore Himself”
Brilliant!!!!
He should be kicked out of the nation that has given him so much Liberty, and sentenced to live all his remaining days in Venezuela. There, before he dies, maybe he will repent his error in judgement about Liberty and economics.
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