Signed Pledge
MacKenzie Scott, Bezos’s ex-wife, signed the pledge not long after the two announced their split. Scott said Tuesday that she has since donated $1.7 billion to several causes including racial equity, climate change and public health.
“There’s no question in my mind that anyone’s personal wealth is the product of a collective effort, and of social structures which present opportunities to some people, and obstacles to countless others,” she said.
Big Tech companies have earned some grudging respect, even from critics, during the pandemic.
“We have been fortunate to have these digital technologies,” said MIT’s Acemoglu. “Without them, the fallout from the lockdowns and social distancing would have been worse.”
That may come with a cost: “This is going to make the domination of tech companies over the economy and our social lives much worse, and it’s going to significantly accelerate the trend toward greater automation,” Acemoglu said. He warns that tech’s rapid ascent may deepen inequality, shrink the number of good jobs, and weaken democracy.
Such concerns could help shift Big Tech and its billionaires into the crosshairs of governments whose finances have been devastated by the pandemic. Heading into this year’s U.S. presidential race, Elizabeth Warren and Sanders proposed wealth taxes on billionaires, an idea that polled well with voters.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, hasn’t embraced the wealth tax, but he’s campaigning on higher rates on the rich and corporations, as well as the closing of estate-tax loopholes.
Absent a wealth tax or some other innovative new kind of levies, it will be difficult to tax the fortunes of Zuckerberg, Bezos and other tech billionaires. Much of their fortune is in the form of rising stock, which isn’t taxed until it’s sold.
“Billionaires are accumulating a huge amount of unrealized capital gains, on which they’re not paying much –- if any -- tax,” said University of California at Berkeley economics professor Gabriel Zucman, who helped Sanders and Warren develop their wealth-tax proposals.
--With assistance from Pei Yi Mak.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.