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A comment on Tech Billionaires Hack Their Taxes with a Philanthropic Loophole. Parent comment

Re:Tech Billionaires Hack Their Taxes with a Philanthropic L... by WalterBright on Sunday August 05, 2018 @03:30PM (#17693024)
> extracting wealth from people who actually work for a living

This is the Labor Theory of Value, which is regularly debunked. Capitalists create value, they don't take it from others. (You can see this on the balance sheet - the business is worth more than its "book value".)

> Capitalism isn't a system that benefits the vast majority of people

The vast majority of immigrants arrived in the US with little more than a suitcase, yet capitalism made them wealthy.

> bad for our planet and society

Non-capitalist societies are far more destructive to the planet.

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Re:Tech Billionaires Hack Their Taxes with a Philanthropic L... by ChristianBundy on Sunday August 05, 2018 @04:09PM (#17693241)
1. You're conflating owners and managers. Private ownership of the means of production doesn't add anything of value, but of course organizing people and resources is valuable. My point is that you don't need to have a monoply (or oligopoly) of power concentrated in private shareholders.

2. I'm not interested in myths. Look up statistics on immigrant poverty under capitalism and let me know whether you'd like to continue this line of reasoning.

3. Some, yes. All? Of course not.

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Re:Tech Billionaires Hack Their Taxes with a Philanthropic L... by WalterBright on Sunday August 05, 2018 @06:22PM (#17693896)
> Private ownership of the means of production doesn't add anything of value

It absolutely does, because it decides where to allocate scarce resources.

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Re:Tech Billionaires Hack Their Taxes with a Philanthropic L... by ghufran_syed on Sunday August 05, 2018 @04:21PM (#17693326)
About point 2: Almost all wealth in this country is owned by people who do not identify as Native American. The US is the most successful society economically over a long period of time. The US has a capitalist system, probably more so than most other countries. Doesn’t that imply that the wealth in this country was generated by immigrants (and their descendants) under a capitalist system?
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Re:Tech Billionaires Hack Their Taxes with a Philanthropic L... by WalterBright on Sunday August 05, 2018 @04:39PM (#17693412)
Where do you think the vast wealth in the American middle class came from? It wasn't picked off the ground, it wasn't here in 1800, and the immigrants did not arrive with it.
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Re:Tech Billionaires Hack Their Taxes with a Philanthropic L... by WalterBright on Sunday August 05, 2018 @06:20PM (#17693884)
> All? Of course not.

I can't think of any. Do you have any examples?

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