They express irrational passion. The o-word expresses some kind of lust and righteousness. It’s a pejorative that points to a major grab of assets during the chaos when the Soviet Union collapsed. It’s not a word that any journalist would assign to those two businessmen.
Can you point to a single calm, rational, and fact-based article anywhere that makes the case that Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos should be labeled as a oligarchs?
Well, they have gone. They don’t have to select podcasts where panelists use irrational derisive terms about the leaders of our biggest companies. The mystery is why some podcasts are doing perfectly fine in this business climate.
That’s the question! What is the integrity of labeling Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos as oligarchs?
Can you point to a single calm, rational, and fact-based article anywhere that makes the case that Tim Cook and Jeff Bezos should be labeled as a oligarchs?
You’re not paying attention to the conversation. I had no comment on California’s imposing a 5 percent tax on its billionaires. I did comment on the absurdity of defining stock assets as a multiplier of Class B shares. From the Tax Foundation article I cited above:
Larry Page and Sergey Brin own about 11.3 percent of Alphabet (Google) but control 52.3 percent of voting rights. Similarly, Mark Zuckerberg owns about 13.6 percent of Meta but has 61.0 percent voting control.
Multiplying these founders’ stock investment by their voting rights makes no sense. My point was that that crucial detail was glossed over by Leo and Jeff in IM #853. That little detail can increase the tax burden by 10x on these individuals. That’s why so many of them departed in December of 2025 – they didn’t want the risk of having 10x of their money confiscated by the good State of California.
Do you think California is entitled to taking more than 5 percent of the assets of these billionaires?
That was also clear: I am passionate because the billionaires tacitly rejected the notion that The State could confiscate up to 50% of their assets. They – and their assets – have departed. Now that those billionaires have departed, there will be that much more load on the millionaires. The SEIU got greedy, and all Californians will suffer with their overreach. Whatever the SEIU though they were going to do with those funds is not going to happen.
@iFish: I am passionate because the entire proposal was a spectacular waste. The fools who concocted this initiative never realized how badly it could backfire. Could you not have predicted that?
Correct. Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook are not oligarchs. Andy knows that. Furthermore, using such slurs into a commercial podcast can have unintended consequences.
Allowing 14 million people to illegally cross the border in just four years is not normal. Having tens of thousands of women and children sexually assaulted by the coyotes they hired to bring them across the border is not normal. Having a “border czar” admit they never even went to the border is not normal.
Please tell me that you know that reopening our border is a terrible idea.
There’s a famous quote: The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off. It’s very comfortable for us to have certainty in our positions, but the world is far more complex than that. There’s widespread agreement on my position on California’s proposed billionaire tax. The proposed initiative is deeply flawed and has already had terrible unintended consequences. Anyone that understands the initiative knows exactly what I’m talking about. I’m not “vehement on defending billionaires” but I am vehement in my pointing out the inherent destructiveness of this initiative. Those are two very different things.
In other words—and this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation’s Galaxy-wide success is founded—their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.
The initiative is fundamentally flawed, but its superficial flaws – its noisiness – prevent people from grasping those fundamental flaws. It’s hard for people to wrap their heads around this proposal. I believe the proposal was deliberately designed that way. Read this SEIU “fact sheet” and count how many of the items listed are totally false.
Oligarch was first coined by the USA to describe powerful US businessmen at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, who used their wealth to obtain power and control politics (E.g. financing politicians, or seeking power themselves, although most prefered to be in the background).
Bezos and Cook running the biggest companies in the world, using their wealth and their companies power to direct social trends and paying the President money is the definition of an oligarch.
The term was re-aimed at rich, influential Russians after the breakup of the Soviet Union, but the term doesn’t only apply to Russians, it applies equally to rich people everywhere who try and use their wealth and power to gain political traction or become part of the ruling elite.
I live in a country where tax and total deductions (state pension, healthcare etc.) is between 30-40%and those earning 6 figures or more pay 50% in the earnings over that 6 figure limit E.g. they get the same tax free sum as everyone else, 30% on the next level, then 40% for the next step and 50% on their earnings over that limit.
E.g. 12K tax free, 14-40% on the earning between 12K and 50K, 42% on 50K through 100K and 46% on everything over 100K
The big difference is that the taxes are collected federally, so they are applied to all citizens equally, not at a state level, so it wouldn’t be a single state, here, getting rich, it would be the country getting rich, reducing its debt and having money to spend on services and, probably reducing the taxes for the rest of the population, at least for a year or two.
Why should the billionaires be exempt from paying taxes like everyone else? If they have been avoiding taxes for decades, then a 1 time tax to bring them back in line seems perfectly fair, it isn’t as if they would really miss it, they’d still be richer than 99% of the rest of the population and it wouldn’t affect their standard of living, just their bragging rights.
Edit: @floatingbones I can understand about the noiseyness of the California legislation drowning out the the actual problems with the bill, but even so, for people who have avoided paying more than 1-2% tax in many cases over the last few decades, a one-time 50% fee and then forcing them to pay normal taxes thereafter seems fair, although I would like to see this as a federal scheme, not a state one… But that isn’t ever going to happen either.
This very MBW episode demonstrated why the term doesn’t work the way Andy shock-jocked it. Tim is subservient to his employees. If a sufficient number get upset and leave, then Tim Cook will be gone. Did you miss that during the show: Andy talked about it @11:45:41? It’s ironic that Andy uses the o-word and shows why the label doesn’t work in the very same show. Does he believe his own divisive words? Nope.
California wouldn’t be “getting rich” with this billionaire tax. It would address some certain shortcomings that SEIU-UHW perceives should be addressed. They claim that it’s a one-time tax, but there are is no binding agreement that they wouldn’t come back for another bite or two of the apple in the future. This is especially concerning, because over $1T of the assets they were hoping to tax have already departed California. The SEIU-UHW story never quite made sense, but it makes even less sense after The Trillion was trucked out of California of December 2025.
A thinking person would be asking why is SEIU-UHW proposing this ballot initiative? Who are they? Who are they accountable to? What if they spectacularly fail to delivery on the promises on their fact sheet? Can they go to jail for fraud? If not, can they be sued? The answer to both questions is, “No.” They can do whatever they want and promise whatever they want with no consequences. If I were a shock jock, I might call the SEIU-UHW leaders oligarchs, but I’ll refrain from using that inflammatory language. BTW: I recommend reviewing that “fact sheet” to see which “facts” are indeed completely wrong.
Have they been avoiding taxes? I don’t see that claim anywhere in the SEIU literature. I suggest you research your question first rather than presume they are guilty of not paying their legal tax obligations.
Most of the assets the SEIU aspires to tax are stock. They are paper assets; the value of the stock is not realized until it is sold. That makes sense: the money isn’t real until the stock is liquidated. If the stock price goes down, then its [future] value also goes down.
The real dispute is Class B shares – shares with a multiplier when voting in shareholder ballots. Class B shares are even more restricted than normal stock. The lion’s share of the assets of Page, Brin, and Zuck are Class B shares.
The large objection I’ have discussed here is the Class B shares. The proposed legislation will apply a multiplier to the tax base for the owners of those Class B shares. If the shares give 10x the voting leverage, then the tax will be 10x the amount of the actual stock assets. I cannot fathom why this multiplication of the actual assets makes any sense.
I don’t really know what it would affect. You avoided talking about the 5 percent vs. 50 percent issue in your discussion – the ONLY ISSUE I have discussed in my multiple comments. While even confiscating 50 percent of a billionaire’s assets would make little material difference, forcing Page, Brin, and Zuck to liquidate 50% of their stock would make a huge difference in the governance of their companies. They would no longer be in charge.
Who? Where? What “cheating” has happened?
Did you include the corporate taxes that Apple, Alphabet, etc. have also paid? Since these people are the owners, then they’ve really paid those taxes, too. You might also want to include the taxes paid by individual employees. But the “fact sheet” doesn’t want to frame the argument this way. It’s amazing what “facts” those people with no accountability whatsoever can say on their website.
How would you describe the failure of the SEIU’s fact sheet to provide up-to-date facts? How would you describe the failure of their initiative before it can ever appear on the ballot? How would you describe Gavin Newsom’s failure to inject some reality into this initiatives before this initiative went public? They got all the pain but none of the benefits of this proposal; that is a colossal FAIL.
One final comment: one thing that many large stockholders do is use their stock as collateral for loans. If someone does that, I think they should be forced to realized the value of that stock at that instant. The vacuum seal on Schrödinger’s Stock has been broken; the amount used as collateral should be taxed. I think one would get widespread agreement on that amendment to our federal tax laws.
Phil, I think you’re coming too close to sounding like an apologist for the rich. I think you’ve said your piece, and now it’s time to let the topic rest please.
Except that they meet the dictionary definition of an oligarch. Given the current political situation in the USA, it is hardly surprising that the press is mouse like. Outside the USA, Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg and Ellison are regularly called “modern oligarchs” by the press.
Here are the first 7 news stories that crop up when I search for “are the tech billionaires called oligarchs in the press?” (in German), the list goes on for pages.
FAZ 28.01.2025 - Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos & Co.: How dangerous are the Tech-Oligarchs?
Subheading: The Broligarchs flex their muscles
FAZ 11.04.2025 - Elon Musk & Co: How the Tech-Oligarchs will fail
NTV 26.09.2025 - Script of the Autocrats: Trump’s Tech-Oligarchs take control of US Media
FAZ 16.02.2025 - Survival of the richest: The mindset of the Tech-Billionaires
“Retreat into the luxury hole, when the world collapses? The Median Theorist Douglas Rushkoff investigates the Worldview of the Tech-Oligarchs”
ZEIT 11.03.2025 - Tech-Oligarchs: The electronic coup and its roots
Focus 13.01.2025 - Oligarchy of the Super Rich: How the USA’s Tech-Billionaires rule the World
Given that those that are leaving at the moment are running to the other oligarchs, I doubt it has much to do with his political actions and more to do with how much they are being offered elsewhere. Just look where most of them are going: OpenAI, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta…
Most of them avoid paying taxes, at least income tax. For all of his hundreds of billions of dollars, Musk paid practically zero tax between 2018 and 2021.
Tesla itself has not paid a single cent in federal tax, despite a profit of $4.4b.
Most of Google’s IP is owned by a small company on the Cayman Islands (or some other tax paradise) and Google pays them a majority of their income for the licenses, to avoid tax in other countries, like the USA.
In Europe Google takes more money from the UK Government for advertising than it pays for tax (other than the tax contributions of its staff). Most of its UK income is filtered through Ireland and into a tax haven.
In the EU, Amazon’s income used to all flow through Luxembourg and over to Ireland to avoid tax. Recent changes in EU tax laws have tried to close that loophole.
Big business and billionaires have always been about minimising the tax they pay and avoiding it the best they can, putting as much off shore in tax paradises, for example. When you and I pay more income tax for our paltry (in comparison) income than a billionaire does for his billions, there is something really wrong with the world.
Given that we pay tax in the 30%-50% range, whether the billionaires pay a paltry 5% or a more normal 50% is neither here nor there, when they haven’t paid taxes for most of it at any stage…
You do remember the first Trump term, where he made a special dispensation for repatriated money? All those hundreds of billions locked up in tax paradises that these companies couldn’t use in the USA, because it would cost them a fortune?
They were taking out loans in high-tax regions and paying it back through the money locked up in tax paradises, because the interest was cheaper than repatriating the money.
Then you have a mystery. Facts are stubborn things! Why do no American newspapers use the word that Andy used to label Jeff Bezos and Tim Cook? At best, your example is not entirely accurate. The first head you provided used the word **Broligarch **– a playful portmanteau. And it wasn’t Google Translate that did that; your newspaper headline used the German words Die Broligarchen – completely different nuance than the o-word. Do you see the difference.
Here’s the point: a true [Russian] oligarch answers to nobody. But Andy’s own description @[01:44:21] of this episode notes that Tim most definitely answers to his staff. Not only would a RRO (a Rascally Russian Oligarch) never hold an all-hands meeting, but heads would roll if that hypothetical presentation’s audio were leaked to the press. And Tim knew that his presentation would be leaked.
In short, the shock-jock label he uses a label that really doesn’t fit. The word fits superficially, but it wouldn’t stand up to critical thinking? This is a time that I miss a quick reply from Alex: “Really? You’re going to label Tim Cook as an oligarch?”
I don’t know where “most of them” are leaving. You missed the critical point. They can leave. Tim Cook is subservient to the collective will of those employees. They can leave Apple employment with no consequences; they don’t have to worry about some “oligarch” doing violence to them if they leave. OTOH, those Wascally Wussian Oligarchs do not answer to their employees. And, BTW, the BoD can remove Tim anytime they like. That’s why the term is dreadfully inappropriate to apply to the CEO of a US company.
Um… what? Are you claiming that the 200 CA billionaires paid no income tax? This is like characterizing the US press as “mouselike”. If you can point to hard data please provide it. If not, please note that the claim makes no sense.
Again, not totally accurate – and not tremendously interesting. The loopholes have been closed. The fact-check on your literal statement is here. A business’s job is to comply with the rules. If you think that EU rules are broken (or maybe still broken), then complain to the rule-makers. Complaining here sounds spectacularly useless.
News flash: everybody has always been trying to minimize the tax they pay and avoiding it the best they can. You do it. I do it. Everybody but those Wascally Wussian™ Oligarchs: they like to pay taxes.
All business strive to minimize all their expenses. If there is some loophole, then the onus is on the policy-makers to close the damn loopholes. Complaining about them here sounds silly
Billionaires pay a far higher percentage that 5% on their income. Your real gripe is that you think capital investments should be labeled as income. And you conveniently ignore the other taxes those companies pay and all of the taxes individuals working for those companies pay.
That is a grossly inaccurate representation. The problem was a double taxation on those foreign corporate profits – one companies avoided by keeping those assets in foreign countries. That policy started creating strange fiscal side-effects world wide. AFAIR, there was global agreement that the existing tax policy on foreign earnings made no sense and The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 was a good solution to the problem. Note: “tax cuts” is a misnomer; they were tax rate cuts. The enactment of those tax rate cuts initiated a tremendous period of economic prosperity in (at least) the US that was only derailed by the COVID pandemic. Here’s a summary of the problem and its solution.
Again, this is a total non-sequitur. AFAICT, nobody is concerned about the repatriation and taxation of those funds. The craziness was the rate of double-taxation on the income. Is anyone in Europe still griping about this legislation? Can you appoint to any article that explains why anyone is still griping about that?
Why are you bringing it up? Have you ever griped about it in the past? Why now?
Bingo. That’s the way the world works. Business strive to minimize their tax bill – as do individuals. The absurdity was the double-taxation on the earnings, and that has been fixed. If you think that legislation was/is broken, please find some 3000-5000 essay somewhere that calmly explains some obvious “error” in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. I had no idea that anyone anywhere was still griping about that obvious fix to an obvious problem.
I’m happy with California imposing a 5% asset confiscation on its billionaires. I have stated this over and over in the discussion. My objection has been the #!$$ multiplier that the proposed legislation imposes on the deal. For many of those founders, the confiscation would be more than 50%. Nobody wants confiscation of 50% of the assets of any of those California billionaires. Leo doesn’t want it. Jeff Jarvis doesn’t want it. If you think I’m “too close”, then you need to explain what’s different from what I said and what Leo/Jeff said. Until you do that, it looks like you’re just sniping in this discussion.
I appreciate the conversation here with @big_D. He doesn’t pepper his conversation with absurd loaded questions. I learn things from what he says (and, I fondly hope, vice versa). I sense he’s persuadable – that’s a prerequisite for me to engage in a conversation. I am persuadable.
Are you watching S4 of The Lincoln Lawyer? Elliott Gould’s character has the famous adage about lawyers representing themselves. There’s an applicable corollary of that idea: Geico had a wonderful 2025 30-second commercial noting the absurdity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUHNQZsDQnQ . Here’s an AI’s take on the juxtaposition. I love how Grok gets all meta in its humor.
That’s your interpretation of the conversation?? Interesting. To me the complaint is the lack of the rich CEOs of these companies giving any push back on the growing demands of a fascist government leadership and its agencies.
I can easily summarize the thread without the button, but I get the feeling one of the posters would complain to the mods about someone being mean to them.
(sigh) this comes up frequently. “Get your politics out of my pure tech discussion.”
We do not have the luxury, if we ever did, that politics and tech are not connected. And when tech leaders engage in political actions that affect their users and customers, it absolutely is worth discussion. Just like when a company is sued for antitrust or other violations - it’s worth discussing because it impacts the company.
For example: The Trump Administration’s FTC has threatened an Apple investigation because of some alleged bias in Apple News.
That’s politics right there - and it’s absolutely worthy of discussion.
Does he believe his own divisive words? Nope.
