Edward Luce, what do you mean, is Mark Zuckerberg not paying the taxes he should pay, or is he just no taxed enough?

Sir, I come from a nation, Venezuela, where those in power have wasted hundreds of times more fiscal revenues than the amount of taxes citizens might have evaded. So I am no fan of the redistribution profiteers.

Edward Luce writes: “America’s new economy elites tend to cloak their self-interest in righteous language. Talking about values has the collateral benefit of avoiding talking about wealth. If the rich are giving their money away to good causes, such as inner city schools and research into diseases, we should not dwell on taxes. Mr Zuckerberg is not funding any private wars in Africa. He is a good person. The fact that his company pays barely any tax is therefore irrelevant.” “The Zuckerberg delusion” November 16.

What does Luce mean? Is Zuckerberg not paying the taxes he should pay or is he not taxed sufficiently. If the first Zuckerberg should be fined or even go to jail, if the second Luce is close to being defamatory and should suffer some consequences. 

And Luce also holds “The next time Mr Zuckerberg wants to showcase Facebook, he should invest some of his money in an actual place.”

What on earth does Luce mean? That Zuckerberg does not have his money invested in an actual place? That Zuckerberg keeps his wealth all in cash stashed away under his mattress?

I am clearly against how much rents are derived from monopolistic positions, and would of course like to see that kind of rent capturing to be diminished. But I also believe that once wealth has been created, and that wealth has been allocated to different assets, one should not come to the conclusion that redistributing these would actually result in something better.

It is so typical for wealth-redistributors to suggest, like Luce does, that Zuckerberg would do better funding “a newspaper to make up for social media’s destruction of local journalism” without given a single thought to what would then have to be defunded.

What is most conspicuously absent in the aggressive let’s redistribute the wealthiest wealth proposals, is an explanation of how that is done and of what that implies.

For instance, let us assume Mr Zuckerberg has a $200 million dollar Picasso hanging on the wall. How do you convert that painting into food, health services, education or money for the poor, without having to find another wealthy buyer of that Picasso?

And, if you did cash in the $200 million, how much would reach the less wealthy and how much would just enrich the redistribution profiteers… perhaps making them the neo-wealthy?

The fact is that if Zuckerberg had a $200 million dollar Picasso he has, in a sort of voluntary tax, frozen alternative purchasing capacity on his wall. In this case leading for art to be seen as a good investment, and most probably down the line causing some artists down to get some more income for their art. 

But Sir you would also probably agree with Luce in that journalists are worthier than painters. And I don’t hold that against you… because that’s life. Let anyone not wanting to redistribute something more to himself, cash if you are poor and goodwill if you are Zuckerberg, throw the first stone.

PS. I am an ardent defender of a Universal Basic Income because I find that to be the most efficient way to finance, among others, the creation of decent and worthy unemployments. But that redistribution method also needs to be clear on the implications of what is being redistributed. How much would exist in the Frenchman Thomas Piketty’s Paris’ Museum of Louvre, had it not had been for the existence of the odiously wealthy?

@PerKurowski