Drawing by Nathaniel St. Clair
Billionaire philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates, appearing recently on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, said a number of things that made Colbert’s liberal audience squeal with delight.
When told that the very existence of billionaires was a signal that capitalism doesn’t work for the many, and that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had mused that America could do without billionaires, the Gates laughed politely and talked vaguely and approvingly of raising taxes on the ultra-wealthy. To those who are given much, much is expected, Melinda Gates said.
Then, after those platitudes were exhausted and the TV audience had slipped into a warm coma of semi-consciousness, the Gates’ let show their true colors and uttered a good old-fashioned Trumpism.
Melinda Gates started by criticizing European countries that have higher tax rates than the U.S., and claimed such rates stifle innovation. “In fact there have been many times when you’re in France and they’ll say, ‘Gosh, we wish we could have a Bill Gates, we wish we could have such a vibrant tech sector,’” Gates said. “But the taxes have been done there in such a way that it doesn’t actually stimulate good growth. So we believe in a good tax system that should tax the wealthy more than low-income people for sure.”
Colbert let that criticism slide. The host probably has no idea what Europe’s economic growth is like or whether France’s tech sector is sluggish or booming, or…