'No One Deserves To Have That Much Money' — Just Mark Zuckerberg Talking About Billionaires

Mark Zuckerberg is one of the world's richest people and owns a corporation often pulled up for data leaks, including one that allegedly helped Donald Trump win the presidential election of 2016. Bernie Sanders is a Democratic senator known for his stance against billionaires. It's hard to imagine that the two could agree on something but in 2019, the Meta CEO said he "understands" where Senator Sanders comes from when he says 'billionaires shouldn't exist.'

"No One Deserves That Much Money"

In a question-and-answer session with employees live-streamed in late 2019, a Facebook employee asked Zuckerberg to share his opinion on Sanders’ comment that billionaires should not exist. The company CEO, who was worth about $70 billion at the time, surprised everyone by saying, “I understand where he’s coming from,” according to CNN. Zuckerberg said he didn't have a threshold in mind but "at some level, no one deserves to have that much money."

The Multi-billionaire added a caveat and said that while it can be "unreasonable"  how much wealth individuals can amass, it also “may be optimal” for society at large, in case the alternative to it is the governments controlling all of the wealth. “I think if you do something that’s good, you get rewarded,"  he said at the event.

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Zuckerberg's comment may not be that surprising if one considers that he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook shares through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI).

Talking about their pledge, Zuckerberg said that there are people who would say even that is bad. “We are funding science, for example. And some people I think would say, ‘Well, is it fair that a group of wealthy people get to (to some degree) choose which science projects get worked on,’” Zuckerberg told CNN. 

Joining Zuckerberg, fellow tech billionaire, Bill Gates also expressed his views on billionaires and the tax system. Gates appeared alongside Senator Sanders on the new Netflix series "What’s Next? The Future with Bill Gates."

Despite their differences, Gates and Sanders sat down together to discuss wealth and taxation for the latest episode. The Microsoft co-founder said that if he designed the U.S. tax system, then billionaires like him would be a lot less wealthy.

One of the 10 richest people in the world, as per the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, Gates said that it was a "strange thing" to "have people worth a billion, 10 billion, a hundred billion." He said that under the tax system that he would have created, the wealthy would have about a third of what they now have. Sitting opposite to him, Sanders chimed in that he would "go a lot further."

The comments made by Gates on the show reflected what he told The Independent in an interview. He said that if he designed the tax system, he would be billions of dollars poorer. Gates suggested that the tax system could be more progressive without damaging the incentive to innovate. He further shared that he was in favor for an estate tax as well.

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Gates had previously indicated that according to him, the world would be better off if billionaires "voluntarily chose to give more money away" and fight inequity in the world, as AP reported.