We don’t have any oligarchs in the US. You’re spouting Marxists nonsense. Further, It has nothing to do with the rollout of data centers. While there is a scarcity of compute, there are opportunities for communities to ask for large concessions to place data centers to fund all kinds of initiatives. Under some scenarios, entire areas could basically have their power needs totally subsidized. It’s not crony capitalism but whether those tradeoffs are worth it to draw in business and the voters want it.
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Yes, and what we get are massive tax breaks to Meta arranged by corrupt politicians like Gov Jeff Landry with little input or benefit to the local community.
If this was on the up and up, it would be arranged by public debate rather than a blizzard of NDAs.
The average effective property tax rate in Louisiana is 0.55%. What are the odds that a poor community like Rayville is going to see $275 million per year of local property taxes on a $50 Billion investment in a Jeff Landry deal?
intercst
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I’m all for transparency. But, if you don’t know the full terms of the deal, isn’t it difficult to know what the total benefits will be to the region?
1 in 5 Michigan lawmakers signed NDA’s as part of the states economic development program, which prevented sharing information with voters. It’s hardly unusual but I would prefer broader transparency.
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Let’s say Joe has house worth (assessed) $300k, and pays an effective property tax of $1650 a year. If Joe buys a large flat screen TV for $2000 and attaches it to the wall in the family room, does his assessed value go up by $2000 and his taxes also go up? Probably not. Same here. They’ll (eventually, after the tax abatements expire) pay commercial property taxes based on the real value of that data center land+structure like every other commercial structure in that county. They will NOT pay on the $50B total investment in “stuff” to put inside their building … just like Joe doesn’t pay when he adds a big TV to his house.
In most states businesses pay property tax on the value of tangible personal property (TPP), like equipment, computers, furniture, etc.
Louisiana has a particularly high TPP tax rate of 15%. However, Zuckerberg got the oligarch job creator TPP tax rate of 0%. He also pays only 20% of the real property tax rate.
And no reasonable person would expect a company like Meta to have to pay sales or use taxes, right? Of course not. So those have been removed too. But to be fair, the exemption is temporary. It expires after 30 years.
And let’s get real here: Larry Ellison owns an entire Hawaiian island. Zuck only owns part of one. Zuck can’t get to full island ownership if he’s paying taxes like the rest of us.
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Definition of an oligarch.
- Extreme Wealth: They control massive business empires, natural resources, or industries like banking, energy, and media.
- Political Influence: Unlike a standard billionaire who only focuses on business, an oligarch actively shapes laws, political campaigns, and public policy to protect or grow their power.
- Self-Interest: They use their position to benefit their small elite group rather than the general public.
Yeah, we have oligarchs.
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This is why his user name is “fool me”.
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Like so many things, those seeking power and control want to redefine words for their own purpose. Oligarchs have been traditionally those that have gained control through govt influence and favoritism unfettered control of industries.
The fact that someone builds a business and becomes wealthy and uses that money and influence does not make them an Oligarch.
It’s a twisted up term to draw some comparisons to the historical class wars between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie under communism/marxism. If you want to find oligarchs, go to Russia. If you want to see someone starting with nothing and building vast fortunes, look to the US. It’s nothing more than noise from the mitten man from Vermont, who spent a lifetime in office to rename a couple of post offices.
Nobody used these terms a decade ago. They were simply captains of industries, Magnates, Moguls or the affluent. Language is being co-opted, which is another feature of cultural marxism.
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LMAO just thinking so do you.
I don’t care what word you use. Yesterday’s robber barons are today’s oligarchs. You wanna call them something else, go ahead. That doesn’t change the fact that they exist and are using their billions to redirect government to benefit themselves.
And cultural marxism is a far right wing/antisemitic conspiracy theory. I seriously doubt those folks are the ones disparaging the likes of Elon Musk. Unless you are redefining the language to suit your own argument…
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Ummm, you might want to look up the definition of oligarch.
Yeah, you should definitely look up oligarch in the dictionary.
I think we should call them kleptoplutoligarchs.
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Words have meaning and those using the term as a catch all for billionaires in the US are either parroting others or to create a stigma. It’s only become popular in its use recently and done so deliberately for political purposes and aimed only at the wealthy opposed to their views.
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Whatever you say comrade.
For decades in Western media, “oligarch” was an exoticized label applied almost exclusively to post-Soviet businessmen who acquired state assets corruptly. High-profile left-leaning figures have intentionally broken this convention. They argue that the fundamental behavior—using immense wealth to buy political protection and favorable laws—is the exact same regardless of whether the billionaire lives in Moscow, Silicon Valley, or New York
Really?
We probably don’t have peasants either.
We just demonize other countries with those terms.
In reality, it’s all the same everywhere.
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Good one. But…since I’m not Russian, shouldn’t you call me something else?
“Increasingly, though, a wide range of voices on the left and right are speaking in exactly those terms. Steve Bannon has complained that his party had been hijacked by “oligarchs” such as Rupert Murdoch and hedge-funder Ken Griffin. A bestselling book described Bannon’s former bosses, the Trumps, as American Oligarchs. Donald Trump Jr., for his part, complained that China controls “America’s oligarchs.” A group of congressional Democrats is pushing the OLIGARCH Act to tax and audit the wealth of the richest Americans. “We’re clearly living in the age of the petulant oligarch,” Paul Krugman wrote recently, in reference to Elon Musk. Pick any billionaire with a media company—or any billionaire who’s tried to bankrupt one—and chances are you can find a prominent critic lambasting them in language once reserved for upwardly mobile ex-Soviets.”
"America’s oligarchs nowadays are more comfortable being called “mega-donors,” a term commonly used by media outlets of all stripes. The term is interesting in that it acknowledges the political role of the rich, but it casts their attempts to dominate and control our institutions as a donation, rather than as an expression of democracy-distorting power. (For the record, the only true US mega-donors are people like Marc Satalof, the 76-year-old recently in the news for donating his 280th pint of blood—35 gallons over a half-century.)
When it comes to politics, oligarchs are the opposite of donors. For millennia, they have deployed their wealth power to advance their interests. Whether operating in liberal democracies or dictatorships, they exhibit only one consistent pattern: defense of their riches.
The American experience proves this beyond any doubt. A 2020 study on the explosion of US inequality by the Rand Corporation—a conservative think tank—estimates that, since 1975, some $50 trillion in wealth has been shunted from US workers earning below the 90th percentile into the hands of the top-earning 1 percent. Had the inequality levels of the mid 1970s held constant, the study showed, the bottom 90 percent would today be bringing in at least $2.5 trillion more per year—which translates into a median family income 67 percent higher than the current figure."
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Would these gentlemen be considered oligarchs?
George Soros
Reid Hoffman
Michael Bloomberg
Howard Schultz
Tom Steyer
Michael Moritz
Neville Roy Singham
If they have extreme wealth and use it to influence government policy to benefit themselves, then yes. There are oligarchs on both ends of the political spectrum. And probably in the middle too.
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Welp, if we’re going back to the roots, it would depend on whose interest they’re serving.
Aristotle would call some aristocrats and others oligarchs, depending on how they use their wealth to influence politics.
If we’re uncomfortable calling Musk an oligarch, I’m cool with Perverted Aristocrat.
True dat!
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How do you say “I’m a Groyper”, without saying “I’m a Groyper”?
I love Jeopardy, let’s do another!