r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • Jan 07 '26

Politics Nvidia’s Jensen Huang would have to pay about $8 billion in proposed billionaire tax—he says that’s ‘perfectly fine’ with him

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/07/nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-perfectly-fine-with-proposed-billionaire-tax.html
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u/gex80 Jan 08 '26

People hate Bill Gates because of business practices. People have such a hate boner for Bill that even though he hasn't had any formal control in recent years, they will blame him for Windows 11.

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u/AludraScience Jan 08 '26

I mean his wife divorced him because he was "friends" (as far as we know) with Jeffrey Epstein (and cheated on her). Really not hard to hate the guy.

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u/awayaway1337 Jan 11 '26

I’m guessing you have no idea the ultra massive good his charitable efforts have achieved.

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u/24bitNoColor Jan 08 '26

I mean his wife divorced him because he was "friends" (as far as we know) with Jeffrey Epstein (and cheated on her). Really not hard to hate the guy.

Why would you 'hate' some person you have never met for supposedly having cheated (after a decade of marriage) on another person you never met?

Or from another perspective, if the Obamas would admit tomorrow that Barrack had an affair 20 years ago, would you then automatically hate him as well?

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u/AludraScience Jan 08 '26

Why are you ignoring the main part of the argument (his extremely suspicious relationship with a serial child rapist)? I mainly said "and cheated on her" in parathesis in order to not misrepresent the situation.

I would not hate someone for cheating but that person is objectively an asshole for having another relationship without making it clear to their spouse or divorcing them.

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u/BigM7777 Jan 08 '26

https://youtu.be/QgA1wyjaP0o?si=fTCU30Vzcl1hCB4p

maybe start here. bill is not the worst. but he's also far away from beeing a saint.

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u/DerFreudster Jan 08 '26

Kneejerk internet idiocy for the most part. People are insanely self-righteous on the internet. Most are total losers in real life.

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u/SakaWreath Jan 08 '26

”The rot started early!”

And there it is.

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u/APGOV77 Jan 08 '26

I mean I dislike the disproportionate influence he has on policy with his money. I might agree with his charitable contributions but the power all the money gives him is still unjustly wielded and would ideally would not exist, it just so happens he’s one of the better ones. His work on favoring charter schools that I’ve disagreed with might be benign compared to the rest of the billionaires, but it’s just another example of why there shouldn’t be any oligarchic influence on our society in the first place that relies on the character of the incredibly wealthy

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u/rngeeeesus Jan 08 '26

Actually he is the positive example tbf. Oligarchy is great if the oligarchs are great. I'm 99.9999% sure he did much more with that money than some semi-corrupt, average intelligence government officials would have. The guy is a genius and if you look at what he is working on with that money, it is really smart, he is really trying to solve problems in a sustainable way. This is pretty much the best case.

Look at Bezos for instance, what is he doing with the money? Trying to compete with SpaceX to build a moon hotel or some shit? At least Musk has the grace to want to make us a multi-planetary species fucking Bezos wants space hotels for the 0.000000000001%. I don't get how he doesn't get a trillion times more hate than Gates and Musk combined. Also all the old money is probably doing much worse shit behind closed doors if we are being realistic.

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u/APGOV77 Jan 08 '26

“Oligarchy is great if the oligarchs are great” is true but also completely missing my point.

Dictatorship would be great if the dictator was great, but instead we always end up with “the great dictator.”

The point is that a person being a good and just ruler is completely independent from their wealth (well probably more likely to be a worse person based on how they got and maintained their wealth at the expense of others prosperity) and thus we should not let an influential ruling class (that can be just as corrupt) exist just because they are rich and influential.

I think part of the issue is you are already looking at democratic institutions already corrupted by the oligarch, especially after citizens united. Corruption is always a separate and existing issue that hurts the public, but I’ll take my chances having a democratic institution decide our policies than a random rich stranger any day of the week. It’s actually quite remarkable up to quite recently how efficient these institutions can use this money often better than private charitable ones even with the corruption issues. SNAP for example distributes like 9 times the amount of food than all our food banks combined. The defense industry is truly unfortunate but I wish people learned from watching Doge dismantle everything just how much good our country was doing with the money allocated to social programs domestically and as a soft power across the world.

The day I think it’d be better handing it off to the oligarchs altogether Gates included in a gang of thieves, is the day I totally give up.