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tim333today at 2:01 PM1 replyview on HN

Technically if you look at AOC's statement he mentions

>AOC: “There’s a certain level of wealth and accumulation that is unearned. You can’t earn a billion dollars. You just can’t earn that. You can get market power, you can break rules, you can abuse labor laws, you can pay people less than what they’re worth, but you can’t earn that”

there's some truth there in that PG is talking about capital gains as the owner of a company and AOC is talking about earnings as payment for labour which are different things both in reality and in tax policy and law.

The capital gains can be unfair in that most of them go to founders and VCs and not much to other employees and stakeholders who have contributed as well.


Replies

twoodfintoday at 2:38 PM

Putting the scale of dollars and the startup world aside, AOC’s comments read that way would suggest a farmer who gets a series of loans from the bank to help him expand his family farm from a $200K sole proprietorship to a $10M sole proprietorship didn’t “earn” it either.

I don’t think a definition of “earn” that excludes cases like that captures the generally understood meaning.

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