Gates, whose company battled with the government for a decade over efforts Online Cigarettes Store USA to break it up, also stressed that he didn’t approve of Warren’s plan to break up big tech companies.
In one of his more shocking remarks, Gates also refused Newport Pleasure to say whether he would vote for Warren over President Donald Trump in a 2020 matchup, saying he’d pick “whoever I decide would have the more professional approach.”
Gates joins other mega-wealthy people in his criticism of Warren’s tax plan. Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman sent the senator a letter last month saying she had “proceeded to admonish me (as if a parent chiding an ungrateful child) to ‘pitch in a bit more so everyone else has a chance at the American dream.’”Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who is eyeing the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2020, may not have a fan in Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.
The senator, who has made no secret that she believes the richest people in the country have far too much wealth, has proposed a wealth tax as a means of breaking up concentrated fortunes.
And while Gates is in favor of raising taxes in a variety of ways, he does not necessarily share the view that billionaires should not exist at all.
“Maybe I’m just too biased to think that if you create a company that’s super-valuable, that at least some part Newport box 100s cigarettes of that, you should be able to have – a little bit for consumption, and hopefully the balance to do philanthropic things,” he said during a New York Times/DealBook conference on Wednesday.
Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, said Warren “vilifies successful people” and said we should instead “applaud successful people.”