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It may be the first time a billionaire and a socialist agreed on anything.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg surprisingly found common ground this week with Sen. Bernie Sanders — who recently declared that billionaire shouldn’t exist.
“On some level, no one deserves to have that much money,” Zuckerberg — worth $69 billion — said Thursday when asked about the Democratic socialist’s comment during a Q&A with employees, Business Insider reported.
“I think if you do something that’s good, you get rewarded. But I do think some of the wealth that can be accumulated is unreasonable,” Zuckerberg added during the live-streamed event.
Zuckerberg noted that he and his wife Priscilla Chan have pledged to divest much of their wealth over their lifetimes through philanthropy.
But he acknowledged criticism that that kind of giving leads to a small group of rich individuals selecting what does and doesn’t get support.
“We’re funding science for example,” he said. “And some people would say ‘Is it fair that a group of wealthy people get to, to some degree, choose which science projects get worked on?’ I don’t know how to answer that exactly.”
“The alternative would be the government chooses all of the funding for all the stuff,” he said. “What I worry about a little bit when I hear sentiments like what the senator suggested is the suggestion that this should all be done publicly, I think, would deprive the market and world of a diversity of different attempts that can be taken.”
Sanders, a 2020 presidential hopeful, made the comment while outlining his proposal for a wealth tax and a national wealth registry.