Neat story about Hal Taussig, the 85-year-old Media philanthropist, who lives frugally on social security and rides a bike everywhere.
I've met and written about Hal myself and he's delightful guy.
He decribes himself as a "Christian Marxist" but really he is so much better than that. Marxists believe in the workers controlling the "means of production" and an intellectual vangard running the government. 'From all according to their abilities to all according to their needs.' With the vangard deciding just what those abilities and needs are. Blah, blah, blah. It's a system that hasn't and doesn't work anywhere in the world.
What Hal does is simply give his money away like any good, decent capital-having philanthropist. It should be remembered that there have been thousands of good capitalists who have made and given away far more money than Hal ever has. Few of them live as frugally as Hal, but many of them, (Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Gates, Buffett, etc.) have given away billions of dollars to good causes and charities.
They had all that money because they live in a society that values individual freedom and initiative. One that allows people to keep the fruits of their labor (at least some good portion of them) and dispense them as they see fit.
Hal is no more a Marxist than Sen. Elect Chris Coons is, even though he too once described himself as such.
Anyway, it's a nice story.
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