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.

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twoodfin 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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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mashlol 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Didn't AOC's comment specifically say a billion? Why would it imply someone increasing from $200k to $10m didn't earn it?

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Alpha3031 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think putting the scale of dollars aside is reasonable when the entire point is contingent on the scale being at least two orders of magnitude higher and sole proprietorships usually don't scale to the point where fines from ignoring regulations is just the cost of doing business.

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testing22321 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The farmer doesn’t own that mega farm until he pays off the loans.

How does he get the money to do that?

	▲	anon84873628 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		By paying farm worker less than they deserve, farm equipment manufacturers more than they deserve, and using farming practices that destroy the ecology and depend on continued fossil fuel extraction. (And in California where the most profitable crops are perennial fruits and nuts, probably outright stealing water from the aquifer or state irrigation system.)

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bwhiting2356 31 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

they keep moving goal posts. Show me an entrepreneur making 10M AOC says fairly earned it.