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Billionaire hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller said Friday he doesn’t have a problem with a higher capital gains tax.
“I don’t really think capital gains promote investment as much as advertised out there. It’s hard for me to believe that Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos would have said, ‘Oh my God, the capital gains is going to be 35% and I’m not going to be trying to found Amazon or Google.’ So I don’t have a problem with it,” Druckenmiller said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box. “
Former Vice President Joe Biden, the front-runner in the Democratic presidential primary, said recently that the current 20% capital gains tax is “much too low.”
“The problem with the capital gains hike … is that it might not raise that much revenue. And I’m not into something just because it’s fair. But frankly, I think I kind of agree with Biden,” Drukenmiller said.
Taxing the wealth has been a theme in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has proposed an “ultra-millionaire” tax on the wealthiest families in America, and Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to jack up the estate tax, including a 77% rate for over $1 billion.
“The narrative about inequality is correct, but one piece of the story is left out, is that everybody is doing better and unfortunately the people [at the top] are really accelerating. I don’t believe the way to solve this is let’s just rule everything and everybody would be worse off,” Drukenmiller said.
The hedge fund manager also said Friday the U.S. is in bad shape in the event of a recession because of ballooning corporate debt and the trade tensions could kill the market’s “animal spirits.”
He is former chairman and president of Duquesne Capital and is currently CEO of Duquesne Family Office.
