The Socialist Billionaire Who’s Getting a Sweet Tax Deal

On the menu today: Earlier this week, billionaire Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard — a self-described socialist who contends that every billionaire represents a policy failure — announced that “Earth is now our only shareholder” and that he was transferring control of his company to a newly founded environmentalist organization.

Of course, the move allows Chouinard and his family to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal capital-gains taxes and estate and gift taxes. This week, Chouinard and Patagonia got the world to believe the narrative they wanted it to believe.

Chouinard popped up on my radar screen back in autumn 2019 — a lifetime ago, considering everything that’s happened since then — when I noticed him on the cover of Fast Company magazine, under the eye-catching headline: “CAPITALISM IS DEAD. LONG LIVE CAPITALISM.” The cover further explained that Chouinard “and a brigade of bold leaders are fighting for a fairer, more sustainable way forward.”