To Charles Schwab, who brought stock-market investing to the masses with his eponymous discount brokerage, socialism evokes a grim, unremitting sameness — a death knell for creativity.
“If you’d like socialism, we all drive the same car or have the same colour house or same size of house, blah, blah, blah — we’re all the same fundamentally,” said Mr Schwab, who founded his low-cost US bank and brokerage firm in 1971, recently in an interview at the company’s Wall Street office.
So wealth taxes like those proposed by presidential candidate and Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders last month and rival Elizabeth Warren are not exactly something the entrepreneur supports. In Mr Schwab’s view, a wealth tax is an innovation-killer, and therefore a capitalism-killer. Reward systems are important because they reward people who come up with great ideas, he said. He points to Steve Jobs and the iPhone, and how it unleashed a flood of creativity as entrepreneurs created applications for it.
“It’s one little aspect of America’s great growth,” said Mr Schwab, who has a net worth of $7.8 billion (Dh28.64bn). “No other country has the creativity this one does. It’s not by luck, it’s because of our system, where there is innovation, entrepreneurship and capital available for great new ideas.”
Here the 82-year-old, who is currently on a publicity push for his memoir, Invested — released earlier this month — reveals his thoughts on the future of America's wealth.
What do you think of a wealth tax?
It’s a negative reward for success. I put myself in the category of being successful, and guess what I do? I give enormous amounts of money away to philanthropy. I don’t make a lot of noise about it, I just do it, whether it’s my schools or health services or whatever it might be.
It’s not like these wealthy people are running around just building castles all over the place. Eventually they pass away, and you’re really not able to leave much money to your kids in the present system, and so it’s OK. It’s sort of a short time that the person has the success and he or she has the opportunity of giving money away to good causes. It’s not like us running around seeing the King and Queen of France, the King and Queen of England, and all that kind of stuff. You see some rich dude come around in a fancy car, I guess it might offend you, but it’s not going to be forever.
Would a wealth tax have much of an impact?
It’s the beginning. And then, how do you approach it? How do you approach the value of Facebook? Its stock price goes up and down. How do you value it and at what point do you take the 2 per cent in a wealth tax, and then if you do that every year. After 10 years it’s 25 per cent or 30 per cent of the guy’s wealth that has gone away. It’s not just one year, it’s every year. And it becomes an enormous take on creativity in terms of the wealth reward.
In California, wealthy successful people pay nearly 50 per cent already. I guess you could say what’s wrong with 60 per cent, what’s wrong with 90 per cent? Wealthy people create an enormous number of jobs. On a personal level they have people who do gardening, provide services. They might own a couple of different homes that requires more people to maintain them.
Where do those people get jobs?
The government is not the solution to so many things that people think it is. It’s a mix — you don’t want to kill the golden goose. You want to make sure that entrepreneurs in America are preserved and have some protection because they create millions of jobs.
Most of these things are because of jealousy. It’s not done with a purpose, it’s done with a sense of “they don’t deserve it.” That’s what I don’t like about it.
Is there a better way?
In terms of tax policy, I would like to see, for the low end of society, more earned-income tax credits. I was there, and you were there, we were all there at some point — some of us emerged from it because of our ability to move ahead, and our education helped us. But a lot of jobs when I was a kid were at very minimal wages. We all need to start someplace and we want to look forward to opportunity.
You recently eliminated commissions on trades. Why now?
It just seemed like the logical time for me to do this. Why not reward our clients with what we started out to do, which was to take prices down, down, down. The fundamental thing is that we want to get more people engaged in investing -- that’s what we’re all about as a company. We’re all about entrepreneurial capitalism, free-market capitalism.
How did you teach your own kids about investing?
I talked about it a lot, but there were no financial literacy classes. I have five kids and they do their own investing. They all own some Schwab stock, and that’s their core, but hopefully they invest beyond that and do all the things good investing requires, such as diversifying.
I do some investing with one of my sons, who loves private equity. He does some weird things, which some day will pay off, hopefully. He is very involved with a Kelly Slater wave technology company that created Surf Ranch. It creates artificial waves for surfers. The first one is not too far from Fresno, California, and they want to create more of these.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
The specs
Engine: Long-range single or dual motor with 200kW or 400kW battery
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Max touring range: 620km / 590km
Price: From Dh250,000 (estimated)
The specs
Engine: 6.2-litre supercharged V8
Power: 712hp at 6,100rpm
Torque: 881Nm at 4,800rpm
Transmission: 8-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 19.6 l/100km
Price: Dh380,000
On sale: now
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THE CLOWN OF GAZA
Director: Abdulrahman Sabbah
Starring: Alaa Meqdad
Rating: 4/5
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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The Bio
Favourite vegetable: “I really like the taste of the beetroot, the potatoes and the eggplant we are producing.”
Holiday destination: “I like Paris very much, it’s a city very close to my heart.”
Book: “Das Kapital, by Karl Marx. I am not a communist, but there are a lot of lessons for the capitalist system, if you let it get out of control, and humanity.”
Musician: “I like very much Fairuz, the Lebanese singer, and the other is Umm Kulthum. Fairuz is for listening to in the morning, Umm Kulthum for the night.”
Lexus LX700h specs
Engine: 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 plus supplementary electric motor
Power: 464hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 790Nm from 2,000-3,600rpm
Transmission: 10-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 11.7L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh590,000
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Shooting Ghosts: A U.S. Marine, a Combat Photographer, and Their Journey Back from War by Thomas J. Brennan and Finbarr O’Reilly
MOUNTAINHEAD REVIEW
Starring: Ramy Youssef, Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman
Director: Jesse Armstrong
Rating: 3.5/5
Ferrari 12Cilindri specs
Engine: naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12
Power: 819hp
Torque: 678Nm at 7,250rpm
Price: From Dh1,700,000
Available: Now
Specs
Engine: 51.5kW electric motor
Range: 400km
Power: 134bhp
Torque: 175Nm
Price: From Dh98,800
Available: Now
F1 The Movie
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Rating: 4/5
The Sand Castle
Director: Matty Brown
Stars: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea
Rating: 2.5/5
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
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The specs
- Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
- Power: 640hp
- Torque: 760nm
- On sale: 2026
- Price: Not announced yet
What can victims do?
Always use only regulated platforms
Stop all transactions and communication on suspicion
Save all evidence (screenshots, chat logs, transaction IDs)
Report to local authorities
Warn others to prevent further harm
Courtesy: Crystal Intelligence
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
Torque: 450Nm at 6,100rpm
Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now
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Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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United States
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2.
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China
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3.
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UAE
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4.
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Japan
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5
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Norway
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Canada
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Singapore
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Australia
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Saudi Arabia
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South Korea
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21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Yuval Noah Harari, Jonathan Cape
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
TCL INFO
Teams:
Punjabi Legends Owners: Inzamam-ul-Haq and Intizar-ul-Haq; Key player: Misbah-ul-Haq
Pakhtoons Owners: Habib Khan and Tajuddin Khan; Key player: Shahid Afridi
Maratha Arabians Owners: Sohail Khan, Ali Tumbi, Parvez Khan; Key player: Virender Sehwag
Bangla Tigers Owners: Shirajuddin Alam, Yasin Choudhary, Neelesh Bhatnager, Anis and Rizwan Sajan; Key player: TBC
Colombo Lions Owners: Sri Lanka Cricket; Key player: TBC
Kerala Kings Owners: Hussain Adam Ali and Shafi Ul Mulk; Key player: Eoin Morgan
Venue Sharjah Cricket Stadium
Format 10 overs per side, matches last for 90 minutes
When December 14-17
THE SPECS
Engine: 4.4-litre V8
Transmission: eight-speed automatic
Power: 523hp
Torque: 750Nm
Price: Dh469,000
Brief scores:
Huesca 0
Real Madrid 1
Bale 8'
Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
