By Steven T. Jones
It’s rude to speak ill of the recently deceased, but as I read the laudatory obituary of Don Fisher in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, it seems appropriate for us to say a few words about the legacy of a man long criticized by the Guardian for his sponsorship of right-wing and corporatist causes.
Most of what Fisher is now being praised for is how he spent his vast fortune, accumulated through The Gap clothing chain he created. Some of those expenditures (such as children’s programs and buying great art, which he arranged days before his death to have SFMOMA display) were good and many of those expenditures we opposed.
But the point to consider now is why US tax policy has allowed the Don Fishers of the world to keep so much of the wealth they accumulated – in this particular case, largely through exploitive sweatshop labor around the world — and to use it to attack the public sector and empower corporations.
As we praise the philanthropy and generosity of Don Fisher, it’s worth asking whether the billions of dollars that he was allowed to keep (money the federal government would have appropriated for public use up until the late ‘70s, when the tax rate on top earners was as high as 90 percent) might have been better spent by our elected leaders.