“Taxing such great universities (whatever their failings) is an act of barbarism”
You doth protest too much. It is also easy to become a permanent institution when you are free of the burdens of taxation. Harvard, Yale et al could easily absorb a tax. Heck all of their professors push and vote for the increase of taxes on a daily basis. Harvard has an endowment of $40 Billion. Yale has a $25 Billion endowment. They don’t even pay property tax. You greatly exaggerate the worth of Yale and diminish the philanthropy of Wang. I say the institutions that push for more socialism should start spreading the wealth. Why am I paying more in taxes than Yale? My contributions to science and patents for medical devices should at least warrant a tax free life on par with Yale. I am even passing on my wisdom to my children as well as volunteering my time for many years to youth sports. Treat me like Yale!!
If ancient Romans of the 1st Century BC had protested more vigorously and effectively, their finest mind and greatest orator would not have had his tongue torn our and his hands hacked off (the traditional Italian organs of speech) and nailed to the wall of the Roman Senate as a warning to others and then Cicero was beheaded by thugs of the triumvirate for the "crime" of speaking his mind on the floor of the Senate.
Soon enough, as he had warned, the reasonably noble Roman Republic and its citizens deprived of what freedoms they had enjoyed. When the Empire was established under the relatively benign Caesar Augustus. Soon enough, he was succeeded by the tertiary syphilitic child molester Tiberius who was, in turn, succeeded by Caligula who made Tiberius, at his worst, seem like a walk in the park. After a brief respite under Claudius, tyranny was restored under Nero and continued under other emperors.
Cicero was a pagan on the cusp of an epiphany for an adult pagan leader of legendary note, according to the late Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. Cicero was murdered in about 43 BC. +Sheen attributed to Cicero remarks to the effect that: "The world is so mired in sin and iniquity that, although we know not who or when or where, it surely must await the imminent arrival of its savior." He did not mean Caesar Augustus.
+Sheen attributed to Virgil, author of the epic poem of Rome's founding by Pius Aeneas, The Aeneid, who (Virgil) was a bit of a libertine banished from Rome in about 12 BC by Caesar Augustus for taking sexual advantage of the daughters of the Patrician class the prophecy that very soon a virgin would bear a son who would be the savior of the world.
"Don't tax you. Don't tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree." was the famous remark of the very practical long-time Louisiana United States Senator Russell Long who long served as Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
I am going with Cicero and Virgil and rejecting the standards of Russell Long.
I grew up in New Haven and lived there until I was 17. I then moved to a a suburb just north of New Haven when my then Democrat voting parents had had enough. If anyone had given the New Haven liberal Demonrat Machine the power to tax Yale, New Haven would be no better off and rather quite worse off because Yale would have either moved to more friendly locale or been destroyed. Civil War era dorms transformed into welfare housing, the dining halls become soup kitchens, Payne Whitney Gymnasium devoted to martial arts training for urban gang warfare. Yale's shooting range become a training ground for urban gang bangers to improve their efficiency and marksmanship. Perhaps, Yale Bowl being converted to gladiatorial games at which the Machine could dispense bread to the seething street mobs. BUT what would be done with Yale's many libraries after, of course, the books are burned? And the laboratories and other research facilities when the looters have closed them?
Remember the quite successful Winchester Rifle Corporation (of New Haven)? The anti-gun politicians drove it from New Haven, took over the factory buildings for taxes and then hired 300 unemployables to work for the politician created US Repeating Arms Corporation but, ummm, not successfully.
In short, social "progress" just to help you not pay taxes (if we substitute Harvard for Yale).
By putting the USA on wheels in affordable cars, Henry Ford did far more for our country and our world than you or Wang. No one suggests making Ford Motor Company tax free. Lest you want to portray yourself as a victim, I am NOT diminishing your contributions or Wang's. I am just placing them in perspective.
If you want to spread the wealth by taxing presently untaxed left-leaning non-profits to fatten up government slush funds, start with such as the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Foundation. Eliminate that category of tax-exemptions altogether leftist or not.
"At least warrant a tax free life on a par with Yale"???? What more do you want? An annual or monthly stipend (tax free, of course) from the peasants/taxpayers as well? What should we serfs have done then for such inventors as Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison?????