evidence: A number of very well-resourced institutions, ranging from the Ivy League to Notre Dame and Emory, collectively invest billions of dollars in hedge funds and private equity. Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Princeton alone accounted for over $107 billion of such accumulated wealth in 2015. In the same year, the endowments of the twenty wealthiest US institutions (including four public university systems — the UC system, the University of Virginia, the University of Texas, and the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor and sixteen private universities) totaled more than $547 billion – a figure roughly comparable to the gross domestic product of Sweden. That these institutions are exempt from local and state property taxes enables this prodigious accumulation of capital, as only the most explicitly commercial activities are taxed, and there are few real restrictions on how endowments may be used and how large they are permitted to grow. But tax-exemption is also useful for an important stratum of the bourgeoisie, which can itself avoid taxes – when wealthy patrons donate to tax-exempt educational institutions, the write-offs their donations generate can play an important role in shielding their own income from taxation.