My Gustavus home sits in a magic spot. Glacier Bay is our backyard, and looking south out the front window, we can see the Inside Passage. I can sit in my living room and watch all manner of boats come and go.
But one afternoon about a month ago, a strange-looking vessel dropped anchor just out front. Painted all white and about a football field long, with an expansive, equipment-packed back deck and an instrument-heavy, five-deck-high wheelhouse, the vessel didn’t make sense. A NOAA, Coast Guard or Alaska Department of Fish and Game research vessel? Nope, wrong colors.
A quick glimpse through binoculars revealed that the equipment on the back deck included a helicopter, a sizable runabout and a large crane for moving stuff around. A short time later, the mother ship arrived: a futuristic-looking megayacht.
A quick online search revealed that the 387-foot yacht Launchpad, with an estimated value of $300 million, is reportedly owned by Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The 262-foot Wingman, a support vessel with an estimated value of $100 million, hauls many of the yacht’s toys and is reportedly equipped to carry a submarine.
The helicopter was soon aloft. A quick trip to the airport showed why: It had gone to meet N68885, a Gulfstream G650ER associated with Zuckerberg that cost roughly $65 million new. Since then, I have watched the fleet come and go three times.
Together, the two vessels and aircraft have an estimated value approaching half a billion dollars. That kind of personal fleet illustrates just how concentrated private wealth has become.
Meanwhile, the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy calculated that Meta’s current federal tax expense amounted to 3.6% of its U.S. pretax income in 2025.
We common folk shoulder plenty. A fair tax system should ask more of highly profitable corporations and the billionaires who control them.
— Wayne Howell, Gustavus
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