Not taxing the rich would be deadly to the rest of the humanity
“Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.”
this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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My guess: poverty exists to satisfy the rich. They feel happy when someone else suffers.
the thing is that it doesn't even inconvenience them. it's a net gain for them as well. (they just haven't understood that yet)
consumerism is in decline because people have less money. if people consume less, companies can't sell products, so they have less revenue, so the company's worth less. rich people hold all their wealth as assets of some companies (or apartments that they rent out). if consumers have no money, these assets become less valuable as a result. the only way to keep these assets valuable is to stimulate consumerism, which can only happen if the people have money that they can spend.
taxing the rich might superficially appear as if it would annoy the rich, but actually the opposite will happen. if you tax the rich, the money goes to the people, who spend it by buying products, and so the companies (and therefore the rich) recover that money. as long as that cycle keeps spinning, there's revenue to be made, and companies and assets are worth something. the wealth of a country is measured in its productive force; if there's no consumption of products, companies and factories decline and crumble and the productive force diminishes. It is only as long as people continue to consume products that new products will continue to be produced, which means that the factories stay maintained and functional.
The kings of yore had to use flushless toilets, the commoner of today now has heated bidets. The wealthy don't understand that by allowing commoners the ability to think, invent, create, and implement, that the results will trickle up and benefit the wealthy.
Wealth is meant to flow throughout society, not get locked up in the reservoirs of the wealthy. Their greed creates a drought that harms everybody, themselves included.
I have a game, where every time I hear or read "the economy" in the news, I replace it with "rich fucks' money" in my head - works really well, and in many cases is actually closer to reality than the original news...
Richest man
French economy
The Zucman tax is absolute minimum of what's required at this point. It should be higher, it should be progressive, and it should start at lower levels of wealth. Moreover, in the future it should be applied globally and yearly.
I propose a simple, practical test: ask anyone with more than 100 million dollar or euro what their exact wealth is. The difference between what they say and what it really is, that can just be taxed away. It's going to be more than 2%.
and it should start at lower levels of wealth.
no. otherwise you end up with the AfD (or Heute zeitung) who says it damages the "small man" and should therefore not be implemented.
it's intentionally this high, so it doesn't affect 99% of the people. sothat there's a broad democratic support. that is the whole point of it.
I feel like for balance they should also talk to Europe's poorest man.
For financial balance, they would need to talk to Europe's poorest 20 million men.
There are few different economies. The top 1% own the businesses, top 10% own shares and investments and the 90% who just work paycheck to paycheck.
This guy is not talking about the 90%.
There are (..) different economies.
Thank you, I need to remind myself that "The Economy" is just another lie, usually cited with the undertone that it's too complex to understand for the 90%.
Try replacing "the economy" with "rich people's yacht money". From a tweet many years ago.
- Medicare for all would destroy rich people's yacht money
- The Dow Jones jumped 5%, indicating a real strength in rich people's yacht money
- etc.
...Good?
If the economy dies from barely taxing this cunt, let it fucking burn.
“aims to destroy the liberal economy, the only one that works for the good of all”.
Lmao. Seriously dude?
Yeah. And he really means it the way every European would read it anyhow: Economic Liberalism, a.k.a. Unfettered Capitalism
Arnault’s net worth stood at $169bn (£125bn) on Friday, mainly because of his 48% stake in LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, according to Bloomberg. After joining his family company and turning it from construction to property, Arnault grew his fortune by buying up brands ranging from the jewellers Bulgari and Tiffany & Co, the fashion houses Christian Dior and Celine, to perfumes and whiskey brand Glenmorangie.
(...)
The wealth tax could raise as much as €20bn, according to Zucman. However, other economists have argued that it would raise only €5bn if the ultra-wealthy leave France.
The wealth tax could raise as much as €20bn
for reference: france has 70m inhabitants. if that money is distributed among the people, that's 300€/person per year.
that doesn't sound like a lot. that probably only covers something like 3% of people's cost of living. but it would be a valuable small experiment that can inform us about what works and what doesn't work, and then we can see how we go on.
edit: i did the calculation, and the same wealth tax implemented in the US would generate about $7k/person per year. Source: link and link and some spreadsheet maths.
that's a sizeable income, and if that was distributed among the people, it would really help them.
a wealth tax that could cost him more than €1bn would be deadly for France’s economy.
megalomania
And sociopathic
We don’t need them or their ill gotten gains.
I’m sure he is saying that from a completely objective position and has no personal stake in it whatsoever.
Every time they whinge about leaving if they get taxed and they actually do get taxed, they stay. Because it's hard to move your fortune off of the source.
also they have to suffer a disadvantage if they do leave the country, for example they lose access to the french consumer market; if they shift their companies somewhere else, then they lose the ability to sell products in france and make money that way.
that can be implemented through import taxes.
"We'd all die! Die, I tell you!"
That's why you don't ask those people about these topics.
No shit, Sherlock! No ask someone without money in the game.
The French founder of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton said in a statement to the Sunday Times that calls for a 2% wealth tax on all assets “aims to destroy the NEOliberal economy, the only one that works for the good of all MONEY BROS".
I wonder if he thinks a wealth tax or a guillotine would be deadlier
The idea of a 2% wealth tax on fortunes worth more than €100m has been proposed by Gabriel Zucman, an economics professor who has become a household name in France.
I fully 100% agree.
The reason why the tax exempt amount is $100m is because sothat 99% of the population have less of that amount in total wealth, so they pay no taxes at all; that's why it should be widely popular. At least parties like the AfD can't argue that it "hurts the small man", because that's simply not true.
I think that a wealth tax can only work if it's combined with import taxes, because otherwise companies just leave the country and go somewhere else to produce their products. To prevent them from doing so, they have to suffer a disadvantage if they do that, so they have to lose access to the market, for example, by implementing import taxes.
https://feddit.org/post/19150492
Literal translation of the headline: The rich agains inheritance tax.
(Beacuse the name of our minister for the economy translates to "The rich")
Deadly for who?
"In a statement to the Sunday Times". A newspaper that was never going to be read by people without significant means.
I know this is a lot of math but this is my tax plan:
- The government prints money and gives it out to the people, but has to tax it back at some point to create real demand for the currency, otherwise the currency devalues and becomes meaningless.
- Since the government has to sooner or later tax back all money it hands out, the total government balance is always close to 0; i.e. there's no substantial government debt.
- The government hands out the money directly to the people. It is really a hand-out and not a loan-out. Big banks can also take credits, but these are loans, not hand-outs.
- The people continue to spend their money for products. A low sales tax would mean higher amount of sales and therefore higher revenue for companies.
- The companies get money from sales, but the companies can't meaningfully profit. If they profit, where does the money go? The shareholders can't invest that money anywhere meaningfully, since the market is already fully grown and new investments simply aren't worth that much. So, since profits are less meaningful, the company lowers their sales price to reduce profit, which in turn increases sales amount. As the company profits converges to zero, all the company's income is spent on expenses - either labor expenses or expenses in materials.
- The materials either come from agricultural farms, or from mining operations. Since these two can also be looked at as companies, the same applies and they will eventually lower their profit to the point where all their expenses go either towards wages or material expenses.
- The lower that sales taxes are, the longer the journey of the dollar is before it finally gets taxed back by the government.
France tried this is the late 80s, 10-12,000 millionaires left and it lost money overall so they scrapped it. A wealth tax doesn't work in Europe where it's so easy to leave.
But my understanding is France is already pretty tax heavy, so I don't know of a better tax revenue solution.
There's been plenty of historical examples where taxing the wealthy has worked. Assets can't easily move countries, nations can enforce taxes regardless of a wealthy person's residence, etc etc etc. Even if this tax is hard to design and implement, it's the right thing to do and it's necessary for our future.
Stop doing the work of the billionaires for free. Properly designed wealth taxes will work in Europe, we're smart enough to figure it out - and again - it's necessary.
"There's been plenty of historical examples where taxing the wealthy has worked". And yet they literally tried it IN FRANCE and it didn't work, France is literally the example used for capital flight.
What a lazy rebuttle, "you're doing the work of billionaires", lazy and without substance. But if you require a pledge of allegiance to the lower classes before I can talk tax: Idgaf if France decides to wealth tax every dime until billionaires earn $20 an hour. There you go.
Wealth taxes are extremely hard to implement. You're hand waving off-shore holdings like, "nations can enforce tax". Tell that to Ireland. Not to mention the costs involved with determining "wealth".
A wealth tax sounds lovely and appeals to voters, but it historically just doesn't fly. A VAT on luxury goods is way easier, cheaper, less risky, and achieves a lot of the same goals. It's just a lot harder to sell to mugs like you.
Wealth taxes are extremely hard to implement, but legislating thousands of tax loopholes is extremely easy. Removing them is hard, adding them is easy. Why is that?
Removing step up basis on assets, taxes inheritance over a limit, increasing capital gains taxes, taxing corporate buy backs, are all great wealth taxes. VAT is a horrible wealth tax, that’s not the level of wealth we want to target. We don’t want to target consumption, we want the money back in circulation. I don’t think anyone here appreciates your explanation or your intelligence as much as you do.
Ah, you're one of the morons who thinks a billionaire has a bank account filled with $1,000,000,000, just sitting idly, waiting to be added back into the economy by the government.
Good luck France, here's hoping you're the ONE country who can successfully institute a wealth tax.
No I think a billionaires assets are being leveraged by 10x at a 4% interest rates to manipulate asset prices and consolidate wealth. What do you think they are doing big brain?
Just implement capital flight tax. Norway has done it.
After the rate hikes in 2022, capital flight exceeded the additional revenue raised by the higher rates. And Norway had incentivised local governments to have a stake in the wealth tax which aided in the responsibility of the tax, something I haven't read France propose.
After the rate hikes in 2022, capital flight exceeded the additional revenue raised by the higher rates.
The wealthy fled before the tax on capital flight was implemented.
And Norway had incentivised local governments to have a stake in the wealth tax which aided in the responsibility of the tax, something I haven't read France propose.
Because France is run by politicians who pretend that there is no solution to combat the threat of capital flight, because they are in rich people's pockets.
Even Warren Buffet advocate increasing tax on the wealthy. He stated that higher taxes did not actually stop them from investing or leaving the country with their wealth, when the US used to tax higher rate on the higher marginal wealth bracket. Only relatively few wealthy people do leave the country.
France also did a wonderful political experiment a few hundred years ago. It was a real work of equality. I’m sure there are other solutions we could consider….