cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/36272492
Europe’s richest man, the luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault, has said that a wealth tax that could cost him more than €1bn (£817m) would be deadly for France’s economy.
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 liberal economy, the only one that works for the good of all”.
The idea of a wealth tax has steadily gained ground in France because of a political crisis, with the government trying to push through unpopular budget cuts. 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.
No shit, Sherlock! No ask someone without money in the game.
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.
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.
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.
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 sothat 99% of the population have less than 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.
I wonder if he thinks a wealth tax or a guillotine would be deadlier
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.
“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.
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”)
Richest man
French economy
I’m sure he is saying that from a completely objective position and has no personal stake in it whatsoever.
a wealth tax that could cost him more than €1bn would be deadly for France’s economy.
megalomania
And sociopathic
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.”
My guess: poverty exists to satisfy the rich. They feel happy when someone else suffers.
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…
