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.
That’s why you don’t ask those people about these topics.
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.
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.
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.
No shit, Sherlock! No ask someone without money in the game.
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.
Richest man
French economy
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 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 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’m sure he is saying that from a completely objective position and has no personal stake in it whatsoever.
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…
a wealth tax that could cost him more than €1bn would be deadly for France’s economy.
megalomania
And sociopathic
