It seems clear to me that something needs to be done if we want to avoid growing wealth/income inequality pretty much globally.
Wealth tax is just one approach, but even top income tax rates used to be much higher in the US, and you could argue that politicians since LBJ and Reagan have failed the median citizen completely in that regard (nice visualization: https://mystack.wyman.us/p/tax-brackets-and-rates-1913-2024).
Wealth tax seems a step in the right direction.
Retric 2 minutes ago [-]
Income taxes are heavily dependent on what’s classified as income. In the US we explicitly have a carve out for long term investment returns into a separation category making simple arguments around the top tax bracket irrelevant.
chmod775 20 minutes ago [-]
After spending months searching for a french citizen who could comment on this issue without any conflict of interest, we have finally located this man.
Narann 21 minutes ago [-]
> LVMH owner Bernard Arnault, who could take €1bn hit, says proposed 2% levy ‘aims to destroy liberal economy’
I don't know why what Bernard Arnault says is on HN, he has no competencies in economy.
No dumb rich-hate here, simply that Bernard Arnault is definitely not best person to talk about the subject.
freedomben 5 minutes ago [-]
I don't know anything about him personally, but if he's that rich then I'm certain he has a highly paid team of extremely expert and well-informed people that are giving him his information. I take what he has to say with a grain of salt since he has such a massive self-interest in this, but still worthy of examining his arguments
amelius 24 minutes ago [-]
Doesn't have to be binary.
Just make it like a volume knob. Turn it up, slowly, see what happens. If bad things happen, turn it back down.
primitivesuave 19 minutes ago [-]
In this case, "bad things happening" is an exodus of the ultra wealthy, which is not so simple to reverse.
yardie 11 minutes ago [-]
The ultrawealthy have been exiting SF, LA, NYC, and Chicago for decades now. Not sure how many are left in those cities since every election cycle brings doom and gloom that the wealthy will abandon those states for sure, this time.
LargeWu 4 minutes ago [-]
What does it even mean that an ultrawealthy person would "leave" a city? One not unreasonable interpretation is that they would no longer have standing to promote their own interests there at the expense of the rest of the population. As a non-billionaire myself this sounds like a pretty good idea to me; what's good for billionaires is often not so good for everybody else.
chmod775 9 minutes ago [-]
If your economy is based on producing things of real value rather than management of wealth, this is a good thing.
ngetchell 17 minutes ago [-]
Is that a bad thing?
primitivesuave 10 minutes ago [-]
That's an interesting point. America is a good example of an economy where the majority of businesses are designed to channel the majority of their revenues to the ultra wealthy. I could see an exodus of ultra wealthy people where it opens up greater economic opportunity for regular people and small businesses.
influx 12 minutes ago [-]
Do you believe the economy is a zero sum game?
armitron 10 minutes ago [-]
If you are trying to squeeze them for extra tax revenue then yes. The ultra rich have numerous ways to fight back. Which usually leads to such ineffective tax measures landing on the middle class (case in point, Netherlands).
Wealth tax is universally a terrible idea, it has never worked to its original intended purpose. It does play well politically though, especially to the proles.
sebastianconcpt 13 minutes ago [-]
How you say that would that impact the IQ of the population? Will go up or down?
And note that being an IQ denier would transform your question in an insult to intelligence.
rockercoaster 8 minutes ago [-]
Would a very-small number of people leaving affect a well-distributed and population-wide metric like IQ in a measurable way at all? I'd expect not.
What are you trying to get at? Could you be more direct? I'm having trouble making sense of this post.
recursive 10 minutes ago [-]
I doubt it would have a measurable impact on the IQ of the population.
rco8786 9 minutes ago [-]
No it's not. It's not binary. Just like GP said. Wealthy people moving their assets to new locales is at least difficult if not impossible in some cases (like real estate).
lupusreal 1 minutes ago [-]
Even if wealthy people didn't move or otherwise evade or avoid the wealth tax and fully complied with the spirit of the thing, I don't see how it could work over time. If the tax "worked" and reduced their wealth, then the revenue from the tax would drop. There would be a natural tendency for the system to then start moving the threshold down to keep the revenue up. Where does that end, with everybody being equally poor?
surgical_fire 11 minutes ago [-]
This is only "bad" if one believes in bullshit in the line of "trickle down economics".
sebastianconcpt 15 minutes ago [-]
Make a list of countries that created temporary taxes and that later removed them.
Meditate on how good your openness to that idea was.
yardie 6 minutes ago [-]
As a former resident of France, here are the headlines I observed through the years:
The wealthy abandoned France in 2000 and moved to Switzerland.
They abandoned France in 2009 and moved to... Switzerland.
They abandoned France in 2014 and moved to... Russia.
They abandoned France in 2020 and moved to... USA.
For nearly 2 decades there has been this steady rollout of the news saying the wealthy will abandon there socialist-democratic country for somewhere else. But most of them tend to stick around. A few abandon their dumb project and find their way back even.
devoutsalsa 6 minutes ago [-]
Regardless of how you feel about taxation, increasing taxes will not fix out of control spending.
sebastianconcpt 17 minutes ago [-]
The perfect functional synonym of tax is: Friction.
Its understanding having proportion in mind is: How strongly you're breaking the economy.
0_____0 10 minutes ago [-]
If that's a pure and whole definition, then having no taxes at all would surely result in the best economy possible, yes?
jonathantf2 20 minutes ago [-]
Thanksgiving would be deadly, says turkey
lefrenchy 13 minutes ago [-]
I will take motivated reasoning for 300 Alex.
guywithahat 14 minutes ago [-]
To be fair, France implemented a wealth tax in 1989 and it ended up costing them more in lost tax revenue than they raised. This is the story of most countries that implement a wealth tax (such as Netherlands, Sweden, etc), and is why they end up removing them. Not only do many consider them immoral, they tend to cost the government tax revenue and simply don't work.
surgical_fire 9 minutes ago [-]
The Netherlands still has a wealth tax.
pphysch 18 minutes ago [-]
"The economy" is a relative term that might as well be substituted for "my personal interests" in 99% of cases.
Few people care about "the economy" writ large, they just care about their little corner of it. This applies to both rich and poor.
bgwalter 10 minutes ago [-]
The usual argument at the bottom of the article "the wealthy will leave" only applies if you let them take their money with them. If you can sanction Russian oligarchs, you can sanction French people who got rich in France and then flee or move their money elsewhere.
And that does not even include the number of rich families who own vast amounts of real estate which they cannot take with them. If the argument is "they'll increase the rent" then implement rent caps (and crack down on fake renters who run AirBnB ops or sublet).
gred 4 minutes ago [-]
> let them take their money with them
The image of taxman as thief has never been clearer.
clueless 11 minutes ago [-]
so if one were to extend the ultra rich metaphor to meaning more intelligent (which doesn't feel too far fetched), a society has to contend with the threat of its smarter members around tax, with possible lower economic activity, i.e. less smart people managing the rest on how to move the economy forward.
Then the problem becomes a game theocratic back and forth, where society can impose on the rich but face it's own downside, or let the rich be and enjoy its marginal benefits (of large companies, high tech etc).
Seem like the best approach would be to make it hard for the rich/smart to leave, with the threat being: you won't find any better society than this one to thrive in...
Rendered at 16:23:06 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Wealth tax is just one approach, but even top income tax rates used to be much higher in the US, and you could argue that politicians since LBJ and Reagan have failed the median citizen completely in that regard (nice visualization: https://mystack.wyman.us/p/tax-brackets-and-rates-1913-2024).
Wealth tax seems a step in the right direction.
I don't know why what Bernard Arnault says is on HN, he has no competencies in economy.
No dumb rich-hate here, simply that Bernard Arnault is definitely not best person to talk about the subject.
Just make it like a volume knob. Turn it up, slowly, see what happens. If bad things happen, turn it back down.
Wealth tax is universally a terrible idea, it has never worked to its original intended purpose. It does play well politically though, especially to the proles.
And note that being an IQ denier would transform your question in an insult to intelligence.
What are you trying to get at? Could you be more direct? I'm having trouble making sense of this post.
Meditate on how good your openness to that idea was.
The wealthy abandoned France in 2000 and moved to Switzerland.
They abandoned France in 2009 and moved to... Switzerland.
They abandoned France in 2014 and moved to... Russia.
They abandoned France in 2020 and moved to... USA.
For nearly 2 decades there has been this steady rollout of the news saying the wealthy will abandon there socialist-democratic country for somewhere else. But most of them tend to stick around. A few abandon their dumb project and find their way back even.
Its understanding having proportion in mind is: How strongly you're breaking the economy.
Few people care about "the economy" writ large, they just care about their little corner of it. This applies to both rich and poor.
And that does not even include the number of rich families who own vast amounts of real estate which they cannot take with them. If the argument is "they'll increase the rent" then implement rent caps (and crack down on fake renters who run AirBnB ops or sublet).
The image of taxman as thief has never been clearer.
Then the problem becomes a game theocratic back and forth, where society can impose on the rich but face it's own downside, or let the rich be and enjoy its marginal benefits (of large companies, high tech etc).
Seem like the best approach would be to make it hard for the rich/smart to leave, with the threat being: you won't find any better society than this one to thrive in...