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Europe's Ultra-Rich Could Fund a Substantial Part of the EU's Budget
- philipallstar 2mo agoWelcome to the United States of Europe.
- socialismkills 2mo ago[flagged]
- homeonthemtn 2mo agoWe could do both. There is very little sympathy for the ultra wealthy though. I suspect they'll be fine.
- socialismkills 2mo ago[flagged]
- Forgeties79 2mo agoDon’t feed the troll. New account, look at their name.
- socialismkills 2mo ago[flagged]
- verzali 2mo agoIn Europe many billionaires are idle old wealth. They don't work, they inherited the money.
- bryanlarsen 2mo agoCutting 90% of 5% of the budget is not a meaningful reduction. DOGE did much less than that, and did far more harm than good.
- econ 2mo agoYou can automate a lot but first it will cost money.
- JumpCrisscross 2mo ago> DOGE did much less than that DOGE was a culture-war fever trip. There was zero actual effort at deficit reduction or catching grift and fraud.
- Arainach 2mo agoAnyone who says "reduce bureaucracy by 90%" is on a culture war fever trip and doesn't actually care about efficient spending either.
- JumpCrisscross 2mo agoAnd anyone who claims they're going to cut spending without touching Medicare or the Pentagon is talking tripe.
- bryanlarsen 2mo agoA username of "socialismkills" is also a good signal of a social war fever trip.
- ben_w 2mo agoI'd say that's more "look at me I'm an edgy teen who wants to be taken seriously" than fever tripping culture wars; where this kind of thing would become the latter is where the owner of that username thinks modern Scandinavia is indistinguishable from the USSR.
- dismalaf 2mo agoJust like startups and businesses want to grow, so too does government bureaucracy. Governments aren't in the business of helping people, they're in the business of employing government officials and furthering their own organizational goals. Citizens just get crumbs in the form of specific populist slop (this particular article is of the leftist sort) as a bribe of sorts to keep the government in power and the government worker class employed.
- dfilppi 2mo ago[dead]
- baal80spam 2mo ago[flagged]
- markraptwks 2mo ago[dead]
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- leugim 2mo agoThis is a shortcut for taxing unrealized gains. They start with NW >100 million and start decreasing the concept of Ultra-Rich until everyone non-broke eventually pays it. In Spain it happened with the Work Tax which from >60k EUR (68k USD) goes to 45% as if earning 3k EUR (3.4k USD) per month made you rich.
- JimBlackwood 2mo agoThere’s a long way between NW >100 million and making 60K EUR. Maybe if they taxed NW >100 million, you wouldn’t need a 50% tax on work.
- xienze 2mo ago> Maybe if they taxed NW >100 million, you wouldn’t need a 50% tax on work. Don't be mistaken, it's an "in addition to" tax, not "instead of", or else it wouldn't be pitched as one of many ways to plug a budget hole.
- bigbadfeline 2mo agoAny "addition to tax" should still be a tax.
- arjie 2mo agoThe proposal does not involve reducing existing taxes. It is a technique to pay for increased spending. So the latter sentence seems unlikely.
- lifestyleguru 2mo ago60k is now worth somewhere around 49k in pre-Covid Spanish Euro. The highest income tax rate on employment contract is brutal. Why would anyone work there at all? No wonder I meet young Spanish anywhere I go, and they are not tourists. Then Europeans moving to Spain are not moving there to work either.
- mc32 2mo agoAs long as there are reasonable countries they can move to and moving doesn’t impact their business enough, people will move to more favorable tax environments even if they have qualms about the new options politics if taxes get too high. A few years ago France imposed larger taxes and a few wealthy people left and some even took debatable citizenship options. Some people may not like this to happen but it does and would.
- Sol- 2mo agoUnlike the US, wealth takes on the EU could perhaps raise revenue without disrupting innovation, because here in the EU, we have little innovation and self made wealth to begin with - so there's nothing to disrupt. But taxing inheritances would still be preferred mechanism rather than taxing unrealized gains I think. That would target the EU's unproductive rent seeking heirs the best.
- baud147258 2mo agoI don't know where in the EU you're thinking of applying that, but here in France inheritance are heavily taxed
- melling 2mo agoFor how long?
- clickety_clack 2mo agoI don’t agree with wealth taxes. The ultra wealthy will find the ways to avoid them and it will end up disproportionately landing on the middle class like everything else. If it has to be done, it should be at the sources of the wealth so that they can’t be dodged. Things like property taxes, corporate taxes, taxation of stock buybacks (which is a way to pay dividends without paying income tax on them). The middle class will still be paying these, but at least the ultra wealthy will be contributing on their share of the wealth generation too.
- lifestyleguru 2mo agoMiddle class in Europe where?! In Germany in 1990s?
- andriamanitra 2mo agoI don't see how a wealth tax that starts at $100M could possibly disproportionately (or at all) land on the middle class. I'm sure the parasitic class will always find ways to partially dodge taxes but compared to income and capital gains taxes a strongly worded wealth tax would be much more difficult to avoid. We just need to be careful with the wording of the law to make sure lobbyists are not allowed to carve out any loopholes that can be abused by tax planners.
- EPWN3D 2mo ago1. Wealth tax happens on assets > 100M 2. Wealth > 100M flees jurisdictions where it could be taxes 3. No receipts on wealth tax 4. Wealth tax boosters need something to brag about, so they dial the limit down to 50M 5. Wealthy keep dodging 6. 50M becomes 25M, becomes 10M, becomes 1M 7. Definition of "wealth" is expanded to include things like home equity lines or credit, unexercised stock options, unvested RSUs
- clickety_clack 2mo agoExactly. I think income tax was 1% when they introduced it and it impacted the top 1% to 2% of earners. Now look how much they’re taking from the rest of us.
- johen8 2mo agoThe same principle of "just one more lane, bro", can be applied to "just one more tax, bro". You give the burocracy more money and they will find new, inefficient ways to spend it between them and their cronies, until it is not enough, and a new tax has to be created.
- LaurensBER 2mo ago> Europe’s Ultra-Rich Could Fund a Substantial Part of the EU’s Budget > Taxes on wealth, crypto and financial trades could raise billions no single member state can collect alone. The sad reality is that as soon as the EU introduces this, these families won't be Europe's Ultra Rich anymore. They'll soon be the UK/Swiss/Dubai/Israel/US Ultra Rich. What the EU needs is: - Less bureaucracy - One capital market - More venture capital What the EU doesn't need is a larger budget. Is is really an issue if a family has a net worth north of 100 million if 90% of that is invested (directly or indirectly) in future growth of the EU? > A financial transaction tax would not only generate additional revenue for the EU budget; it would also make short-term and speculative trading in financial markets more expensive. This goes *directly* against the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis. Potentially creating more friction and less efficient capital allocation in an continent already struggling with growth and innovation. > A tax on ultra-high wealth would have particularly high revenue potential. One possible approach would be a minimum tax for individuals with net wealth exceeding €100 million, ensuring that the taxes paid annually by this group amount to at least a specified proportion of their wealth. Such a tax would specifically target individuals whose effective tax burden is lower than that of other groups. At the same time, it could help to limit tax competition between member states for particularly wealthy residents. The biggest competition does not from member states, rather it comes from Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Two countries where citizenship is (for most ultra-rich) a plane ride and a few administrative meetings away. USA, the middle-east and Israel offer other options, slightly further away.
- neerd 2mo ago> The sad reality is that as soon as the EU introduces this, these families won't be Europe's Ultra Rich anymore. They'll soon be the UK/Swiss/Dubai/Israel/US Ultra Rich. Yeah, but the physical assets they own can’t move freely. The EU can still tax or seize assets within the EU.
- LaurensBER 2mo ago> Yeah, but the physical assets they own can’t move freely. The EU can still tax or seize assets within the EU. This is true but effectively it would lower the value of those assets (since any future investor needs to account for the increased tax burden) which would also be negative for the EU.
- geertj 2mo agoThe last thing the EU needs is a higher budget. Unelected bureaucrats that control a trillion dollar budget and have the ability to introduce legislation that supersedes national laws, what could possibly go wrong?
- ktosobcy 2mo agoCan we stop parrotic absurdly stupid "unelected bureaucrats" mantra? EU and it's bodies is not more "unelected" than in any other government body -- in the UK people don't vote for the PM, members of Lords or civil servants ("unelected burocrats managing money")… same goes for most of other countries…
- geertj 2mo ago[flagged]
- mono442 2mo agothe budget doesn't have to be balanced, they can fund it with deficit
- AntronX 2mo agoEuropeans make around half of what similar roles make in US and pay up to 70% of their income in taxes (50% income + 20% vat). What are they spending all that money on?
- foder 2mo ago[flagged]
- autoexec 2mo agofree or heavily subsidized healthcare, childcare, higher education, and excellent public transportation?
- AntronX 2mo agoThen why work hard if everything you need is paid by someone else? This may explain low salaries in EU and 30 day PTO. Then if people don't make a lot they have to tax them more to pay for all this free stuff which further disincentivizes working harder.
- autoexec 2mo ago> why work hard if everything you need is paid by someone else? So they can buy things they don't need but just want. So they can really splurge on their many luxurious vacations for example. People in Europe work harder than Americans. They work fewer hours, but are much more productive than workers in the US. Nobody should feel "incentivized" to work harder by the threat that they'll become homeless the moment they get sick or need an ambulance. If you feel like you'd never work hard if you didn't have that threat constantly hanging over you maybe you're just unnaturally lazy.
- jjav 2mo ago> Then why work hard if everything you need is paid by someone else? Isn't the answer obvious? So that you can afford cool things that you want. There needs to be a baseline of minimum services everyone gets (health care, education, food). If you want anything beyond that, like a nice house, nice car, nice toys, travel, etc. then that's the motivation to work harder.
- ktosobcy 2mo agoEU needs more integration ("federalisation") as internal borders amount to something like 40% tarrifs… :/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49075517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49075517