Rich fucks tell you they want to be subjected to a wealth tax in your face, so you’re not too tempted to reach for the pitchfork, and lobby for tax exemptions for their rich asses behind your back.
If rich people would like to preemptively pay more money in to society to stop societal collapse and their own eventual defenestration… I’ll take it. There will always be imbalances of power, which we need to effectively regulate and not leave the most powerful to regulate for themselves.
If rich people want to use their money to make the world a better place, they can! When they say “I’d pay taxes if you made me” they really mean “fuck you”
Donations are not a good substitute for taxes at all. A social expectation of billionaires donating only ensures that the people who remain billionaires are the biggest assholes around to an even greater extent than they already are.
Sure, it shouldn’t be their choice by any means, but if they’re going to actually step aside and let actual tax policy take effect rather than lobbying tooth and nail to stop it. Good.
If they’re just paying lip service, as so often they do… well we’re back to the eventual defenestration.
Nah, they leave the lobbying to their employees or front organisations.
This. It’s all performative. They know that they have the politicians in their pockets and there’s no chance of new taxes targeting the wealthy. They will lower taxes on the wealthy just like they have continued to do for the past 50 years.
Millionaire is a very, very wide category. There are an astonishing number of people who are millionaires by the simple fact of owning their house and their car, in this insane market.
On the other end of the spectrum, someone can be worth 999 million and basically just be a billionaire, while technically not clearing the bar.
What people think inequality looks like and what it actually looks Ike are entirely different. Millionaires are closer to being broke than being a billionaire, and a billionaire is basically broke compared to the people who own everything. You need a semi logarithmic Y axis to plot the wealth disparity sanely.
We have to reduce the influence of billionaires, or anyone with less is ignored.
Can’t they just… Spend their money instead of hoarding it?
A. Liquidity B. Leverage C. Interest
Mostly their income depends on already having money. They get paid for having money.
They want it to go out as tax so they can then claim a bunch more on top of their existing charitable donations.
You don’t pay tax on charitable donations, and it’s a good way to hord off some money if you don’t want to pay tax on it, at least until such time as you can relocate your money to a less taxing nation, but there is a limit to how much you can tax exempt in a year. For normal people this limit is irrelevant because it far exceeds the amount of money they would ever get in a year let alone amount they would be able to give as charitable donations.
If there was a millionaire tax they could pay that and essentially offset the tax they pay by reducing their charitable donations. They would end up in exactly the same position as they currently are, but society would be slightly less pissed off with them. All to their benefit.
The only millionaires and billionaires that don’t want this other ones that are doing weird dodgy tax things so they don’t pay anything. Most of the wealthy 1% do actually pay their fair share of tax (although it isn’t high enough) because it’s so little money to them that it’s not worth fighting about it. Likes of Elon Musk a special breed of narcissist who actually put more effort into not paying tax in its worth.
What a strange article, it doesn’t say much else but keeps repeating the word millionaire like they’re some sort of different species.
Millionaires are closer to being one of Us than they are one of Them. I think some of them know that too.
If you were given £500,000 a year on the condition that you paid £20,000 additional tax, would you say yes?
No.
