More than 250 billionaires and millionaires on Wednesday reiterated their call on elected representatives of the world’s leading economies to introduce higher taxes on the very richest in society.
In an open letter to political leaders gathered at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the rich signatories said they wished to deliver a clear message: “Tax our extreme wealth.”
“We are surprised that you have failed to answer a simple question that we have been asking for three years: when will you tax extreme wealth?” the letter said.
“Our request is simple: we ask you to tax us, the very richest in society. This will not fundamentally alter our standard of living, nor deprive our children, nor harm our nations’ economic growth. But it will turn extreme and unproductive private wealth into an investment for our common democratic future.”
This is marketing. If they really wanted this they would lobby for it, the same way they get all their other interests looked after.
lob·by: seek to influence (a politician or public official) on an issue.
How isn’t this lobbying?
Not the dictionary definition of lobby, but the colloquial sense where it’s a synonym for bribery.
Maybe you should use “bribery” then
No. Maybe you should mind your business.
Not sure why you’re being downvoted. We literally have a system of legalized bribery in the US. Sure they call it “campaign finance donations,” but it’s no coincidence that politicians come through for those donors every single time. Sadly, this includes foreign governments as well (Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, etc.)
The only surprising thing about this is that more foreign governments haven’t caught on. Our politicians are on sale for surprisingly cheap.
I made a list of all the things preventing billionaires from building community projects (such as sports facilities, primary healthcare clinics, funding teachers, child care centres) to benefit working people :
They don’t even have to do the work.
They can donate to progressives in primaries to offset the donations from other billionaires…
It’s just they know they get the same PR for just saying this, so it’s all they do.
Not everywhere is America.
All those impediments it’s easy to understand why they don’t. I mean that list is just so…BIG.
But those pesky politicians keep giving me tax breaks on my wealth. What am I to do?
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Takes time and effort or you need to create an organization that handles it for you, maybe they should hold elections? Oh, wait, now we’ve created privately owned/financed shadow governments…
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People will always bitch and moan about it either being the wrong thing, not enough, only for the press etc etc so doing it won’t help them in the slightest. Whereas being taxed will at least take heat off in the form of the specific campaigning that has been ongoing for many years now.
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It won’t be as well utilized as if the government gets it to distribute. Now this is a contentious statement of course but a private individual no matter how rich can’t give their money the legs the government can which already has the costly structure to dispense it in place. For a specific purpose a specific organisation might vastly outperform the government of course but if you generally want it to benefit the population of your nation then taxes is the best system we have to ensure it benefits all as much as possible. And the most fair in that we can vote for how it should be used.
Edit:
This said I still believe it’s firmly for selfish reasons they want to be taxed more:
- Reduce the mentioned heat on them
- Better wealth distribution help create more of the circumstances that got them this wealth, i.e. it’s a sound long term investment.
- Most of them have kids and they see how fucked they will be if societal and environmental problems aren’t solved
- Most have wealth tied up in assets that will lose value if things get more skewed, if noone can afford a house they will lose value until they are “affordable”, as a basic example.
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Maybe they should stop bribing elected officials to lower taxes on them then?
Talk about crocodile tears, ffs.
They’re just covering their asses when the masses have started to develop taste for the rich.
Yup. They’re starting to feel the flames tickling their feet and are getting worried … it’s too little - too late tho.
No mercy rules.
I mean I get what you’re saying, but these people asking to get taxed more “obviously” aren’t the people lobbying government to not get taxed. I’d bet it’s the CEOs and “lower level” assholes that want every benefit imaginable so they can appear to be doing a Good Job™ and collect their massive bonuses. :(
and it’s not like their governments wouldn’t accept extra money, either. i know the u.s. government accepts ‘donations’ to the general budget or specifically to reduce the federal (public) debt.
But donating quietly would defeat their purpose to publically “take a stand”, in the hope we wouldn’t have a massive BBQ!
How about we create a system that makes it impossible to be a billionaire, and makes it impossible to horde generational wealth?
These people are literally trying to save their asses from the masses - they dont want to give up anything.
Oh also we need massive death taxes to reset this horrible system.
massive death taxes
That’s one very good way to ensure one of our most popular governmental programs, Social Security, remains quite solvent.
Wild-ass idea here. If these wealthy individuals want to be separated from their extreme wealth so badly, why don’t they reduce their executive compensation and distribute the difference among their employees? You know, the people who do the work that earns them the extreme wealth in the first place.
Because capitalism.
The less glib answer, though a bit of an over simplification, is that the current trend of neoliberalism discourages self limitation and collective collaboration. If regulation is not put in place and enforced by forces (government, social contract, etc) then people are incentivize to push and make use of any advantage available. Not doing it risks being displaced by those who do. Competition becomes toxic and self perpetuatingSo basically “please put rules in place that protect us from ourselves”.
They have enough self awareness to know that it’s bad, but too much greed/drive/whatever to risk someone else getting ahead of them, so they need an outside entity to step in and change the playing field.
“Ourselves” as in the collective, not “ourselves” as individuals. It doesn’t matter how well-meaning the world’s billionaires are, if you don’t put guardrails in place eventually one of them will abuse the “norm but not outright illegal” system and we’ll be right back here.
Look at the US. They thought there were all these rules restricting a variety of things relating to governmental powers. Trump ignored a bunch of them, and it turns out there weren’t laws in place to prevent or enforce repercussions. Just conventions that most politicians abided by. Now they’ve got that cluster fuck. Or more directly related, there were laws regulating the stock market. Those regulations have been eroded over time by those who would benefit. We let them, and now inequality is off the charts. Systems this big and intertwined need structure. You can argue about whether you want it centralized or decentralized, but it needs structure. Letting people decide what is right for themselves leads to what we have now. Those with money have the power, and they are free to keep taking from those at the bottom.
And let’s not fool ourselves. I’m sure that at least some, if not most, of these signatories aren’t doing this out of some altruistic streak. Doesn’t take morals to see that we’re headed for class war. That or economic collapse. They are giving up some money/power/control so they don’t risk losing it all.
Fucking hypocrites. “Our request is simple: we ask you to tax us, the very richest in society" and then they let loose their army of lobbysts and lawyers to stop governments from even trying to tax them.
Well, yeah. Plausible deniability, my good Demonsword.
I mean, there’s a LOT of billionaires at this point. Are the ones saying this at Davos all (or largely) ones that are doing that lobbying?
there’s a LOT of billionaires at this point
you can’t even fill a small stadium if you gathered all of the world’s billionaires, its only a few thousand… 2-3k last time I’ve seen that statistic
Ok, then, this would be 10% writing this letter, and my question wasn’t answered.
They could also commit to giving 10% of their personal income or 2.5% of the value of their ne worth (whichever is greater) to the most effective charities now, while they’re waiting for the taxes to come.
Chris Anderson (of TED) has suggested this and had the math run, and worked out if every ultra wealthy person on record in the world did this it would generate enough money solve basically all pressing concerns to do with poverty and climate many times over (so we don’t even need all of them).
It’s never going to happen though, because Chris hasn’t accounted for the fact that most people who acquire wealth to this degree are some degree of sociopathic or at the very least believe somehow they’re entitled to be as wealthy as they are. So we need government regulation. Problem is we need it everywhere all at once, or these people just move their wealth around which can still severely damage the economy. But some countries, especially smaller ones, need to be brave. Europe taxes their wealthy reasonably well, and it’s clear it makes living in those nations better. More need to lead by example.
And yet, I was reading a similar thread yesterday, where most of the replies were critical and distrusting about one of the richest people giving most of his wealth to charity.
Just like they are not all the same and some will never be satisfied, the same is true of Lemmy
We need a good man like Davos in charge. A fine and honorable man. A man who could smuggle an onion through naval blockade.
If you’re an EU citizen, you can sign this petition for an EU wealth tax https://eci.ec.europa.eu/038/public/#/screen/home
Great, thnx for sharing!
I guess it’s fun to cosplay as a poor, but they keep bribing politicians to prevent that. Their wealth can make that happen if they actually wanted that.
Them: “Gee things are getting bad… The last time the poor were this bad off heads started rolling… How did we avoid that? Ohh yeah! Concessions! What if we SAY we want to give them concessions, and then tell the government not to? That should work!”
-The wealthy leeches, enemies of humanity
When the heads started rolling generally there was mass starvation. “Unfortunately” most of us are still too comfortable and unmotivated to force change that way. At least in the countries where most of these people are.
Put your money where your mouth is and then I will believe it - bribe/threaten to withhold funds from a politician and just get it done.
Putin does that by funding things like the NRA and Faux News.
It’s highly effective.
As a wise man once said: “Give it away, give it away, give it away now”
At first I thought this was billionaires only and it would be somewhat significant. Then I saw Simon Pegg listed and did a triple take, then realized I missed the words “and millionaires” in the first sentence.
I’m guessing there aren’t that many billionaires that would put their names on this list. ~250 millionaires is nothing, there are millions of them.
I remember this from a few days ago…
All the main “billionaires” are people who are heirs to billions but don’t have it yet.
It’s easy to say you don’t need billions when it’s hypothetical. It’s a lot different when you have the money
I’ll reply to that the same way the head of the US treasury replied once for US billionaires who were saying they should pay more tax “Don’t wait, we accept gifts, donations, and any money you want to send us, check our site, call us up, whatever, you can do it via cash, wire transfer, credit, or check. We stand by for you to send us that extra money”
If they’re that rich, they can easily fund a means of dispersing their wealth back to the system they’ve extracted it from
I mean, i can totally see the southern-accented rich lady on her fainting couch fanning herself with a spread of hundred dollar bills, “oh i do declare! If only the leadership could concoct a means for which i may reallocate much of these funds that have been slung over my shoulders for ever so long! I tell ya, a girl could just fall over with all this wealth on her back!”
This would only give more power to the remaining billionaires, who won’t disperse money on their own. This is why it must be a systemic change and not a volunteer action.
You’re god damn right 🤜🤛
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Classic prisoner’s dilemma.
