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Spain and Brazil push global action to tax the super-rich and curb inequality

(news.un.org)
131 points Traces | 7 comments | 02 Jul 25 10:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.461s | source | bottom
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samiv ◴[02 Jul 25 11:52 UTC] No.44442587[source]▶
I hope this works. The only way to save the economy and the society is by taxing the rich.

Think about it for a minute. The rich people hoard all the resources, financial assets, means of production and in the competition for resources they will (and are doing so) displace everyone else in the economy (and really from society also).

This means that those who are displaced have no means to participate in the economy. And not only that but also they will be pushed to the fringes of the society and exists in slum conditions. This will stiff the economy and hollow it out.

Let's say for arguments sake that the government taxes X hundred of millions of $ from the bezos/musks/gates/etc. and put that into the economy by

  - indirectly or directly hiring people
  - building infrastructure
  - providing services for the citizens (education, health care etc)
  - providing benefits to those who need.
All that money will immediately go back into the economy stimulating all kinds of economic activity. And essentially two weeks later that same X hundred million is back in the bank account of bezos/musk/gates and it can be taxed again!

By letting the uber rich hoard the wealth that wealth is essentially away from the economy providing very little economic activity.

In economy this is known as the "high propensity to spend". The "poor" (i.e. working/middle class people) have high propensity to spend, the rich have low propensity to spend.

Tax the wealth, not the work!

This has been done before and it can be done again!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Deal

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1. logicchains ◴[02 Jul 25 12:21 UTC] No.44442851[source]▶
Spending money doesn't grow the economy; the economy grows by saving and investment. Punishing people who successfully save and invest by giving money to people who prefer to spend everything they earn leads to less savings and investment, and lower economic growth, as the poor economic conditions of Brazil and Spain demonstrate.

Rich people don't "hoard" the means of production, they create it. Confiscatory policies lead to less business creation; if Gates, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Page had not had the wealth to create the businesses that made them billionaires, those businesses wouldn't exist, the jobs and products they create wouldn't exist. Europe demonstrates this empirically with its complete lack of any big tech companies, a result of its hostile policies and cultural attitudes to entrepreneurship.

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2. samiv ◴[02 Jul 25 12:24 UTC] No.44442887[source]▶
Investing in passive assets such as property that already exists does not create new economy.

"Rich people don't "hoard" the means of production, they create it."

Actually they do. Look at the GDP growth rates across western countries. 1-2%.

The wealthy people (since pandemic) have grown their wealth 10-20%. Where did that come from if the GDP didn't grow.

The only way they were able to do this was by literally hoarding wealth and by buying assets that already exist and by doing so displacing other people with less assets.

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3. mafuy ◴[02 Jul 25 12:33 UTC] No.44442981[source]▶
I think the GP comment has some issues, but this is not the right way to address them.

If someone owns all the houses but does not rent them out at a reasonable cost, so people have to sleep on the street while the house stays empty, then I will call that hoarding. You don't really address that core problem.

4. koonsolo ◴[02 Jul 25 12:41 UTC] No.44443038[source]▶
Europe has plenty of startups. The real issue is scale-ups, where the main cause is lack of risk capital.
5. drcongo ◴[02 Jul 25 13:17 UTC] No.44443363[source]▶
Indeed. There's a whole street in London (The Bishop's Avenue) that's essentially unoccupied - every house on it is owned by foreign billionaires. Every now and then one of them knocks down the house and builds a new, more garish one in its place. It used to be stunning, now it's grotesque.
6. ethbr1 ◴[02 Jul 25 15:48 UTC] No.44445192[source]▶
> if Gates, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and Page had not had the wealth to create the businesses that made them billionaires, those businesses wouldn't exist

Bullshit. They would have all created those businesses as long as their personal financial situation improved through them.

Arguing that it takes 0.1% wealth payoffs to incentivize business creation is false.

Someone would do it for anything greater than average, if there were global minimums, and a tax structure that allowed corporations to retain capital was used.

7. vitorgrs ◴[03 Jul 25 05:14 UTC] No.44451840[source]▶
Spain is actually one of the few countries in EU that is growing a lot, actually.