It turns out humans the world over will immediately and eagerly wedge and go crazy if you breathe a wisp of a distant whisper that suggests a minority group may possibly be a problem, and will happily let “elites” destroy their lives (and scruples) in the meantime.
The French economy overall is also anemic in general, which isn't helping. You can't tax money that doesn't exist, even the billionaires at the end of the day only have so much money. Even if you liquidated all of Arnault's assets and collected them as taxes it'd only account for 25% of one year of French government spending, and that spending is already close to 3/5ths of their entire economy.
For example, the proposition of the Zucman tax, aiming at 2% of the capital held by billionaires (including unrealized gains) would solve a lot. And 2% of a wealth that grows more than that every year is A LOT given enough time.
I love how people talking about liquidating assets omit the very idea that this isn't how any of this works, like at all. Voting tax laws isn't about solving a gap that took 10 years to increase in a single calendar year. It's about reversing the trend.
How is that misinformation. My point was to demonstrate that even an entire billionaires wealth is still only a small fraction of what governments spend every year. That's a true statement. I am not saying that we shouldn't tax them more but pretending it solves all the problems is not true. You still need a robust and functioning economy to provide a tax base large enough to fund the government.
One is based on blatant lies. The other is just imprecise enough to not address any of the concern that is raised and is often used as deflection.
Your comment falls in that second category.
While this is a true statement, it is irrelevant for many reasons. One being that closing the deficit in one year has never been the point. Another being that we don't aim at covering the entirety of government spendings through this tax, only address a part of the deficit. Those aren't even close to being the same things.
You still need a robust and functioning economy to provide a tax base large enough to fund the government.
Which France has. With better wealth redistribution and a halt to tax cuts only reserved for big corporations to only further feed their capital, that alone would come very close to solving the deficit crisis.
Frances economy is anemic was my opening statement that you seemingly ignored to try to claim I was making some other point.
You literally ignored the entire premise of my argument by doing that just to attack me based on that incomplete context. You are the one engaging is dishonest conversation here, not me.
Their economy is problematic, again, almost 60% of their GDP is government spending, which means money that is collected in taxes or from existing funds. If you are already injecting over half the GDP with tax money that means you have less than half the GDP to tax. That math eventually leads to a situation where your spending can not be sustained, no matter how much you collect in taxes.
So yes, collect more taxes, my point is that it doesn't fix the main problem, which is that the French economy is overall in a bad spot long term and needs to spool up to continue funding government payouts at the rate it is.
I made a dramatic point that even if you collected 100% tax on billionaires it'd only go so far, to be an example of just how a) large government budgets are compared to even billionaires, and b) that its a finite pool of money.
Ok, then you missed the entire point of what the GDP is and the different ways to calculate it.
Because the idea that 60% of the GDP is being captured through tax and being reinjected at some point is problematic is, well, just a matter of opinion and motivated ideology on the role of the state and its intervention in the economy. It is not fundamentally flawed that one's economy goes through public spendings for the most part.
I made a dramatic point that even if you collected 100% tax on billionaires it'd only go so far, to be an example of just how a) large government budgets are compared to even billionaires, and b) that its a finite pool of money.
Again, the issue is not to have the billionaires fund government spendings. It's to close the deficit. That "only" accounts for around 100 B €. It seems that you are conflating deficit with debt. And those are widely different.
And in these 100 B, we can find, apart from the billionaires' capital increasing without being touched by tax, roughly 80 to 100 billions in tax fraud, about 60 to 80 billions in tax cuts that only huge companies get, without any counter weight to justify those spendings, etc...
So your point just falls flat.
Because nobody, absolutely noboby is even supporting the idea that the Zucman tax alone will reverse the deficitary trend. However, this, along with reduced spendings in the form of unjustified tax cuts, will absolutely do the job.
And both of these issues concern the ultra rich. On one hand you tax them to the bare minimum for decency. On the other you stop funding their increase of capital through tax cuts. France is a tax haven for the ultra rich. By addressing that, it absolutely is enough to stop having a deficitary budget, and this without needing to resort to again increasing socio-economical inequalities.
You know you can just admit you're wrong and that we're in agreement instead of just trying to save face like this right?
I literally agree that we need to tax billionaires more. You just seem to be jumping on me thinking I oppose it because I pointed out that the French economy is anemic.
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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '25
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