• dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    What’s the downside? If they move away, you haven’t lost anything because they weren’t paying taxes anyway. If they stay, you have just gained tax revenue. And it isn’t like you are going to lose a lot of sales tax money or real estate tax money, since they are not going to stop visiting Paris and buying luxury goods and are not going to sell their properties (that’s why they are so wealthy in the first place).

    Also, if they move away then you have fewer billionaires fucking up politics.

    • leftytighty@slrpnk.net
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      19 days ago

      Capitalist threats of leaving are hilarious. Oh no the non-contributors will leave. The workers are the economy. If capital flight becomes a problem that’s only a problem within a larger capitalist framework.

      Let them all leave, then we can own our own labour output.

    • slaacaa@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      No, you don’t understand, if the gajillionaires leave, then who will exploit our workers and take bail-out money from the government?

    • Dem Bosain@midwest.social
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      19 days ago

      But billionaires are the only source of jobs and if nobody is there to buy yachts how will the trickle-down economics work?

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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    19 days ago

    I like the “they’ll just move somewhere else” arguments about these wealth taxes. First of all, no they won’t. They like their luxury penthouses in Paris and their mansions on the Riviera. Secondly, that’s just an argument for having this tax everywhere else too.

    And you know, if Russia (or wherever) doesn’t want to have a wealth tax and all the billionaires move there, I’m not really seeing the downside.

    • FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      19 days ago

      We had a famous actor Gérard Depardieu move to Russia and renounce his French citizenship because of a 75% tax on earnings over 1 million P/A.

      Unsurprisingly he also has been charged with rape and is a Putin lapdog. So getting rid of him was a net positive.

    • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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      19 days ago

      You can implement exit taxes. I think some countries have that already. If you are a billionare, you will have to give up a fixed percentage of your wealth if you move.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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        19 days ago

        Hey, no one is saying they get to take their assets with them when they move to Russia to avoid those billionaire taxes.

    • VieuxQueb@lemmy.ca
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      19 days ago

      They already don’t pay taxes anyways, so pay up or leave is perfectly ok but remember to pay you sales tax when you sell your mansions and cottages.

      • Tja@programming.dev
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        18 days ago

        The seller doesn’t pay sales tax (and sales tax doesn’t apply to real estate transactions, usually it’s a special real estate tax and it’s much lower).

  • Supervisor194@lemmy.world
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    19 days ago

    Le Coq suggested that when simply considering the 10 biggest fortunes in France, the tax would bring in no less than €13bn for the state.

    A 2% tax on billionaires. Give me a break.

    The point isn’t to bring in money, the point is to eliminate these blights on society by any means necessary. How bad will the world have to get before something that looks like this happens? When the world was more civilized - the world conservatives constantly pine for - the ultra-wealthy were taxed over 90%, because we knew that too much power in the hands of a single person was immensely dangerous. We knew this intrinsically from generations of being ruled by kings, but we got firsthand experience with it from them constantly fucking up the economy.

    There was shame in being wealthy. Hell, there was shame in being rich when I was growing up - it was understood that you couldn’t get mega-rich without stepping on the necks of the working class and being horrible people. It’s nearly Christmas - go rewatch It’s a Wonderful Life for crying out loud. 1946!

      • Supervisor194@lemmy.world
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        18 days ago

        Which doesn’t really change the point does it. These people are de-facto kings ruling us; their wealth subverts the entire idea of democracy. You can’t tax them out of existence without taxing their wealth because none of them have any actual income. Banks fall all over themselves to fund anything they care to do.

        In any case, 2% isn’t going to do fuck-all even if it gets passed which is hardly a certainty.

  • vin@lemmynsfw.com
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    19 days ago

    would apply to anyone who is a tax resident in France or who has assets in France.

    Awesome!

  • Floshie@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    19 days ago

    Within the Barnier government, this law will be quite unlikely applied, yet I’m glad it reached such point of consideration