this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
437 points (99.3% liked)

Not The Onion

18175 readers
2755 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

  1. Links to news stories from...
  2. ...credible sources, with...
  3. ...their original headlines, that...
  4. ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Please also avoid duplicates.

Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/36272492

Europe’s richest man, the luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault, has said that a wealth tax that could cost him more than €1bn (£817m) would be deadly for France’s economy.

The French founder of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton said in a statement to the Sunday Times that calls for a 2% wealth tax on all assets “aims to destroy the liberal economy, the only one that works for the good of all”.

The idea of a wealth tax has steadily gained ground in France because of a political crisis, with the government trying to push through unpopular budget cuts. The idea of a 2% wealth tax on fortunes worth more than €100m has been proposed by Gabriel Zucman, an economics professor who has become a household name in France.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] threeduck@aussie.zone -3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

"There's been plenty of historical examples where taxing the wealthy has worked". And yet they literally tried it IN FRANCE and it didn't work, France is literally the example used for capital flight.

What a lazy rebuttle, "you're doing the work of billionaires", lazy and without substance. But if you require a pledge of allegiance to the lower classes before I can talk tax: Idgaf if France decides to wealth tax every dime until billionaires earn $20 an hour. There you go.

Wealth taxes are extremely hard to implement. You're hand waving off-shore holdings like, "nations can enforce tax". Tell that to Ireland. Not to mention the costs involved with determining "wealth".

A wealth tax sounds lovely and appeals to voters, but it historically just doesn't fly. A VAT on luxury goods is way easier, cheaper, less risky, and achieves a lot of the same goals. It's just a lot harder to sell to mugs like you.

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Wealth taxes are extremely hard to implement, but legislating thousands of tax loopholes is extremely easy. Removing them is hard, adding them is easy. Why is that?

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Removing step up basis on assets, taxes inheritance over a limit, increasing capital gains taxes, taxing corporate buy backs, are all great wealth taxes. VAT is a horrible wealth tax, that’s not the level of wealth we want to target. We don’t want to target consumption, we want the money back in circulation. I don’t think anyone here appreciates your explanation or your intelligence as much as you do.

[–] threeduck@aussie.zone 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ah, you're one of the morons who thinks a billionaire has a bank account filled with $1,000,000,000, just sitting idly, waiting to be added back into the economy by the government.

Good luck France, here's hoping you're the ONE country who can successfully institute a wealth tax.

[–] TronBronson@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

No I think a billionaires assets are being leveraged by 10x at a 4% interest rates to manipulate asset prices and consolidate wealth. What do you think they are doing big brain?