We need taxes for all - also the super-rich.

“Tax the rich” is an official EU petition. The EU Parliament has to deal with it when successful.

7 EU countries must reach the quorum. And in total 1M Votes are needed. Check yours in the chart and share, cross post etc.!

The petition calls for the introduction of a wealth tax on very large fortunes. Sign the petition here

  • Kuinox@lemmy.world
    47·
    3 months ago

    Ideally we should massively share it in communities of the top 5 countries where the threshold wasn’t reach.

    So Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands and Slovenia.
    But it’s too late it end in 1.5 weeks.

  • MrMakabar@slrpnk.netEnglish
    25·
    3 months ago

    The petition also needs to go over 1million signatures. So French and Germans signatures help as well.

  • gandalf_der_12te
    14·
    3 months ago

    signed

    Edit/commentary: I understand that this proposal is less than ideal, because “tax the rich” is not going to solve the problem. We need a reform of our basic principles of economy. But it’s a sign that something must be done against the inequality.

    • 7eter@feddit.orgOP
      14·
      3 months ago

      i believe they might not know that this is important and will affect folks who earn around 1000€ passively from interests… per day ^^

          • 7eter@feddit.orgOP
            9·
            3 months ago

            is it fair being born with wealth that pays you a daily interest that others work for a whole month?

              • barsoap@lemm.ee
                7·
                3 months ago

                Hey ho I have a paper for you

                We demonstrate that chance alone, combined with the deterministic effects of compounding returns, can lead to unlimited concentration of wealth, such that the percentage of all wealth owned by a few entrepreneurs eventually approaches 100%.

                …note no skill required. Conversely, hustling won’t get you there.

                We show that a tax on large inherited fortunes, applied to a small portion of the most fortunate in the population, can efficiently arrest the concentration of wealth at intermediate levels.

                So we don’t even have to hit millionaire kids. Inheriting 5-10 million a head is fine, systemically speaking. And if you think that your kids are better off with more money I sincerely feel sorry for you.

  • Fuckswearwords@lemmy.world
    6·
    3 months ago

    I’m not against this initiative per se. But this is just another tax on middle class people and doesn’t tackle the real wealth being hidden in multinationals that don’t pay any tax and hold governments hostage by threat of moving their employment away. They are the problem. They pollute like no other because no one is ever held accountable.

      • Fuckswearwords@lemmy.world
        2·
        3 months ago

        Again, I’m not against this initiative in it’s entirety. I’m just remarking it doesn’t tackle the real problem. And to answer your question, having savings around a million euros isn’t weird for western Europeans. The standard of living here is fairly high. The average starter home is around 400k euros where I live. Meaning regular 4 people family homes are almost double that. Again. I’m not against this proposal. But it’s just populist pandering. Most people just read the title and go “yeah eat the rich”. I know Paul Magnette. I’d never vote for him cause he’s not a sincere politician. He’s a populist. It’s the modern political disease, they’re all populists. No one is honest anymore. They’re all there in your face just to get votes. This proposal is nothing more than a simple ad and power grab. I wish it were different. I really do. The real problem is that no one who works for someone else earns their fair share. Corrupt governments won’t solve this.

        • threeganzi@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          3 months ago

          Thanks for the context. And I have no idea who Paul Magnette is so I’ll take your word for it.

          I think your point about cost of family homes makes sense. If that is the case it might need an adjustment.

          I have no experience with economic systems, but I wonder what the effect on home prices would be if taxed at the levels proposed. My hunch would be that home prices would decrease. The risk is of course that families with less financial means that borrowed money to afford a home will loose money.

          Regardless, the main problem is extreme wealth disparity. My question is mainly, are the home prices high because wealth is high?

          • Thomrade@lemm.ee
            6·
            3 months ago

            I dont know where this OP is living but having a million Euros in savings is definitely NOT normal, nor is it “middle-class”. Yes the houses can cost that much, most are mortgaged and the owners saddles with half a million in debt, desperately hoping for the prices to rise to make a profit. And there’s a significant housing shortage in several western euro countries too.

            • Avero@feddit.org
              1·
              3 months ago

              Rich people usually dont have their wealth laying around on a savings account, but rather own shares of a company or property or something else, but not cash. If you’re lucky and bought a house in a metropolitan area a few decades ago, it’s also not unlikely that you’re a millionaire on paper with a normal middle class income. Just having double the income of the average isn’t that absurd, some people just earn a little more than others. The real issue is waaaaay above this level of wealth. Not the 60y/o guy who has a few hundred thousand in his pension savings.

      • notabot@lemm.ee
        3·
        3 months ago

        It’s probably not so much you can’t retire, but you can’t retire with an income that you’ll be comfortable on.

        A brief look suggests the average pre-tax wage in Belgium is around €3800, or about €45000 per year. Assuming you already own your home, or continue to pay mortgage payments at the same rate as before retirement, your pension needs to roughly match your income to not have a drop in living standards. A €1250000 pension pot will buy an annuity that pays a bit more than that, probably around €55000 a year, but assuming you amassed that in your pension pot you would probably have been on a higher than average salary, so it’s going to be close, and an annuity at that level wont increase with inflation, so your buying power drops over time, just when you’re more likely to need a care home or nursing support.

          • notabot@lemm.ee
            1·
            3 months ago

            A really rough calculation (and I acknowledge I could be somewhat off here) suggests that if you contribute for 40 years, and get around 5% interest per year, you’d need to put in an average of €10,000 per year to reach €1,250,000. Working out average salary progression through a working life is left as an exercise for the interested reader, but assuming you’re putting 10% of your salary into your pension, you’d need to be earning six figures to make that pension pot, so a drop to around €73,000 including the public pension could be hard to manage.

            As I said, not so much can’t retire, as can’t retire at the same standard of living, especially as annuity payments wouldn’t increase with inflation.

    • 7eter@feddit.orgOP
      12·
      3 months ago

      This just qualifies as ultra-rich - which is not wrong, imho. I don’t know the exact conditions for Belgium but in Germany the taxes would start to show effect at 4,6 million with 2%. If you think about it assets in this magnitude could easily lead to 1000€ daily passive income. Those 2% wont hurt.

      • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
        5·
        3 months ago

        But it doesn’t include the home or business assets. So you could have one guy with €1.25 million in stocks who lives off a modest income from dividends and sleeps in an RV and he would be classified as ultra rich.

        Another guy could live in a €2 million mansion and be the owner of a €100 million business (but have no other investments) and be classified as NOT ultra rich. See the problem?

        • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
          5·
          3 months ago

          Yeah, the problem is you’re shooting down a great initiative with an edge cases that affects maybe a couple dozen RV sleeping millionaires. Maybe he should participate and contribute to society!

          • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
            4·
            3 months ago

            Edge cases are what these guys used to get their fortunes in the first place. The more common term for these is tax loopholes! Everyone knows that big corporations like Apple use them (“Double Irish” being the most infamous) but individuals use them all the time.

            Anyway, the point I’m making is that I really don’t care about the RV sleeping millionaire, I care about taxing the 200 millionaire business owner I mentioned who would currently be exempt. Because of the loophole, you can bet that all of the “ultra-rich” are going to restructure their investments into a single business they own so that they can completely exempt themselves from the tax.

            • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
              3·
              3 months ago

              Yeah, start with this law then close loopholes. It’s like you’re climbing a cliff, you don’t leap straight to the top you get handholds where you can find them and make your way up.

        • threeganzi@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          3 months ago

          Why should someone be able to live off dividends if they have “ultra-rich” wealth at the bank? This person has a lot of money so if they live in an RV it’s obviously a choice they made.

          Plus they could just spend some of that stock money and go below “ultra rich” level and get taxed less. And perhaps then they have to use part of their non-ultra-rich wealth to live their RV dream life to supplement their dividends. Doesn’t sound too bad.

          TLDR; I don’t feel bad for someone that can’t live dividends when hey have more than one million euro in the bank.

          Edit: while is still stand by comment, I do see I missed your point about fairness. Not too big of a problem in my mind. Or perhaps a solution would be to tax home values above X amount? (Edit2: and only the amount above X)

  • wieson@feddit.org
    2·
    3 months ago

    Can someone tell me, where I can look up whether I have already signed or not?

    Or do they remove duplicates automatically?