406
Mega-rich renew call on global leaders at Davos to 'tax our extreme wealth' (www.cnbc.com)
submitted 9 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world
50 comments fedilink hide all child comments

More than 250 billionaires and millionaires on Wednesday reiterated their call on elected representatives of the world’s leading economies to introduce higher taxes on the very richest in society.

In an open letter to political leaders gathered at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the rich signatories said they wished to deliver a clear message: “Tax our extreme wealth.”

“We are surprised that you have failed to answer a simple question that we have been asking for three years: when will you tax extreme wealth?” the letter said.

“Our request is simple: we ask you to tax us, the very richest in society. This will not fundamentally alter our standard of living, nor deprive our children, nor harm our nations’ economic growth. But it will turn extreme and unproductive private wealth into an investment for our common democratic future.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] ninjan@lemmy.mildgrim.com 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

  • Takes time and effort or you need to create an organization that handles it for you, maybe they should hold elections? Oh, wait, now we've created privately owned/financed shadow governments...

  • People will always bitch and moan about it either being the wrong thing, not enough, only for the press etc etc so doing it won't help them in the slightest. Whereas being taxed will at least take heat off in the form of the specific campaigning that has been ongoing for many years now.

  • It won't be as well utilized as if the government gets it to distribute. Now this is a contentious statement of course but a private individual no matter how rich can't give their money the legs the government can which already has the costly structure to dispense it in place. For a specific purpose a specific organisation might vastly outperform the government of course but if you generally want it to benefit the population of your nation then taxes is the best system we have to ensure it benefits all as much as possible. And the most fair in that we can vote for how it should be used.

Edit:

This said I still believe it's firmly for selfish reasons they want to be taxed more:

  • Reduce the mentioned heat on them
  • Better wealth distribution help create more of the circumstances that got them this wealth, i.e. it's a sound long term investment.
  • Most of them have kids and they see how fucked they will be if societal and environmental problems aren't solved
  • Most have wealth tied up in assets that will lose value if things get more skewed, if noone can afford a house they will lose value until they are "affordable", as a basic example.
this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
406 points (97.0% liked)

World News

39021 readers
1061 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world

Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
quinten@lemmy.world
NewsAutoMod@lemmy.world
jordanlund@lemmy.world
Tenthrow@lemmy.world
little_cow@lemmy.world
lemmyAtom@lemmy.world
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world