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Second Article in this week's Economist. The Economist is "Centre-Left" According to MBFC. (thelemmy.club)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/libjerk@anarchist.nexus
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https://archive.ph/20260225073357/https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/02/19/dont-go-after-the-rich-to-fix-broken-budgets

Apparently poor people starving while rich people have 2 yachts is less morally wrong than 👻Taxing the Rich👻

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[–] 9 points 6 months ago (16 children)

Read the article. They’re in favour of closing loop holes and ensuring tax is progressive all the way to the top end (so taxing the mega rich properly) but point out the inconvenient (and true) truths that it won’t raise enough money to fix everything, and it concentrates political power in an even smaller number of people (those who are paying for everything) and encourages a culture of dependency in everyone else.

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  • [–] 35 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    concentrates political power in an even smaller number of people (those who are paying for everything

    Somehow rich people paying taxes concentrates power? They already have all the power via lobbying and citizen's united. How the fuck would taxes give them power?

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    The solution to lobbying and citizens united isn’t tax changes - it’s transparency in political funding and the electorate giving a fuck. And, pretty obviously, if most of a governments tax income came from a few hundred individuals they’d have enormous power, even if you did fix the lobbying/citizens united problem- they could just leave and crash your income overnight

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  • [–] 10 points 6 months ago

    if most of a governments tax income came from a few hundred individuals they’d have enormous power

    But, currently, those people already have enormous power ... and we're not even getting any money out of the deal.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago

    Yes... The solution to lobbying and citizen's united is to get rid of them... I was merely saying that was the locus of their power and that taking their money via civic means doesn't somehow give them power. Also, the flight of wealthy people narrative never pans out when tested.

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  • [–] 10 points 6 months ago

    Ok, then let's not "tax" them. Let's just confiscate 100% of their assets and throw them into a wood chipper. Would that be morally acceptable to you? I mean the power isn't concentrated in that person anymore.

    Personally I'm a fan of this method.

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  • [–] 9 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    The Economist is based in the UK, so they know with absolute certainty that the rich most definitelly do not "pay for everything" since in that country, much more than most, the industry for Tax Avoidance and Evasion is MASSIVE, using British Crown dependencies (like the Channel Islands and the Bahamas) and even supported by the local legislation (such as their very special Non-Resident Tax Scheme which actually applies to people resident in the UK), all of which expensive enough that they're only worth using for people who make millions per-year.

    The idea that a British-based magazine specialized in Finance and Economics are unfamiliar with the kind of schemes used by the likes of the Duke Of Westminster to avoid paying any tax at all and instead think the rich pay most taxes beggars belief.

    At best, the Middle and Upper-Middle Class pay for everything. De facto the rich pay less effective tax on their incomes than the lowest levels of the Working Class, some even in absolute terms (as admitted by none other than Warren Buffet when he said that "I pay less tax than my secretary").

    I read The Economis for over a decade until the 2008 Crash (when I finally saw the disconnect between the ideas they claimed to defend and the actions they actually approved of, and thus stopped reading it) and I have no doubt in my mind that this is just their usual "opinion forming" mix of half-truths, cherry picked factoids and pseudo-Scientific theories knowingly built on top of lies.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    The article is about the US, so doesn’t mention the UK. But to quote the article “Loopholes benefiting the very wealthy should certainly be closed. The biggest problem in the American tax system is at the very top. The resetting of the basis for capital-gains tax upon death allows billionaires who hold on to assets, borrowing against them to fund spending, to avoid the levy entirely. The dodge is outrageous. Yet ending it would yield only a tiny amount of money, probably less than 0.1% of GDP annually. The same goes for raising inheritance tax, a good tax that has never generated much money.” I suspect the same in the UK.

    The key point remains reasonable though - you can do all that but you just don’t raise enough money to meet people’s expectations

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    As the quote from Warren Buffet I provided shows, it's exactly the same thing in the US.

    My point is that those working for a Finance and Economics magazine in the country of the World with a massive International Tax Evasion & Avoidance industry are very much aware that the people with the most money do not "pay for everything", quite the contrary: they take more from the common pot via industry subsidies, the cost for the taxpayer to uphold Property Law for their assets and the societal side effects of wealth inequality - from the need for unemployment and other benefits to higher Crime due to inequality - than they put in taxes - they're parasites, not contributors.

    Further, the top 1% of wealth in the US don't own 30% of all the wealth in the country throught their annual wealth increase only being 0.1% of GDP as implied by how they framed their argument around that single loophole.

    That claim that a specific "loophole benefiting the very wealthy" only amount "0.1% of GDP" is either a lie or they cherry-picked a single loophole and chose not to mention all the other ones, which is a lie by omission.

    Lying by omission like that definitelly matches my own experience from reading it, on how The Economist frames things and dishes out selective half-truths to "form opinion" either to excuse (even celebrate) the very wealthy or spread a message of "there's nothing we can do about it, better just do nothing" when it comes to make them pay their fair share into the common pot - the propaganda technique of this magazine doesn't seem to have change in the decade and a half since I stopped reading it.

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  • [–] 8 points 6 months ago (1 child)

     it won’t raise enough money to fix everything,

    Who says that? Only one way to truly find out!

    it concentrates political power in an even smaller number of people (those who are paying for everything

    They already kidnap and fuck children, they kidnap other heads of State to disteact from that, they create a Gestapo...

    Like how should that it even get worse?!

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  • [–] 0 points 6 months ago

    Find a political party you like, join it, start getting better people elected. Find an activist group (real, not online), wrestle with the compromises necessary to actually get anything done. Remember - a small group of dedicated people is the only thing that ever changes the world

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