Want better public services? Ban Billionaires, Tax the rich and legalise cannabis
Let’s have a new deal on the Billionaire Class….
….and this too…
Who is brave enough to back Brazil’s global tax on billionaires? The answer will define our future
The response to the pandemic was one test of that proposition. Now the world’s governments face another. Last week, Brazilian climate minister Ana Toni explained a proposal put forward by her government (and now supported by South Africa, Germany and Spain), for a 2% global tax on the wealth of the world’s billionaires. Though it would affect just 3,000 of the super-rich, it would raise around $250bn(£195bn): a significant contribution either to global climate funds or to poverty alleviation.
Radical? Not at all. According to calculations by Oxfam, the wealth of billionaires has been growing so fast in recent years that maintaining it at a constant level would have required an annual tax of 12.8%. Trillions, in other words: enough to address global problems long written off as intractable.
You would need to perform Olympian mental gymnastics to oppose Brazil’s very modest proposal. It addresses, albeit to a tiny extent, one of the great democratic deficits of our time: that capital operates globally, while voting power stops at the national border. Without global measures, in the contest between people and plutocrats, the plutocrats will inevitably win. They can extract vast wealth from the nations in which they operate, often with the help of government subsidies and state contracts, and shift it through opaque networks of shell companies and secrecy regimes, placing it beyond the reach of any tax authority. This is what some of the global “investors” in the UK’s water companies have done. The money they extracted is now gone, and we are left with both the debts they accumulated and the ruins of the system they ransacked. Get tough with capital, or capital will get tough with you.
The Brazilian proposal, which will be put before the G20 summit in Rio in November, has already been dismissed by the US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, who suggested there was no need for it. On whose behalf does she make this claim? Not ours. Wherever people have been surveyed, including in the US, there is strong support for raising taxes on the rich.
In the two years following the start of the pandemic, the world’s richest 1% captured 63% of economic growth. The collective fortune of billionaires rose by $2.7bn a day, while some of the world’s poorest became poorer still. Between 2020 and 2023, the five richest men on Earth doubled their wealth.
Billionaire wealth impoverishes us all: astonishingly, each of them produces, on average, a million times more carbon dioxide than the average global citizen in the bottom 90%. Billionaires are a blight on the planet.
Yet, because they are the true citizens of nowhere, shifting their wealth and residence between jurisdictions, they pay far lower levels of tax than the most downtrodden of their workers. Oxfam has calculated, using records unearthed by the investigative journalists ProPublica in 2021, that Elon Musk pays a “true tax rate” of 3.27%, and Jeff Bezos less than 1%. Falling tax rates and the clever workarounds designed by the lawyers and accountants serving the ultra-rich help to explain the growth of their fortunes.
Wealth that could otherwise support public services and public wellbeing is siphoned out of nation states. As the global rich accumulate ever greater economic power, and find ever more inventive ways to evade democratic restraint, they become more potent than many governments. There’s a word for this: oligarchy. Some of them use this power to demolish democratic safeguards. To give one example, they have lobbied successfully to pull down the rules and caps on campaign finance, until, in some nations, they appear to wield more influence over elections than the electorate.
…if we want to build the social and physical infrastructure we need to radically adapt to the realities of catastrophic climate change, we need to tax the rich!
I’m not looking for socialism here folks, just basic garden variety regulated capitalism!
There are 14 Billionaires in NZ + 3118 ultra-high net worth individuals, let’s start with them, then move onto the Banks, then the Property Speculators, the Climate Change polluters and big industry.
You should be angry, NZ Capitalism is a rigged trick for the rich and powerful. The real demarcation line of power in a western democracy is the 1% + their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us!
Do not allow their smears of ‘Envy’ dilute the righteous rage you should all be feeling!
There’s no point making workers pay more to rebuild our resilience, tax the rich!
-Sugar Tax
-Inheritance Tax
-Wealth Tax
-Financial Transactions Tax
-New top tax rate on people earning over $300 000 per year.
-Capital Gains Tax
-Windfall profit taxes
-First $20 000 tax free
Lift the tax yoke from the workers and the people and place it on the mega wealthy and have them pay their fair share for once!
In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth
By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals
In 2018, it was 42
In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people.
In 2021, 20 people own more than 50% of the entire planet.
This isn’t democracy, this is a feudal plutocracy on a burning Earth
The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.
We are but meat bags secreting hormones addicted to dopamine rewards for fat, sugar, salt and sex in a cultural landscape of individualism uber allas where we sing sweet secret lies to ourselves to make sense of a world around us that is frightening and in constant entropy.
Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.
PS – A legalised Cannabis market would create $1.1billion per year that could be ringfenced for proper drug rehabilitation.
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IF want to tax everyone equally start with a cashless society.That way everytime the billionaires spend they are taxed the same as us all .Every time a drug deal is done tax is paid .All the cash jobs done by tradies and others will no longer happen because every transaction will be taxed .
Government income would rise and personal taxes for the bottom feeders would be gone .
All the illicit trading would be captured because all transactions would have to go through a bank .The tax is then collected by the banks and the IRD IS REDUCED IN SIZE BECAUSE IT NO LONGER HAS TO CHASE THE BLACK MARKET .
Gordon walker. One would have to have confidence in the competence of the banking fraternity to agree to a cashless society. As someone whose bank account was skimmed, through no fault of my own, I have zero confidence in them. When criminals are smarter than both bankers and the police, and banks are unable to protect their customers’ money, this isn’t a very good idea. Further, It is IT dependent, which can lead to chaos when systems crash, and many older people aren’t IT savvy.
Agreed.
A cashless economy will hurt the poorest.
Currently, billionaires don’t move capital around in suitcases of cash. They use the electronic banking system. They would absolutely love a cashless economy.
Rather, let’s just tax the ultra wealthy fairly.
Better that than pitchforks.
How would it hurt the poor ?thats just another deflection they are already being crushed so how could it be worse them not paying any personal tax .It is not the poor who are dodging paying their share .The rich do move their money electronically but we would be able to trace all of their money and tax them accordingly .Even if they hide it in a trust that trust will be taxed on every transaction as well
Looks pretty simple to me and old people maybe more savy than you think .I guess you maybe one of those black market cash tradies .
We know a no buy or sell time is coming but I don’t support the idea of hastening the process by going cashless. I support the idea to make sure that everyone contributes to a functioning society but those with the ability will use gold or another valuable commodity along with a barter system to continue their lifestyle and ordinary people will suffer instead.
From what I have heard ex prisoners already have a difficult process to get a bank account and for various reasons some people choose not to have a bank account so being cashless would not help them.
“A legalised Cannabis market would create $1.1billion per year”
according to who?
Now see here!
I really cannot endure anymore of these unseemly attacks on millionaires, billionaires, trillionaires – the rich and propertied who run the world. I know most of this criticism comes from those disgruntled lumpenproletariat who realise their Christmas festivities will be limited to toast and baked beans or bread and marmite( no bread and butter now – butter and cheese! shockingly expensive) and whose Christmas parties are limited to a small gathering with a bottle of tequila around a park bench in the domain but they must understand how the world works to their benefit even when it does not appear to.
Now our friend Trevor, who is full of useful advice( as well as other stuff) had pointed out that the rich are wealthy because of their hard work and talent.
I have him to thank for clearing up misconceptions I had about them inheriting shitloads of cash from ancestors who struck it rich in gold rushes( the Gates Family) or exploiting black workers as supporters
of apartheid( the Musk family) of silver spoon in mouth upbringings in a wealthy family( Christopher Luxon) or being the descendent of successful brothel owners and slum landlords (Trump family) but thanks to Trev I know their wealth comes solely from hard work and application and as such they deserve to be our natural overlords and masters with holiday homes in Te Puke and Hawaii.
Now are you asking yourselves how does the wealth of our overlords help us with our lives? and pay for food? and our rent? and our doctors bills?
WELL YOU HAVE TO DESERVE IT BOTTOM FEEDERS!
It is called the trickle down theory after all – not the pissing down like a cow urinating on a flat rock theory.
Some of you remember its successful application under Ruth Richardson when the actual phrase used was ‘We should worship the rich’ ( that was about the same time Maori were told they should be more grateful that a National government was returning land stolen from them – rather like a car thief saying you should be grateful you got your car back in working condition when I could have totally trashed it).
WERE YOU IDLE BASTARDS GRATEFUL? No you bloody well were not. People insisted on pointing out that the benefit cuts and other austerity measure caused the economy to contract, unemployment to increase, small business to close, increased out migration and increased wealth for people named Fay, Richwhite (appropriate) Brierley( the pedophile), Watson, Hotchin( remember Hannover Finance and the ruined investors? – serves those greedy ol people right ).
You sods turned around and voted in a Labour government( with a woman in charge as well) and everything went downhill from there(though fortunately not too much because Labour is scared shitless of being called socialist). So much for rewarding hard work and enterprise you ungrateful, disloyal wretches!
Now austerity is being tried again and repeating the same experiment and expecting different results is insanity.
BUT THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT EXPECTING DIFFERENT RESULTS! IT IS EXPECTING THE SAME RESULT!
It is intended that the rich will get richer because they DESERVE it. The poor get crumbs from the high table because they do not deserve anything better.
Hope that clears that up for you. Now off to see if I can snare a few blackbirds so we can have a roast tomorrow.
Yeah yeah wise grey forkbeard. Happy Christmas and recharge your batteries –
as in EV – Effervescent Vivisections.
Greywarbler – the like unto thou with brazen knobs thereof. Merry syphilis and a clappy new year.