Taxing Billionaires isn’t envy, it’s survival

The NZ Right are screaming that the Green Tax policy to let the yoke of tax off the poorest and onto the richest is ‘envy’.

Comrades.

Taxing Billionaires isn’t envy.

It’s survival.

Interesting argument from American political scientist Jeffrey Winters that Democracy is failing because the mega wealthy control the political process, a situation that is obvious in NZ with National and NZFirst crony capitalism infecting every piece of legislation.

We have mistaken Participation Power as the driver of democracy when really it’s Wealth Power…

Fewer than 60,000 people — 0.001% of the world’s population — control three times as much wealth as half of humanity. This statistic from the World Inequality Report shows the extreme inequality in our modern world. Political scientist Jeffrey Winters argues that, while the wealthy have dominated the masses throughout history, the gulf between oligarchs and the average citizen today is even greater than during Imperial Rome. In his new book, Winters points out one key difference: Today, this disparity is often achieved and maintained through democratic means.

 

…this is why taxing the mega wealthy is so important for the survival of democracy and why the Greens and Te Pati Māori economic policy is so crucial because they are the only ones recognising the danger in front of us with policies aimed at taxing the mega wealthy.

Making Billionaires pay for the society that built them is righteous not envy!

The Right argue that rather than taxing more, we have to grow the pie, but the pie is shrinking and demanding people suffer waiting for it to grow isn’t much of an election campaign – ‘Endure more pain’ isn’t as great a slogan as ‘tax the rich’ right?

NBR rich list tells us 26 Billionaires in NZ, many of them douchebags of the most worst kind, why shouldn’t Billionaire douchebags pay a Billionaire douchebag tax?

Billionaire, Steve Jobs said, and I quote…

“I didn’t invent the language or mathematics I used. I make little of my own food, none of my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on.

I put to you that Billionaires stand upon the shoulders of a society and draws their wealth and power from that society with minimal obligations placed upon them. They have benefitted from an educated civil society but want to pay sweet bugger all for its upkeep!

This Green Party tax policy is as close to recognising that reality as possible.

Economic Justice in an egalitarian democracy demands no less!