Want better public services? Ban Billionaires, Tax the rich and legalise cannabis
Let’s have a new deal on the Billionaire Class….
….or 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 $10 000 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.
And now 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.
Just be careful allocating that $1.1B cannabis tax. You may not see much of it if Canada’s experience is anything to go by.
Worth a read; https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67126243
“Canada also has stringent laws on the types of products that can be sold, as well as their potency. Some argue that this has caused illegal cannabis in the country to continue to thrive even under legalisation.
Consumers of cannabis edibles, for example, are able to go online and find products with a potency higher than the legal amount, Mr Smitherman said.
Often, those products are sold at a considerably lower cost than what is being offered in licensed stores.”
Legalising and taxing cannabis is not a cure. It involves potency regulation, compliance costs, distribution costs (shops in Canada are not profitable), and most importantly no brand development as only plain packaging is allowed.
Still very easy to get higher potency products delivered to your home “Uber Eats” style by illegal operations at a cheaper price (cheaper by not having regulatory, compliance costs, distribution and taxation problems the legal supply has). You just need to know what number to call and have cash on hand.
So that $1.1B in taxation will not be realised any time soon, if ever.
Thanks for that Gerrit. Interesting and valuable info. Legalising it and letting the market set prices – competition – would that sort it out? And continue collecting tax while that happens. And using that tax for testing to make sure the product is pure and not a cover for some manufactured drug? And also help in drug rehab. And run chat sessions on philosophy and human potential and help people sort out a way for themselves in the process.
I remember Aldous Huxley went to Mexico I think and tried mescalun. He thought it useful in controlled doses. What has happened to that? Is it around under another name?
I noticed robberies on service stations is 60% up under this government .Clearly the tough on crime has scared the shit out of the bottom feeders and the gangs who are scared of Mitchel coming for their patches .
After your claim the UK killer was white I am surprised you have posted again.
Have you apologized for your error.
Wow Trevor has become a troll, a “Bob the first” if you like. Glass houses Trevor.
well he was born there and is clearly english unlike the shit you white extremists were posting so have you and yours apologized for your constant lies and race bashing.
As someone on the far left I have always considered progressive taxation as the answer economic inequality but the more I learn about how fiat currency and the money supply actually operates I’m increasingly aware that this may not be the full picture.
It’s very counter intuitive and goes against everything we understand and learn about the economy – taxes don’t pay for government spending. The purpose of taxation is to remove money from the economy to control inflation. This used to be well understood but has been erased from economic discourse.
Here is a 3 minutes clip from UK economist Richard Murphy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnYhGD7xNig
Interest cost is the problem. Basic economics require either an increase in the money supply or they increase the income divide between those charging interest and those paying it, both have negative consequences. This is a big picture view and people can use leverage as a way to get ahead however what they gain is lost by someone else and overall productivity does not increase.
During covid $50billion was pumped into the economy to save banks, landlords, businesses and jobs, in that order. It stopped the economy from imploding. The government helicoptered in $15,000 for every adult in the country. If you didn’t finish covid with $15,000 in the bank then none of that borrowed money was given to you. Who ended up receiving the $50billion.
WHERE IS THE $50 BILLION?
WHO HAS THE $50 BILLION?
WHEN WILL THE $50 BILLION BE GIVEN BACK TO THE GOVERNMENT (THE PEOPLE)?
As someone on the far left I have always considered progressive taxation as the answer economic inequality but the more I learn about how fiat currency and the money supply actually operates I’m increasingly aware that this may not be the full picture.
It’s very counter intuitive and goes against everything we understand and learn about the economy – taxes don’t pay for government spending. The purpose of taxation is to remove money from the economy to control inflation. This used to be well understood but has been erased from economic discourse.
Here is a 3 minutes clip from UK economist Richard Murphy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnYhGD7xNig
Here’s another on – there is no such things as tax payers money – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AR9u7SAZ0oU
You will need to watch these several times and listen to other MMT economists – Bill Mitchell, Warren Mosler before this transformation of understanding will take place.
The left needs to include an argument for governments running higher deficits – a government deficit is not borrowed money – it is the difference between the new money a government creates (through the reserve bank) when it decides it’s budget – minus the taxation it receives in a given time period.
For some arbitrary reason we are told that government deficits must be reduced to zero or balanced – however, this means that the overall money supply and therefore economic growth and development will be entirely dependent on private sector credit creation. In most cases this means stagnation or recession.
If my reasoning is correct then I predict Nicola Willis will be forced to ‘borrow’ – increase the government overdraft with the reserve bank – in order to achieve economic growth and to get the employment rate back to electable levels.
the deficit will be 100% of GDP by 2050.
Growing like a weed, a legalized cannabis market won’t see a cent from me, but anything to part the ‘respectable’ middle classes from their money is still OK.
First 20k tax free, given as a cash option through IRD, for beneficiaries as an ease into a ubi.
Tax.
GST off all supermarket shops using a winz payment card.
Musk has contributed to social media which has caused so much damage to mankind .free ride .
Establishment and billionaire controlled Janet Yellen says no. Surprise, surprise.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/a-global-tax-on-billionaires-janet-yellen-says-no-cdb22e2f
A Global Tax on Billionaires? Janet Yellen Says ‘No’
Treasury secretary came out against the proposed global levy, which proponents say would stop the rich from shifting wealth into countries where they can avoid paying the tax
Tax the rich? We are so f’ing stupid we can’t even get a Capital Gains Tax over the line. Ardern sold out and these absolute wankers wouldn’t even entertain the thought.
You may be surprised but I do see the reasoning behind a capital gain tax as at present u taxed gains are distorting the market. It would need to work both ways though .At the moment 25% of sales are at a lose so that would need to be claimed as an offset tax.
Also glad to see u were not completely blinded by Jacinda