I am all for fair taxation. (I do note that a lot of wealth is not cash in the bank but the valud of assetts. So taxing billionnairs on their assetts would require thdm to sell some of it to get liquid asetts to pay the fax, unless they transferred shares and stocks to the tax office to own by way of tax payment - a daft idea).

On universal wage regardless of ability, contribution, assetts, wealth etc - this would fundamentally chande social relations,  creating an underclass from which nothing is expected. In essence it would create a class of people, a caste similar to the untouchables or the pre-emancipation negros, a second or third order lumpen prole class.
As with legalised drugs, the number of 'users' of the universal wage as their permanent sole source of money (plus petty crime) and permenant relationship tie to the rest of society would grow relentlessly.  The whole idea of thriving, initiative, effort, excellence, giving it a go, trying again, failing beter, getting up and keeping going - and all the psychological, social, economic, emotional furniture that comes with such age old values would be radically changed in unforeseen but invariably distopian, degenerate ways.

Life is not JUST about money.

Such a national wage guarantee would die under inflationary pressures, same as rises in unemployment and pensions and wages etc never keep up with rising costs of living - a situation never more clear than at this time, with the advents of the two monsters globalisation and privatisation.

The poor suffering power suppliers are putting their prices through the roof now - poor darlings simply cannot afford people with lovely rooftop panels any more, so they are working on getting costs to those people back on track by raising prices and cutting return for power supplied.

Time to get rid of them and revert power supply to a government operation at one price.  Privatisation has failed - admit it and seek something better... the old mix worked quite well, thank you very much. Wish I could afford batteries.

We have the spectre of reduction in employment, thinning out of employment opportunities via immigration and preference for certain groups over mainstream Australia, same with training, and consequent overall lower incomes for the majority - along with shutting industries down and importing everything at inflated prices, leaving endless poverty-stricken disaster areas where once were thriving communities.  Then add to that the reality that Australia/Australians are still treated as "rich" First Worlders and charged top price for everything imported while steadily subsiding into a neo-Fascist, neo-
Feudal shattered and failed society of Robber Barons and Itinerant Worker Peasants seeking a meal at every town.

Madness - pure madness........A hundred years odd of genuine progress shattered in a generation and all diluted down to the lowest common denominators the chiefs could find in this world.

Poor Fellow - My Country...

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Can you quote oxfam?

Countries that discourage personal wealth.

Are ruled by despots, pretenders who are capable of nothing but taking.

They are singularly unremarkable in that no one tries very hard.

thegreatdivide wrote on Jan 23^rd, 2022 at 12:03pm:


Are they actually advising a 99% tax on the windfalls?

Not really a suggestion either. There is nothing to suggest oxfam thinks that is a good idea. Just that they think the money appears to be there.

My advice is that wealth taxes a great way of getting people to leave the country, spend their money overseas, hide their wealth, not bother working as hard, and skew the economy significantly, but a really bad way to raise revenue. Which is why no-one does it.

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Would you have to get rid of all the dictatorships first?

Exactly what I suggested would happen:

https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/education/2021/02/11/lessons-from-history-france-s-wealth-tax-did-more-harm-than-good/

While most decent people would support policies to address rising inequality and support those worst hit by the pandemic, history suggests introducing a wealth tax is unlikely to be the best way to do it. As Mr Healey concluded, there is a little evidence that, all things considered, it can be sufficiently lucrative.

Back in 1990, around a dozen European countries had a wealth tax, but most have been abolished

In 1982, Francois Mitterand, the first left-wing president of France’s Fifth Republic, introduced a wealth tax that was swiftly abolished by Jacques Chirac in 1986, but reinstated two years later when Mr Mitterand was voted back in. The tax – called the ISF (impôt sur la fortune) – stayed in place until 2017 when it was abolished by current president Emmanuel Macron.

The rate was charged on individuals with a net worth over €1.3m (£1.14m), with the rate ranging from 0.5 per cent to 1.5 per cent (on assets over €10m). While it might have helped social solidarity in France, the revenue it raised was paltry. In 2015, a total of 343,000 households paid €5.22bn, an average of about €15,200 per household, according to the Financial Times. It accounted for less than 2 per cent of France’s tax receipts.

What’s more, it led to an exodus of France’s richest. More than 12,000 millionaires left France in 2016, according to research group New World Wealth. In total, they say the country experienced a net outflow of more than 60,000 millionaires between 2000 and 2016. When these people left, France lost not only the revenue generated from the wealth tax, but all the others too, including income tax and VAT.

French economist Eric Pichet estimated that the ISF ended up costing France almost twice as much revenue as it generated. In a paper published in 2008, he concluded that the ISF caused an annual fiscal shortfall of €7bn and had probably reduced gross domestic product (GDP) growth by 0.2 per cent a year. What's more ISF fraud mainly involving an underassessment of property assets was estimated at around 28 per cent of total revenues.

Most wealth taxes have failed to bring in much revenue and ultimately proved politically unsustainable. Higher taxes and the flight of a cohort of France’s richest will have helped to reduce inequality, which is lower than in the UK, according to the Gini coefficient. But it is hard to see that it left the country better off.