Starmer is in big trouble. If he goes, could gov fall - impact on the messy world we are in now

Taxing the rich isn't the solution to everything. But not taxing the rich is a big cause of a lot of the **** that has gone wrong

The influence of billionaires and now trillionaires is almost entirely negative and corrosive to the public good

Taxing the rich to stop them from accumulating such oversized political and economic clout is essential if we want to re-take back our countries.

6 years ago when the UK was talking about Covid supports, the number was £300 billion in income supports, which was 3 times the wealth of the worlds richest man at the time (Jeff Bezos)
6 years later, the world's richest man is valued at over £750 billion

Would you not have issues with Bezos' wealth given the conditions his warehouse workers and delivery drivers operate under?

Amazon as a business model is great, but is his profit margin so tight he needs to resort to draconian targets for his workers?

Thats what they want you to think.

All of the research is that the super wealthy pay a much much smaller proportion of their wealth in tax over their lifetimes than anyone in the middle class.

The super rich invest their wealth in buying assets. The fact that those assets are controlling shares in the companies that own everything is beside the point. If my company owns a billion dollars worth of assets, I can say 'my wealth is just on paper, i'm just an incomeless pauper who needs to claim benefits (which is exactly what Jeff Bezos actually did)

I know we don't tax wealth, thats the problem. The reason why the wealthy pay less income tax is because it is easier for them to find ways have no 'income' (through retained corporate earnings, deferred capital gains, holding company structures) while clearly amassing wealth. Pointing out what we currently do now is not an argument for what we should do to redress the obvious problem if consolidation of wealth and power into fewer and fewer people.

People have 3 reactions when they hear about wealth taxes

1. I don't want to have to pay my own wealth in tax
   1. Nobody is seriously proposing wealth taxes on ordinary people, the proposals by the likes of Gabriel Zucman are on taxing wealth above a very high level centimillionaires and higher, high enough that almost nobody will ever have to worry about paying it themselves. And high enough that anyone paying it, will have no problem affording to pay it and would remain extremely rich.
2. Taxing wealthy people is too hard
   1. Its extremely hard when you don't try to do it at all. Its very simple when you keep the rule 'every year you file a tax return listing all of your assets and the value of each on a given date, and you pay an amount equivalent of x% of that in tax. Apply this rule to people worth more than 100 million euros with penalties for people who fail to file their self assessment. These people can easily afford the admin and accounting required to complete the returns.
3. Taxing wealthy people is unfair on them because they earned it somehow
   1. Its the opposite. Beyond a certain level, they make more passive income than they could ever hope to spend, they use that income to buy assets that increase their wealth and power where it becomes corrosive and they use that wealth and power to make everyone else's lives materially worse.

Ireland already has an unrealised gains tax on eft investments that require them to be paid after 8 years. This is targeting the wrong people. Instead of doing this, there should be a wealth tax on all investments and assets but only for people who are genuinely wealthy and not the people paying the top rate of tax at just over 44k per year.

And the Tech Unicorns are just the next bubble waiting to pop. Allowing these billionaires to amass so much wealth that they gamble with investments completely consequence free, such that the valuation of assets is completely distorted… it harms us all when the bubbles inevitably pop and ordinary people's pensions and savings are wiped out while the banks and billionaire classes, who don't pay their share of tax inevitably hoover up the bailouts funded by the tax payers

No.