this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024

430 points (98.9% liked)

World News

39380 readers

1928 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Rule 1: posts have the following requirements:
- Post news articles only
- Video links are NOT articles and will be removed.
- Title must match the article headline
- Not United States Internal News
- Recent (Past 30 Days)
- Screenshots/links to other social media sites (Twitter/X/Facebook/Youtube/reddit, etc.) are explicitly forbidden, as are link shorteners.
Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. The key points in 1-2 paragraphs is allowed (even encouraged!), but large segments of articles posted in the body will result in the post being removed. If you have to stop and think "Is this fair use?", it probably isn't. Archive links, especially the ones created on link submission, are absolutely allowed but those that avoid paywalls are not.
Rule 3: Opinions articles, or Articles based on misinformation/propaganda may be removed. Sources that have a Low or Very Low factual reporting rating or MBFC Credibility Rating may be removed.
Rule 4: Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, anti-religious, or ableist will be removed. “Ironic” prejudice is just prejudiced.
Posts and comments must abide by the lemmy.world terms of service UPDATED AS OF 10/19
Rule 5: Keep it civil. It's OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It's NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, misinformation, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.
Rule 7: We didn't USED to need a rule about how many posts one could make in a day, then someone posted NINETEEN articles in a single day. Not comments, FULL ARTICLES. If you're posting more than say, 10 or so, consider going outside and touching grass. We reserve the right to limit over-posting so a single user does not dominate the front page.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]

Recommendations

How to spot Misinformation and Propaganda

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

Consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

430

Be brave and impose minimum tax on world’s billionaires, urges Spanish minister (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 month ago by MicroWave to c/world

12 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Summary

Spain’s economy minister, Carlos Cuerpo, is urging G20 nations to support a global wealth tax on billionaires, targeting a 2% minimum tax on assets to raise $250 billion annually.

Backed by Brazil, France, and Germany, the initiative aims to fund climate action and green investments.

Cuerpo highlighted growing public demand for wealth redistribution, especially as climate crises worsen, like Spain’s recent deadly floods.

The proposal mirrors the global minimum tax on multinationals and seeks international coordination to overcome political resistance from wealthy elites and lobbyists.

top 12 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] givesomefucks 56 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

Everytime we talk about taxing them, we hear "they'll leave if we tax them!"

But they fucking won't, and even if they do, it's as simple as a "tax dodger law" when the wealthy enter the country.

There's not many billionaires. If first world countries said if you have a billion in net worth, it now costs 100k/day in taxes to be in their country...

It's not like the billionaires will really live in isolation. Hell, they won't even really go thru with moving legal residence out of the country that made them a billionaire.

Either they move the permanent residence where they'll actually spend their time, or they can pay the 100k/day to be there and not pay the taxes they should be.

Edit:

For America specifically, we have the "exit tax" already...

https://1040abroad.com/blog/exit-tax-explained-a-us-expats-guide-to-expatriation-tax/

It's not the best, and it doesn't stop millionaires from leaving, but it's a big reason US Billionaires never renounce US citizenship, even tho we're like the only country who taxes income from foreign countries.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Also never understood the “they’ll leave if we tax them!” argument

If they stay and we keep tax laws minimal and unenforced or easily evaded ... then billionaires don't pay tax

If they leave ... then billionaires don't pay tax

All the incentive is there to just tax them because no matter what you do with them .. they won't pay tax ... so its better to just give them a good excuse to leave because they are just a drain on the economy

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

“You owe us money!”

“No”

“Oh, okay”

[–] fcuks 2 points 1 month ago

Competelly agree with your points' intention here, but if billionaires leave a country and take their wealth elsewhere, then it's not being invested in that country, which is detrimental. Also they're not spending money on luxury items or lots of whatever billionaire stuff, paying tax on that and circulating a portion of their wealth in that country etc.

So it's more like:

billionaires stay in the country, spend and invest in the country and don't pay tax vs billionaires leaves they dont spend invest, nor pay tax.

My 50pence is there shouldn't be billionaires in the first place, why does any one individual need that much wealth, it just accumulates more wealth and a lot gets hoarded away from anything productive.

[–] FlashMobOfOne 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Solid points all around.

Further, even if it would be largely ineffectual (which it won't), we should make it inconvenient for billionaires to dodge taxes, just as some states make it inconvenient to obtain guns.

[–] givesomefucks 15 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yep.

It's been a busy couple years, but the Panama Papers never really led to anything.

We know "they" are doing this, it's not even an ambiguous "they" because of that story, we have names and evidence of the wealthy breaking laws to dodge taxes. But we just didn't do anything because those people also tend to give a shit ton of money to both parties.

A single unimportant person got four years in the US and two lawyers got four months in Brazil.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/panama-papers.asp

But none of the wealthy dodging taxes was held accountable. Hell, the leaks named dozens of former and current world leaders.... Why would they hold themselves accountable?

As much as I care about politics, we need to start coming to the hard realization that it's just a distraction so the wealthy can stall till they can just buy robots instead of paying people.

That's the clock for taxing the wealthy. The need for human soldiers and manufacturing.

If we don't beat that clock, then humanity as we know it is fucked.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

This is also a proposed wealth tax not just an income tax, the US would probably do something like tax US citizen ultimate beneficial ownership of assets held which can be traded on US exchanges, so unless someone entirely divests there isn't a legal tax avoidance strategy apart from the exit tax.

Honestly 2% on billionaires is too low imo. I'm in favor of starting lower and having a progressively increasing marginal wealth tax, like 1% on all assets over $10M, additional 1% on all assets over $100M, etc.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

And importantly, isn't that the point of proposing a global wealth tax? Unless they plan on taking their wealth to Mars, they'll be stuck paying in, were everyone to play along.

Yes, I know, wishful thinking, but that is the proposal.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Citizens of rich countries are too busy bickering about refugees. They are so easy to distract.

[–] undergroundoverground 5 points 1 month ago

Tbf, those same billionaires are pretty powerful but yeah, you're right and it's tragic.

[–] homesweethomeMrL -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Brave

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Thoughts and prayers 🥰