I don't even have an id card yet

@Natanox I believe if the Member State of your citizenship does have an official eID system, then it does? Not 100% sure.

@sleepybisexual

Lots of people these days are focused on "not" something. You propose a solution (whether it's politics, or technical, or culture whatever) and their reply is "not that." It's easy to say "not that". It's hard to say "we want this" and actually have a viable, workable solution.

When someone replies to my suggestion with "not that" I just immediately reply with "what do we do instead?" Frequently they don't know.

Nobody would live in a house if everyone said "not a cave, not a hut, not a hole in the ground, not a tree, not a bush..." You can't arrive at "I want to live in a house" by naming all the things you DON'T want to live in.

Most countries tax their residents even if that wealth is outside the country. German tax authorities, for example, have been known to purchase evidence related to the Panama Papers release for the specific purpose of being able to levy taxes on people who live in Germany but tried to hide their wealth and income in an offshore site.

> Who exactly would get taxed and to what extent? What would be considered "excess wealth"?

Fair question, not clearly answered.

But this is a very early step in a potential legislative process. This question would get hammered out throughout that process, if it gets in.

It's not like we're voting on specific terms here. Merely saying: "yeah that sounds like something we should spend some EU time figuring out properly."

So, that sounds reasonable to me. Plus, Thomas Pikkety is involved. 👀

I would also reply to "the rich can just move elsewhere!"

Governments know this, and have an incentive to act collectively. Slowly but surely, they are:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_minimum_corporate_tax_rate

The problem of mobile anti-democracy money is being addressed by Biden's rapid approvals of tax treaties.

There are fewer and fewer places for the rich to hide their money and evade taxation, as a result.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/07/01/statement-by-president-joe-biden-on-todays-agreement-of-130-countries-to-support-a-global-minimum-tax-for-the-worlds-largest-corporations/

Europe could do the same. Support a global minimum tax.

Even without being nihilistic, one can take a rather cautious approach to this proposal.

Putting aside discussion about feasibility, details of implementation, and the risk of unintended consequences, I'm uneasy about the way some of the desired outcomes of this proposal are framed.
By implying that "a just ecological and social transition" is conditioned on the contributions, albeit involuntary, of the rich, you just reinforce the same ideas that stand behind gold visa / citizenship schemes, EU tax heavens, and the incredible power of philanthropic whitewashing.

They're rich because they're better than all of us; they're better than all of us because they're rich, and if you keep insisting that this is a circular argument, they're the only way to save us from climate disaster and societal collapse. So clearly, they're better than all of us, their wealth is totally deserved, and you should believe whatever e/acc bullshit they sell at the moment.

Taxing can be the beginning of a discussion about wealth inequality (if I recall correctly, that was one of the arguments behind the global wealth tax in Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century) It can be used to adjust the balance of power (hell, if "moving wealth elsewhere" makes even a small dent in their ability to shape policies, then it is a win in my book). However, seeing it as necessary for implementing essential policies is a slippery slope. Ultimately, balance sheets are not the problem. The problem is that we have policies that keep real resources from where we (as in 99%) need them and divert them where they benefit a few by, among other things, giving them control over the policies that make them wealthy.

As @pluralistic wrote in Walkaway (https://craphound.com/category/walkaway/):

"If there are rich and poor, you need a story to explain why some have
so much and so many have little. You need a story that explains this is
fair. Last century, the rich made things stable by giving some money
back, tax and education and so on. Welfare state. People could
become rich. Invent something, you could become rich, even if
you weren't born rich.

But those zottas—not zottas yet, actually, just gigas or megas—only
let their money be taxed because it was cheaper than paying for private
security and official surveillance they needed to keep hold of wealth if
the system grew unstable because of the gap between them and everyone."

Let's push for changes, but speak out loud why we need them.

> The rich can move their wealth

Yes, but moving the wealth can also cost money. Making paying the tax maybe the cheapest option or not expensive enough to be worth deviating from already set plans.

Some people are "allergic" to taxes, but otherwise, one should not waste too much time on this point

No, it's realism. You can't just propose a bill without first gaming out how the other side is going to respond.

Pretend that you're a rich person who adores their money and already spends their days jetsetting around the world. What tricks would YOU use? You can afford all the greatest accounting and legal minds in the world to help you come up with them, so they're going to be good!

If you haven't gamed this out, what you have is worthless.

Because the outcomes of the countermeasures may not be just neutral, they may actually end up harming ordinary people far more than they harm the wealthy.

The point of legislation isn't "showy stunts", it's "actual outcomes".

Game it out and defend your work, or stop wasting your breath and people's time.

@nafnlaus if you do think htis could harm people, please be specific on how.

It depends entirely on the specific countermeasure in response to the specific policy, but can range from the money and jobs just leaving, companies wasting money on countermeasures rather than salaries, countermeasures leading to *reduced* revenues, and so forth.

Again: you need to *game out what countermeasure will be applied to what policy*.

Lets just say that not only have you come up with some brilliant unescapable plan to tax the rich more but even keep them from leaving the country! Infallable, right?

Okay, now play a rich person. "Fuck this. Okay, now it's no longer "my money" and "my luxury", it's now "my company's". *I* don't have a private jet, but *my company* does. *I* don't have a beach house in Fiji, *my company* has a *small office* in Fiji. Etc.

Game out countermeasures, or your proposal is worthless.

@nafnlaus so you come in here to comment on a specific proposal put forth by Thomas Piketty, among others, and your comment is "game it out"?

No specific point, just: "maybe you should think of possible consequences"?

You honestly think that people behind this proposal, with years of experience in the field, haven't thought of that?

Anyway, the whole "rich people will leave the country" thing is a story rich people keep telling to not get taxed:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hueRrG_u83Q

@nafnlaus and note, I am not saying anyone should accept anything just based on some real or assumed authority of anyone.

But coming into a thread about a proposal like that and just assuming that nobody got the idea to "game it out" before submitting, especially with people like Piketty being involved, is quite a thing to do!

Unless you have a specific point to make, a specific criticism beyond "the rich will move" (which they won't), we're done here.