German welfare state 'can no longer be financed' — Merz – DW – 08/23/2025
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The German chancellor has called for a welfare reform, putting him on course for a possible clash with the SPD.

The German chancellor has called for a welfare reform, putting him on course for a possible clash with the SPD.

  • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    4 hours ago

    Although I appreciate the thought here, and I think the investment idea may even be good regardless of what I’m about to say, that’s not exactly how this works. If you tax the assets the rich own, where they own them, it doesn’t matter where they go. And they can’t live in Germany and not get taxed, so they can change citizenship all they want if they live here they will get taxed here. And based off of the most recent studies/reports I’ve seen (but not read) rich don’t actually move when taxes go up - which makes sense. People have lives, family, friends, favorite restaurants and hobby spaces.

    The rich will try to dodge the taxes, they may even succeed but we don’t have to legistate a bullet proof solution we just have to agree:

    1. the rich need to be heavily taxed (I’d even say out of existence)
    2. taxing the rich is possible via various methods
    3. taxing the rich would solve and/or reverse most of societies problems so everyone should talk and support it.

    But yes, I’m a big fan of no outside investment. I’m also a fan of government investment requiring ownership purchases. I’m also a fan of requiring companies to be partially or totally owned by their workers. And I don’t think anyone should have a net worth over let’s say 50 million.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      So you’re saying the assets (factory, houses, land) should be taxed directly, instead of the billionaires?

      Interesting idea, i need to think about it.

      Edit: after having thought about it, i’d like there to be a “exempt tax amount”, i.e. if you own less than $10m, you don’t pay any wealth taxes. if you do taxation solely on a per-asset basis, that’d be difficult. It would be better if the person gets taxed and not the asset itself. Sothat you can deduct a tax-exempt amount per person, not per asset.

        • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          1·
          4 hours ago

          After having thought about it, i’d like there to be a “exempt tax amount”, i.e. if you own less than $10m, you don’t pay any wealth taxes.

          • if you do taxation solely on a per-asset basis, that’d be difficult.
          • It would be better if the person gets taxed and not the asset itself. Sothat you can deduct a tax-exempt amount per person, not per asset.

          does that make sense to you?

          • gusgalarnyk@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            4 hours ago

            That makes sense. My point isn’t to tax the property it’s that the property is taxed, if that makes any sense. You tax based on the property, it traces to the owner, the owner gets taxed based on the property. If the owner lives in Beijing or Antarctica the property is still here and gets taxed, they can’t avoid it by moving unless they can take the property.

            So in that case, an exempt amount is fine. I’d just want it to be steep up to a point where it’s 98 or 100%.

            No one gets a third house before everyone gets one kinda thing. And also no one is allowed to have enough wealth they can destabilize democracy or even a city.

            • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
              1·
              3 hours ago

              Semi-related, my ideal taxation plan looks like this:

              When doing new, big projects, it makes sense to try them out on a small scale, then see how it goes and scale it up later. For an initial set of parameters, i propose the following:

              Assume you live in country CNTRY.

              • If you own less than the tax-exempt amount, you pay no wealth taxes at all. The tax-exempt amount is $10m.
              • If you’re a citizen of country CNTRY, no matter where you live, your total wealth gets calculated, and you have to pay wealth tax on everything above the tax-exempt amount to the country CNTRY. The tax rate is 3% annually. E.g. if you own $25m, the tax-exempt amount is $10m, and the non-exempt amount is $15m, so you pay $450k annually.
              • If you’re not a citizen of CNTRY, there is no tax-exempt amount for you and you have to start paying wealth tax on everything you own inside CNTRY. This is to avoid tax-avoidance schemes, like people investing in other countries to avoid paying taxes in their own countries. E.g. a person owning $250m might invest in 25 different countries, where in each of them the tax-exempt amount is $10m, sothat they don’t pay taxes in any of the countries.