LVMH owner Bernard Arnault, who could take €1bn hit, says proposed 2% levy ‘aims to destroy liberal economy’

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/36272492

Europe’s richest man, the luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault, has said that a wealth tax that could cost him more than €1bn (£817m) would be deadly for France’s economy.

The French founder of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton said in a statement to the Sunday Times that calls for a 2% wealth tax on all assets “aims to destroy the liberal economy, the only one that works for the good of all”.

The idea of a wealth tax has steadily gained ground in France because of a political crisis, with the government trying to push through unpopular budget cuts. The idea of a 2% wealth tax on fortunes worth more than €100m has been proposed by Gabriel Zucman, an economics professor who has become a household name in France.

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

    The wealth tax could raise as much as €20bn

    for reference: france has 70m inhabitants. if that money is distributed among the people, that’s 300€/person per year.

    that doesn’t sound like a lot. that probably only covers something like 3% of people’s cost of living. but it would be a valuable small experiment that can inform us about what works and what doesn’t work, and then we can see how we go on.

    edit: i did the calculation, and the same wealth tax implemented in the US would generate about $7k/person per year. Source: link and link and some spreadsheet maths.

    that’s a sizeable income, and if that was distributed among the people, it would really help them.