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

    I know this is a lot of math but this is my tax plan:

    • The government prints money and gives it out to the people, but has to tax it back at some point to create real demand for the currency, otherwise the currency devalues and becomes meaningless.
    • Since the government has to sooner or later tax back all money it hands out, the total government balance is always close to 0; i.e. there’s no substantial government debt.
    • The government hands out the money directly to the people. It is really a hand-out and not a loan-out. Big banks can also take credits, but these are loans, not hand-outs.
    • The people continue to spend their money for products. A low sales tax would mean higher amount of sales and therefore higher revenue for companies.
    • The companies get money from sales, but the companies can’t meaningfully profit. If they profit, where does the money go? The shareholders can’t invest that money anywhere meaningfully, since the market is already fully grown and new investments simply aren’t worth that much. So, since profits are less meaningful, the company lowers their sales price to reduce profit, which in turn increases sales amount. As the company profits converges to zero, all the company’s income is spent on expenses - either labor expenses or expenses in materials.
    • The materials either come from agricultural farms, or from mining operations. Since these two can also be looked at as companies, the same applies and they will eventually lower their profit to the point where all their expenses go either towards wages or material expenses.
    • The lower that sales taxes are, the longer the journey of the dollar is before it finally gets taxed back by the government.