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Tax the rich and lower the retirement age that was just recently raised. Seems like a good plan to me.
I’m curious why they chose €400k as the top bracket. Is that low or high for such a steep tax rate? I’m not rich enough to know anything about this.
You have to remember in Western countries it’s usually progressive brackets. So they’re paying 90 percent on anything past 400,000. You never have a net loss to taxes just for making more money in such a system.
Technically, yes. However there are circumstances some places in the lower brackets where making more can disqualify you from welfare benefits. In those circumstances, an increase which is too small to compensate for the loss of benefits would be, effectively, a net loss.
Obviously though, that’s not really an issue at the 400k bracket.
And that’s a big thing in France I think. I heard many talks about how it’s better to be on SMIC (minimum salary) so you get all the benefits, and that for it to be worth it you need to bump up quite a bit higher in salary. I don’t have any numbers to show or anything though so take it with a grain of salt.
Obviously.
Just assuming but people earning 400k are still working but living from the interest. Also 400k and having a few children may result in a good, but rich life.
I would also assume that their math pointed them there.
Lawyers and doctors can make that much, so they want to go just above that.
And anything above that really is excessive.
I assume they chose €400k as the top bracket to make sure it never actually gets passed. Seems like political theater for votes and soundbites.
Good start.
The rich (and those licking their boots, even in these comments) would be well served to remember where the phrase “eat the rich” originates, and what the French (as should we all) do to those in power when they refuse to give up that power voluntarily.
You can go ahead and at least put the full quote, because I just love it so much.
“When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.”
Fair…
Do you remember how all of their revolutions ended up? My personal favourite is the one that led to Napoleon.
The corporations need to be taxed heavily
Why are you not putting the URL in the URL field? That will trigger the metadata to be pulled / federated which often includes a summary/description of the linked content.
I’m using a mobile client called mlem. That must be why the links are coming out weird.
Ah. Haven’t used Mlem, but I’ve heard of it. Weird limitation for a client to have, though.
I’m biased but have you tried [email protected]
I haven’t as I don’t think that’s available for iPhone
im just glad for once that its actually a socialist left coalition that isn’t transphobic. those are rare.
Yay, so they’re much better than Labour.
Not going to happen though. While the left came first they still are not a majority. They hold 180 seats, which is less than 1/3 of the 577. No one really won the election.
Its really deadlock and all 3 groups will struggle to work together as none want the blame for the mess that will be split gjvernment, and all want to position themselves as the solution, win the presidency and/or next set of legislative elections.
So there is no way the centre or right will vote in a 90% tax on the rich. It’ll be a struggle to even get a basic budget passed.
That’s just how parliaments work. The Left has more pull than usual so they are announcing their policy goals to anchor their allies. They won’t get any of what they want in full but now they have to work with their partners in government to get legislation done. I have no idea if the centrists and the right party are as obstructionist as the American GOP though, or if France’s parliament has any levers to prevent outright obstruction
Man, the french are going to need a wall for the amount of lefty americans who will be claiming political asylum.
How do you like Ground news?
I’m likening it a lot as it gives a perspective of who is behind my news.
No OP, but I’ve been using it for a bit now, and while it’s not perfect, it does make it really easy to read news from other parts of the world and to look into the background of various outlets. It makes it easy to get around pay walls and article limits and It’s also, like, $10 a year… and it’s pretty easy to get a “1 dollar for a year sub” promo code from any random politics YouTuber. It’s been a decent way to keep me from just defaulting to Reuters and AP instead of reading other outlets, which I would say is it’s best feature for me.
Does it have a nice feed with the latest news around the world and can you actually read the news there? I thought it was more of a news aggregator/comparison tool and I’m afraid that some news will be behind another pay wall or in some other website.
Lastly if you have one of those codes (maybe one that benefits you I can have a look). For 1$ a year I can give a try myself.
Marginal though right?
Indeed, it’s the marginal taxe rate on your incomes. The left wing coalition wants to add 4 new brackets to the 5 existing ones. 90% would be applied to the next euros you earn after €400,000.
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Well, I’m glad they’re trying it and not us. I think this is a highly risky move and will lead to bad unintended consequences. But I’m not a huge ideologue and won’t mind terribly if I’m proven wrong on this.
Some people are unable to learn from the past. And the last time this happened isn’t even that long ago.
In 2012 then candidate president Hollande did a surprise announcement of a 75% tax on earners of 1m+. And it was such a surprise that even the fiscal expert on his team was surprised.
Before Hollande was even elected, rich people started responding by changing their domicile to outside France, often also actually (part time) emigrating.
After getting elected Hollande then tasked his government with implementing such a tax. And that whole lengthy process was a political disaster, ending with the implementation of a heavily watered down temporary tax.
The chronology: https://www.lesechos.fr/2015/01/chronologie-de-la-taxe-a-75-sur-les-tres-hauts-revenus-avant-disparition-197994
After implementation the tax failed to bring in the projected money, because well, people react to what they perceive as overtaxation + the overall economy wasn’t doing so great due to this and other policies of Hollande: https://taxfoundation.org/blog/france-s-75-percent-tax-rate-offers-lesson-revenue-estimating/
Half an article with a graph of the effect on wages, the rest is behind a paywall: https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2019/06/28/quand-la-taxe-a-75-a-ete-supprimee-le-nombre-de-contribuables-declarant-plus-de-1-million-d-euros-par-an-a-augmente_5482849_3232.html
In 2017 Hollande was the most unpopular french president in history and he did not run for reelection. Not solely because of this tax, but it certainly didn’t help.
And that was 75%. So a 90% tax on the rich is just incredibly dumb populism.
Currently this post sits at 5 down votes, so it’s not just that some people are unable to learn from the past, it’s people who are unwilling to learn from the past.
If you’re presented with evidence that what you want to do, will not work and will have negative consequences and you still want it to go ahead, then I have to ask: Why?
Why insist on doing something again which has failed in the past and which will undoubtedly fail again in the future? What is this meant to accomplish?
I’m left-leaning, but I’m not quite that far left. I hope this is a bargaining strategy, where you ask for something very extreme to give you negotiating room so that when a compromise is reached, it’s closer to what you actually want.
Centrists are simply not going to be able to swallow that, and delivering some form of results to the French voters will be important in maintaining their confidence for voting for the left.
I think 50-75% might be closer to something centrists can stomach, if they get something good in return.
Idk about you, but nobody I personally know makes over $400k per year. (I know it’s €, but I’m in the US and the euro and dollar are similar enough in value). I’m in a very wealthy and expensive area of the US, so I know plenty of people who make over $200k. My plant manager probably makes about $300k. Even then, still not over $400k.
Do you or people you know work to earn anywhere close to €400k? If not, (which I strongly suspect,) then I’m not sure why you would balk at that tax rate. Isn’t €400k plenty for getting through a year? Can’t the rich fucks budget a little better and maybe prepare their own breakfast instead of throwing money away on coffee shop lattes and pastries? I mean, that’s roughly the advice they’ve been giving us poors for 20 years… Doesn’t it work?
If somebody is in the position of making over €400k per year, they should be happy to give back to the system and structures that made that possible so that everybody can benefit. There shouldn’t be unhoused people freezing to death or hungry people starving to death in the same country that sees salaries that high. Full stop. I say go further. 100% tax over €400k until all people are humanely housed, clothed, and fed, then relieve that back to 90%. It can come down to 80% once 80% of workers has a €50k salary, and again to down to 70% once 70% of workers has a €100k salary. Incentivize these greedy fucks to help themselves by helping others first.
One person, no, but I know families that make about that when both salaries are combined (in the Bay area)
A change in taxes like that would incentivize people to leave the bay area, lowering cost of living. If the families you know suddenly lost all or most of their earnings over $400k, but their mortgage/rent were cut in half, they’d benefit. The insane hot spot of cost of living there would stabilize closer to the national median cost of living. They would be affected in the extremely short term, but they would either move away or wait a year or so and start feeling the benefits of the change.
The only downside is that homeowners would see property values drop. I’d propose that some amount of the tax dollars be allocated to paying off the difference in property values for primary residences. Idk I’m not a legislator, but I’m sure there are reasonable carve outs to not fuck over “the middle class” in the process of trying to help people climb up to that status. I’m just some dipshit who sells his time and labor 12 hours at a time, not a career politician or lawyer.
I’m not against. I was just replying that I know families that earn that kind of money
Bay Area has insanely low local purchase power though.
I agree with the sentiment, but in practice the world of politics prohibits such drastic actions without employing violence and ultimately authoritarian control. Unless you can convince the centrists otherwise.
It’s not about what we want or what is right. It’s about what is possible, by necessity. Our entire system is predicated on the importance of equality, which means people who disagree with you (if there are enough of them) must be allowed a seat at the negotiating table, and be allowed to get some of what they want.
This way the government can efficiently produce results, which voters can see, which in turn convinces them to continue supporting those leaders, which enables the leaders to continue to improve the system. This is just kinda how reform works, as opposed to revolution, which has a tendency towards unpredictable results that may sometimes unintentionally create something worse than what existed before. Like, we wanted equality but ended up with the Holodomor. Oopsie.
Funny how going the opposite way (super high to super low taxes for the rich) didn’t require violence or authoritarians in power…
It does actually. The status quo is maintained by authoritarians utilizing the state to enact violence against the working class.
Yeah, it’s deeply frustrating, something that took years to build can be torn down in a day. Centrists can be annoying sometimes. This is why we need to convince people to support progressive policies though. Grassroots has always been our strength, one voter at a time. This makes it very important to deliver them something, even if its imperfect, to reward their support when we do manage to win.
Republicans realized this, and it is why they obstruct anything that improves life for everyday people at every opportunity, and then redirect anger towards culture war issues. We can’t let that strategy continue to succeed, we have to deliver progress. At least something.
the world of politics prohibits such drastic actions without employing violenc
The French have a solution for that too. I think the rich folks will prefer this option.
lol Yeah, you are not wrong.
To me, though, it’s important to manage expectations. When people set their heart on getting everything instead of working with the genuinely ugly realities of real life politics, it just hurts both them and their team. It would be one thing if the left had a majority, but a majority was not secured. We can’t just pretend we have one when we actually don’t, and that shouldn’t stop us from working to improve the lives of our people as best we can.
That’s what you do in negotiating. Blast em with a high number then meet in the middle.
Face or hair? … OK so it is at least going on your head.
