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Millionaires ask to pay more tax:
A group of more than 100 of the world's richest people have called on governments to make them pay more tax. The group, named the Patriotic Millionaires, said the ultra-wealthy were not being forced to pay their share towards the global economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.
"As millionaires, we know that the current tax system is not fair," they said in an open letter. The signatories included Disney heiress Abigail Disney and Nick Hanauer. Mr Hanauer is a US entrepreneur and an early investor in online retail giant Amazon.
"Most of us can say that, while the world has gone through an immense amount of suffering in the last two years, we have actually seen our wealth rise during the pandemic - yet few if any of us can honestly say that we pay our fair share in taxes," the signatories said in the letter to the World Economic Forum.
[...] It said globally, $2.52tn could lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty and make enough vaccines for the world.
Gemma McGough, British entrepreneur and founding member of Patriotic Millionaires, UK said: "For all our well-being - rich and poor alike - it's time we right the wrongs of an unequal world. It's time we tax the rich."
Ms McGough added: "At a time when simply living will cost the average household a further £1,200 a year, our government cannot expect to be trusted if it would rather tax working people than wealthy people.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 21 2022, @01:11AM (5 children)
Hint - you can never own land. It was there for billions of years before you came along, and will be there for billions of years after you're dead. Many civilized (aka non-European) cultures recognize that you are at most the current caretaker of the land. But those cultures tended to lose their land to the Europeans who believed it could be owned, and had the benefit of iron, gunpowder, and endemic bio-weapons with which to steal it. (Americans for example got curb-stomped because there are no surface deposits of iron on the continents to have enabled a transition to the iron age)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @07:38PM
Right. You never own anything because one day you will dieeeee!!!!!!11!!
That's not what ownership means, try again. Maybe this time you'll impress people over middle school age.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 21 2022, @10:14PM (3 children)
What do you think the Indian tribes did amongst themselves before the white man ever showed up? They fought each other over who owned the land. Use the word "control" instead if your concept of ownership is limited to signed deeds. Some tribes dominated the others, and the others hated it. Killing galore to try to get on top. So, contrary to your racist theory, the Indians are just like people everywhere. Were it not so, Hernán Cortés could not have conquered all of Mexico with just a handful of Spaniards against a well-developed and sizable Aztec army. It was the hordes of other oppressed (by the Aztecs) Indian tribes who fought on the side of the Spaniards that allowed the conquest of Mexico.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 21 2022, @11:46PM (2 children)
Controlling something is a *very* different relationship than owning it.
Your boss (nominally) controls you at work - they do NOT own you. A feudal lord controlled their vassals, and their peasants even more so, but did NOT own them either.
There are very important distinctions between the relationships - most prominently you have every right to destroy what you own on a whim.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 22 2022, @12:50PM (1 child)
The lord did own the peasants, indirectly. The peasants belong to the lands, the lands are granted to the lord...
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday January 22 2022, @02:44PM
The peasants were bound to the land, they did not belong to it (what would that even mean?)
The lord couldn't do what he willed to the peasants. He could not kick them off the land, nor kill them without justification, nor breed them like livestock, nor...
There was bondage in the eyes of the law, but not ownership. Perhaps a bit more akin to indentured servitude, though really that was an entirely different third kind of relationship.