Summary
Spain’s economy minister, Carlos Cuerpo, is urging G20 nations to support a global wealth tax on billionaires, targeting a 2% minimum tax on assets to raise $250 billion annually.
Backed by Brazil, France, and Germany, the initiative aims to fund climate action and green investments.
Cuerpo highlighted growing public demand for wealth redistribution, especially as climate crises worsen, like Spain’s recent deadly floods.
The proposal mirrors the global minimum tax on multinationals and seeks international coordination to overcome political resistance from wealthy elites and lobbyists.
Also never understood the “they’ll leave if we tax them!” argument
If they stay and we keep tax laws minimal and unenforced or easily evaded … then billionaires don’t pay tax
If they leave … then billionaires don’t pay tax
All the incentive is there to just tax them because no matter what you do with them … they won’t pay tax … so its better to just give them a good excuse to leave because they are just a drain on the economy
“You owe us money!”
“No”
“Oh, okay”
Competelly agree with your points’ intention here, but if billionaires leave a country and take their wealth elsewhere, then it’s not being invested in that country, which is detrimental. Also they’re not spending money on luxury items or lots of whatever billionaire stuff, paying tax on that and circulating a portion of their wealth in that country etc.
So it’s more like:
billionaires stay in the country, spend and invest in the country and don’t pay tax vs billionaires leaves they dont spend invest, nor pay tax.
My 50pence is there shouldn’t be billionaires in the first place, why does any one individual need that much wealth, it just accumulates more wealth and a lot gets hoarded away from anything productive.