Why? Taxes is what sends children to school, pays for hospitals and funds the infrastructure everyone uses. People love to hear about AI breakthroughs that could transform education or health, why should they not be happy about this?
I have many doubts about the actual technical solution, but I wouldn't discard the work because it's for taxation purpose.
Taxes are pissed away in France in gigantic useless bureaucracies, useless projects and vote-buying redistribution, to the point that core state functions (police/justice, army, education or healthcare system) are paradoxically starved of funds and dysfunctional. Sadly the only way to curb this spending incontinence seems to starve the state of revenues.
You forgot jet flights because, you understand, there were no business class seat available on commercial flights at the right time. I thought it was an isolated incident (the random undersecretary who otherwise couldn’t have made it on time for the government’s school book picture), but it appears to not be so isolated [1] [2].
On some random weird "missions" [3] paid €9.000 a month, or life-long supposed "postings", granted at the discretion of the government, such as our dear ambassador to the penguins [4] [5] (lovingly called "ambassador to the poles", although the previous one, "Michel Rocard", a life-long politician, was apparently also known as "Rocky the Penguin").
And that’s just off the top of my head.
If we were to focus less on the rather questionable spending, and more on the doubtfully useful, we could cite the public health system, where it seems that more than a third of the money goes to the administrative side, and not actual healthcare workers [6], with a significantly bigger share of bureaucratic employees than most European countries.
And I’m pretty sure starving the state of revenue will not curb any of this. It’s not like they’ve shown they were sensible, or acting in good faith.
The state only has as much power as it can wield and as what the people will take. Individuality the way you’re implying does not exist in societies where not even food, shelter, and basic dignity is guaranteed and provided to all.
The article says "The public finance authority DGFiP said the AI programme would now be rolled out nationwide, potentially leading to €40m in new taxes on private pools in 2023".
So total revenue is not that significantly higher than €10m.
Another commenter pointed out that having a pool influences the property value and thereby tax, so they should be able to collect the tax yearly, not just once.
The power balance between state and individual is quite delicate and everything that changes it makes people uneasy. Most people want a situation where law and order is more or less upheld, but the state is otherwise unable to precisely know or control how people live.
It's people that can afford pools on their property. They can afford to own property. I'm not shedding many tears here.
If even a tiny amount of the money recovered improves the lot of the vulnerable then I find it hard to put this at the top of my "this year's dystopian" list.
Your comment however might go on my own "most unimaginative definition of dystopian" list.
The problem with unaffordable housing all over europe should be solved with massive amounts public housing.
Pools should be taxed but that does not solve the problem. Everyone pretends they are not looking at the elephant in the room: draconian environmental regulations and lack of resources make the prices of housing go higher and higher. The governments have the money to solve that, instead of making it worse
You misunderstand, this is 10M euro extra tax revenue each year and it was only a pilot project covering a small part of France. The payback time is basically less than a year.
In America we have a credit score which is quite dystopian. America has the most prisoners and slavery in prisons. The NSA among others monitor citizens.
You made an offhand apolitical comment about China being dystopian in regards where America is arguably worse.
I wake up every day in a right wing dystopia. Even worse, people like you lack the knowledge or solidarity with other workers while having too much nationalism and so on.
I’m going to assume you wouldn’t be able to explain China’s politics nor explain why Taiwan is granted sovereignty but Palestine isn’t. Both places had people before each imperialist group of people conquered land where people already lived. When’s the last time any typical westerner has ever cared about the indigenous people of Taiwan. This doesn’t contradict anything. More of a case where I’m stating the obvious. Even if you happen to actually care about the indigenous people, you’re still going to arrogantly believe Taiwan is a Democratic good guy country. Let’s not even get into Taiwan being fascist for some time…
How did you arrive at your conclusion that the pools mentioned in the article belong to middle-to-lower class people? Did you do your own analysis and cross-checked it with their income statements? Myself I would expect the pools to disproportionally belong to well-off people.
I don't quite get why you differentiate between classes, everybody has to pay taxes. I would prefer the tax agency to go after (illegally evaded) tax revenue where they get the most bang for their buck, this project paid itself back in less than a year so that seems to fit the bill.
Yes, everybody has to pay taxes. The more money you have/make, the more taxes you need to pay, but the case now is that the more money you have, the more you can avoid taxes.
Sure, the agency can get more of the non-super-rich people who don't have an army of accountants optimizing their tax structure, but I don't think that's the most equitable thing to do.
I have many doubts about the actual technical solution, but I wouldn't discard the work because it's for taxation purpose.