[logicchains]

Total French private wealth is around $15 trillion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_pri... ), French government spending is around $1.8 trillion/year. Even if the French government were to tax 100% of that wealth, it wouldn't be enough to cover 10 years of spending. Fundamentally the French economy isn't producing enough to support the current level of pension spending, due to a continuously falling ratio of workers to retirees. No amount of taxing anyone could produce enough money to plug that hole.

[aurareturn]

  Fundamentally the French economy isn't producing enough to support the current level of pension spending, due to a continuously falling ratio of workers to retirees.

Do we think this is why French government added so many immigrants in recent times?

Of course an influx of immigrants will cause other issues. But if wealthy people need more population to keep their wealth up, I don't think they care.

[alephnerd]

It's not about wealthy people alone. You need staff to clean retirees sh!t (literally) in a country where the median age is 42.3 and rising.

France overspent in the 2000s and 2010s due to populist politics, and now the chickens have come to roost. Something needs to give in France, otherwise it'll become an Italy 2.0.

[vladvasiliu]

> Do we think this is why French government added so many immigrants in recent times?

It's part of the official discourse.

[triceratops]

This is simplistic nonsense regularly blurted out by opponents of wealth taxes. It supposes that assets are converted by some alchemy into pallets of cash. The government then piles the pallets up into a big vault and feeds them into a furnace every year until it runs out. And then it's all gone forever.

That's not how things work.

Seriously think through what implementing this would look like. Go through the steps at a high level instead of just adding up 3 numbers and declaring it will never work.

I don't think any government should take over all private wealth. It would be a gross human rights violation and an economic disaster. But this argument against it severely lacks logic and rigor.

[triceratops]

Downvoters: You're proving my point by refusing to engage with logic.

[vdupras]

10 years of covering 100% of spending? That sounds like a really sweet deal to me, and more than enough to invest into the nation enough to go back to a balanced budget in that time frame.

I mean, try it with yourself. Imagine that you take your current salary, keep it for 10 years, and have 100% of your spending covered? How life changing would that be to you? Probably a lot.

[creer]

Who do you propose to sell all that stuff to?

[zdragnar]

...for 10 years. After that, you're back in the hole that you were in before, but without anything to draw on. They're currently taking in the equivalent of $500 billion but spending $1.8 trillion, with a GDP of $3 trillion.

Understand that the non-wealthy wouldn't get anything new, it would just be a continuance of their current services and benefits. They've have 10 years to increase their GDP by 50% to get the tax revenue to get to a balanced budget. That's simply not happening without obscene inflation, with the corresponding increase in government spending on goods and services, keeping them out of whack.

[returningfory2]

What happens on year 11?