
Group led by Thomas Piketty presents plan for ‘a fairer Europe’ - rapnie
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/09/eu-brexit-piketty-tax-google-facebook-apple-manifesto
======
sonnyblarney
Europe is already very heavily taxed. Another tax on gasoline has just set
France on fire.

Democracy? If it were democratic there'd be much stricter implementation of
immigration rules and by the way, I think a healthy dose of helping refugees,
and specifically helping the places from whence they camp.

Also in 'Democracy' \- the EU itself is among the least democratic of
institutions in the West, with an unelected executive forming all the laws,
while elected MEPs with no ability to propose legislation. Moreover - nobody
even knows who their MEP is. I understand why this was done, but still ...

Instead of 'more taxes' maybe they might want to consider a) thinking about
efficiencies both in private and public sector and b) at least listening to
populist concerns on migration.

~~~
aisofteng
Look at youth unemployment rates in Europe:
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-
unemploymen...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/266228/youth-unemployment-
rate-in-eu-countries/)

>20% youth unemployment in France, Italy, Portugal, Spain. I don’t see how a
country could recover from that.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Well, they could reduce the value of their currency to make them more
competitive ... whoops can't do that!

------
atmosx
Watched a show on France24 channel about what's happening in France right now,
7 out of 8 guests labelled Macron as completely out of touch.

It appears that 50% of the country makes 1.2k/month or less. You cannot
survive with that kind of salary in France, so it's not just one tax or two.
There is a series of decisions made by Macron's government that are heavily
controversial.

On a side-note, demonstrations sparked in Belgium and the Netherlands, to a
lower extend.

------
Udik
"The plan [...] includes huge levies on multinationals, millionaires and
carbon emissions to generate funds to tackle the most urgent issues of the
day, including poverty, migration, climate change and the EU’s so-called
democratic deficit."

So the plan seems to be to grab money from a list of subjects the people love
to hate, to use it to solve the problems newspapers love to talk endlessly
about. And how? Not clear. Just solve them, I suppose. With the money.

~~~
ForHackernews
Taxing the hell out of CO2 emissions is likely its own self-fulfilling
solution. To a first order, it doesn't matter what you spend the windfall on.
Subsidize a revival of mime, if you like.

Probably the smartest idea would be to blunt the political backlash by
spending the tax revenue on welfare for coal miners, oil workers, truck
drivers, etc.

~~~
Udik
Maybe, but I just don't understand how a politician can come up with a plan
like this:

"Hey, you know what, why don't we make everything more expensive, so that we
can do more than everybody else in solving a problem that is global, is caused
mostly by other people, and doesn't really affect us that much yet?"

I mean, there are things you do because you have to do them, because they're
the right thing: and yet maybe they're not what excites you most. Especially
when you're trying to sell the idea to a continent that has much more serious,
immediate, _specific_ problems: increasing divide between rich and poor
regions, excessive regulation, corruption, falling economic competitiveness,
negligible political weight on a global scale, etc. To me, the fact that a
problem so vast and abstract is put in front of others, so obvious and
compelling, is already the sign of a serious departure from reality.

~~~
ForHackernews
The reasoning you're outlining is pretty much why I don't think climate change
will be addressed in any meaningful way.

The recent UN report says we have 11 years to cut global emissions by 50%.
It's extremely unlikely that will happen:
[https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-
fos...](https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fossil-fuels)

As you say, everyone will continue focusing on "immediate, specific" problems,
and then it will be too late (if it's not too late already). Our children and
grandchildren will suffer droughts, wars and famines for our short-
sightedness.

~~~
lixtra
Number one reason for our grandchildren to suffer will be that there are so
many of them. As long as the population grows without limit you will have wars
and famines eventually.

~~~
ForHackernews
Developed countries where women control their own fertility don't have an
overpopulation problem. Maybe we could help other nations reach those
milestones?

But again, realistically, not enough time.

------
buboard
I m sure Piketty has the best of intentions, and his arguing about a wealth
tax on the face of growing inequality has merit. The problem is how these
funds are going to be spent. EU is already subsidizing a number of sectors,
with less than spectacular results. EU funds are great for governments because
they offer jobs and make them look good. But look at how agriculture is doing
in the countries that received most of the subsidies. EU already spends a lot
in research, yet research materializes into products on the other side of the
atlantic. Maybe if there was a more tight dependence on returns of investments
these funding schemes would make sense. I think piketty himself knows that the
proposal is naive, but i guess he agreed to be co-opted by the populist left.

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
I read Capital in the 21st Century. I can't speak to this group in particular,
but I think what Picketty argues for is wealth redistribution. Picketty proves
that the poor are much worse at investing money than the wealthy -- which is
actually the biggest factor behind increasing inequality.

Sane people can argue that taking money from good investors and giving it to
bad investors is a bad investment strategy.

But it's quite clear that if we don't do /something/ about inequality, it's
only going to get worse and at quickening rate. Wealth redistribution is
pretty much the only option.

The only way that seems sustainable to me is: you take the average rate of
return and subtract that from each individuals rate of return. If that's a
positive value, you're taxed at some percentage of the difference.

I.E. if the average rate of return is 4%, and yours is 90%, you're taxed at
86%*X -- where X is some value or a function of 86%.

If you tax wealth at some arbitrarily progressive rate, that could easily
disensentivise people from creating wealth or from working as hard to create
it.

~~~
buboard
> the poor are much worse at investing money than the wealthy

i disagree. wealthy people have better investment options by virtue of the
fact that they have more money. any banker can confirm that. Taxation is not
the only solution. full employment is another way , but yeah there are no
magical solutions.

~~~
chrstphrhrt
Ditto.

Also when someone is barely getting by, assuming they are not dealing with
addiction or violence and generally just subsisting, you can bet they know
exactly what to do with that last $20. E.g. groceries with the highest
calories per dollar, how many bus passes to get at a time, etc.

If budgeting is what is meant by investment (since obviously we're not talking
about saving if there's nothing to be saved), from what I have seen poor
people are incredibly good at it.

Contrast that with money managers who are generally just bad and can't
outperform the market, not for lack of trying. Is "investment" really the
right idea, and who says it's the number one importance compared to basic
human needs?

Why does everything have to be about abstract efficiency and cost? It's not
like there's a shortage of business opportunities for techno-luxuries that are
fun to produce and trade, that we absolutely must go after basic rights via
austerity. Lousy rentier mindset, we should have to be creative to profit.
Once monopolies emerge they should be broken up, and once technologies become
necessary for daily life, access to them should become a right. Tax incentives
to invest in R&D instead of hoarding wealth could be expanded. So many things
can be done to mitigate issues within "social democracy" without going full
public ownership or eliminating private property. Question is, once these
things are implemented, how can their repeal be prevented? Time to open up and
revise constitutions.

------
EastSmith
It is funny how one of the top stories on HN right now is an article that
shows total goverment incompetance - the story about NY metro not showing the
time it will arrive, then there is this story about giving that governmemt
more money.

~~~
smolder
Can you fathom a world where governments can actually do some things well and
some things poorly, for quite complicated reasons?

------
skookumchuck
> the manifest unfairness of huge multinationals such as Apple, Google and
> Amazon

Those are American companies. Why aren't there EU companies at this level?
Probably because of their destructive tax policies. Massive tax increases will
just make the situation worse, and investment capital will desert the EU for
American.

------
rogerthis
The problem with every large scale plan is how to bring the "russians" on
board (by russians I mean the people, but maybe also Russia).

~~~
roymurdock
show the population your plan is working by broadly improving the population's
standard of living

this is currently working in both russia and china to the point where many are
content with quasi-dictatorships because they've seen such a vast improvement
in their quality of life through improved economies

at the end of the day more food on your table and more money in your bank
account speaks volumes louder than having an infinitesimal say in who
represents your interests in an increasingly dysfunctional local and federal
government

------
hyperman1
The last sentence of this article resonates with me: Where are the leaders? I
see a deep visionary impasse in all of the west.

There is no coherent response to a long list of hard problems. We know China
or Russia are threatening us. Extremist leaders are appearing in a lot of our
western countries, including US, Australia, a lot of Europe, ... Big
multinationals abuse and damage the core social contracts that provide the
stability of our nations. A huge climate crisis is coming at us.

Meanwhile, our politicians are bickering amongst themselves. The problems of
the 70's are fought with solutions of the 70's. I hate to see how people
support right extremism, choose leaders that only damage them, but I do
understand their frustration very well. It is clear something is not working.

Every time I hear politicians say how they know what needs to be done, but
they will get voted out if they try. I don't believe this is true. A few
times, I saw a few rare politicians make a sane proposal where they told
voters there would be hurt in the short run, and most of them actually get
chosen. I believe the average voter is ready for change. Only there is no
politician decent enough to get their vote.

So where are you, leaders? We really need someone who has the daring to
acknowledge the problem, the vision to dream big , the common sense to keep it
possible, and to actually be capable of executing this vision. Not a small
list, but not impossible either.

I'm not saying this proposal is the one final idea to rule them all, but at
least it is some step in the right direction.

~~~
analogwzrd
I think it's a mistake to look for leaders in our elected officials. In
general, politicians poll their constituents and their platform changes to
mirror what their constituents want in order to continue being re-elected.
Sometimes whenever a politician "flip flops" it's because they're changing
their position to better align with their constituents.

But this also means that public policy lags public opinion. If you want new
(govenrment) solutions, you have to change public opinion first.

Change the public opinion and the politicians will follow but I wouldn't
expect them to take the lead.

~~~
jimnotgym
> In general, politicians poll their constituents and their platform changes
> to mirror what their constituents want in order to continue being re-elected

I find that in the UK the right-wing media tell everybody what they want, the
BBC then takes that as rote and amplifies it. The officials then mirror that.

Take the immigration issue as a case in point to demonstrate (I am not going
to argue the rights and wrongs of immigration itself so don't bother
commenting, this is a meta-comment). The current PM talked about reducing
immigration constantly as Home Secretary (mirroring the Daily Mail). As PM she
has done the same. Recently a story came out that she tried to suppress
reports that immigration was a benefit to the economy on multiple occasions. A
recent report said that immigrants on average were more of a benefit to the
economy than native Brits.

This seems to me nothing like mirroring public opinion, and instead they are
trying to bend facts to fit the newspapers narrative, so they will get
coverage.

I think we do need leadership from elected officials, otherwise 'public
opinion' is lead by the press barons.

~~~
roenxi
> ... they are trying to bend facts to fit the newspapers narrative, so they
> will get coverage.

I think we can all agree that that is politics, but not leadership.
Politicians are active players in the game of politics, no argument.

So I suppose the null hypothesis is that the current PM has a large
contingency of voters who don't like immigration (who are also pandered to by
the Daily Mail), and is trying to represent them. I really like that one - a
politician who attempts to show leadership _will_ be controversial and
resisted. Democracies settle uncontroversial issues extremely quickly, then
settle into an awkward status-quo with competing interest groups, where any
change advantages some and disadvantages others. Someone who tries to lead
anywhere new will face fierce opposition.

Are you fundamentally saying that that null hypothesis is wrong? What are you
proposing replaces it?

~~~
jimnotgym
The apathy hypothesis?

------
alecco
How tone-deaf can they be? Raising taxes can bring tax revenue down. Europe
already has quite high corporate taxes and high income taxes for top brackets.

Also, raising taxes to spend the money on immigrants? Are they purposely
fueling the raise of right wing nationalists? Do they have any self-awareness?

~~~
colde
I am going to need some sort of citation for the idea that Europe has high
corporate taxes. According to KPMG the EU average is lower than the current US
corporate tax rate. Furthermore, setting it at 37% is 3% lower than the US tax
rate was last year. I don't really see any downside to doing this. It's not
like companies are not going to do business in Europe, it's waaay to
attractive a market.

Also, "spending money on immigrants" sounds like it's just being given to
immigrants, the money is specifically to countries cope with the cost that is
there already. It might fuel right wing nationalists, but that seems to happen
anyway, while they are busy doing their thing, it would be nice if the
sensible people tried to tackle the issues at hand.

~~~
alecco
Germany 29% and 47.5%

France 15% and 45%

Italy 27.9% and 43%

UK 19% and 47%

Spain 25% and 45%

Sure, California and some other special states can get almost as high. But the
majority are well below.

~~~
EastSmith
Add ~20% VAT to this. Add the fuel tax. Then add corruption and incopetence
when spending government money.

All those taxes does not let lower middle class to move up. I see this all
around me. There are exceptions of course, but the end result is that by
simply working your whole life you are going to be forever in the lower middle
class. Because of taxes.

~~~
cjblomqvist
And yet we have the Nordics with the highest tax pressure in the world (has
been for a while) which do better than most. Like Hans Rowling said, if you
want the American dream (with max class mobility), you should go to Denmark.

But hey! Why not throw around some more claims without some proper
sources/references.

------
21
Why is it that when the right wants to reduce taxes, which is a popular move,
they are called "populists", but when the left wants to increase social
spending, which is also a popular move, they are not?

Wikipedia definition:

> _Populism is a range of political approaches that deliberately appeal to
> "the people," often juxtaposing this group against a so-called "elite."_

Kind of fits the definition, this article itself says it wants to go after the
elite: big tech companies and rich people.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism)

Downvoters: hit a nerve, eh?

~~~
HumanDrivenDev
Populism is merely a word to discredit something that a lot of people like,
that those in power do not.

That is not to say that I agree with everything labeled 'populist'. I don't
even think it's a left vs right thing, even if that's how it plays out now. I
guarantee you if there was a broadly popular left-wing movement that actually
threatened those in power, the media would label it populist as well.

~~~
Udik
Populism is a precise way of appealing to basic emotions of a population by
creating an "us vs them" narrative. You find an enemy, tell the people that
the enemy is causing all their troubles and that you're the only cure because
you're the only one on the people's side. Then when your supposed cure doesn't
work, you find a new enemy to blame for your failure. It's stupid and
incredibly dangerous.

~~~
tomp
> Populism is a precise way of appealing to basic emotions of a population by
> creating an "us vs them" narrative

Doesn't calling right-wingers "populists" do the very same?

~~~
dane-pgp
When I see (right-wing) "populists" being condemned, the "us vs them"
narrative is that "them" is a small number of political figures who are using
populism as a strategy for gaining power. Hence why, in the statement you
quote, populism is a means of "appealing to ... a population", and is not a
political identity in the same way as "liberalism" or "conservatism".

There is a big qualitative (not just quantitative) difference between
condemning a few manipulative politicians, and condemning, say, an entire
ethnic group or rival political party.

~~~
tomp
Not sure I agree... e.g. Donald Trump (a "populist") was mocking mainstream
politicians etc ("drain the swamp") a lot of the time, whereas Hillary Clinton
(a "liberal") had something to say about "deplorables"... These are just
example, I'm sure there are plenty examples the other way, but I'm just saying
that your claim isn't very correct.

~~~
dane-pgp
Those are useful counter-examples, so thank you for pointing them out.

It's true that Trump has mocked mainstream politicians, and this is probably
equivalent to non-populists condemning populist politicians. I suppose one
could argue that a critic of populist politicians is hypocritical if they also
condemn Trump for mocking mainstream politicians, but I don't know of any
examples of such criticism. (It might also be worth noting that this
particular phrase was used by, among others, Nancy Pelosi in 2006).

As for the "deplorables" quote, I don't want to defend it; however, to
substantiate my point about qualitative and quantitative differences, I have
to mention that in the infamous sound bite she said that "half" of Trump's
supporters could be placed in that basket, and then later regretted specifying
"half". (In previous speeches she apparently made it clearer that these
supporters were only a small fraction).

Politicians of any affiliation are prone to highlighting the extremists among
their opponent's followers (likely due to the psychological biases of Group
Attribution Error and Ultimate Attribution Error, or, more cynically, due to a
desire to exploit those biases) as a way to tarnish people's opinion of that
opponent. That is a problem no matter which politician is doing it, but I
still think that the bigger problem is a politician targeting groups of people
based on immutable characteristics like ethnicity (or institutions like the
media).

------
bobthechef
The first step is stick with a confederal view of Europe. Federal visions of
Europe are stupid, dangerous, and impossible. Europe is not like the United
States nor could it be, and such comparisons are foolish and ignorant. Once
we've agreed to hold to a confederal Europe, operate like a confederal Europe,
and acknowledge the subsequent confederal nature and expectations of the EU,
you should expect a drop in a good chunk of the so-called populism. The main
reasons why a confederal Europe is a better solution is because first, there
is considerable difference of interests and geopolitical difference across the
EU that are incompatible. Inevitably, a federal EU will become a cudgel used
to force weaker states into submission. Second, Europeans don't see themselves
as "European" because it is not a meaningful or even substantive notion here
and the last few crises should have made that clear to any remaining obstinate
holdouts. Even being "American" has more substance, which is saying something.
Third, the values and culture across Europe are quite different and
ultimately, the EU will behave increasingly tyrannically toward member states
that step out of line with the values of the European elites which will circle
us back to populism and possible war of a very disastrous kind.

It should be clear that I am not advocating the dissolution of the EU, though
there is a very real possibility it will disintegrate all on its own with no
need to appeal to external scapegoats. I believe that if any EU is possible,
it is one of limited integration on a limited set of fronts where cooperation
profits the common good of the Union, specifically economically and where
joint scientific ventures (like space) might profit from formalized confederal
joint cooperation.

~~~
jabl
Absent a development towards a more federal EU, it's time to save the rest of
it by getting rid of the euro currency. At this point it's a farce that
produces destitution and drives discontent with the entire EU.

------
beerlord
Europe's problem is simply high taxes, inefficient bureaucracy, and over-
welfare.

Particularly, payroll taxes, which in some countries (France) are at 50%.
These hugely complicate hiring employees, and just encourage cash payments and
tax avoidance. Taxes should instead be shifted to harmful outputs and
products, like food sweeteners and fossil fuels.

Next, bureaucracies need to be be slimmed down and modernised. All EU
countries should offer the ability to transact with their bureaucracy (tax
returns, permits etc.) in the native language or English.

Finally, welfare should be ended for anyone fit and healthy below a certain
age, and the retirement age taken to 70 immediately. Pensions should be phased
out for anyone under 40 currently. The refugee intake should be taken to zero,
and borders strictly enforced, since the net economic contribution of MENA
migrants currently is negative. Access to Master's degrees should be limited
to only the best students, to encourage people to enter the workforce earlier
and to allow a reduction in education spending.

Through all this there could be a huge reduction in the tax burden, targeted
to eliminate payroll taxes (perhaps in combination with replacing it with
higher income taxes, the way Scandinavians do) and reduce VAT. Income
tax/payroll tax savings could be preferentially targeted to couples with 3 or
more children, to encourage higher birthrates.

~~~
dcposch
> The refugee intake should be taken to zero, and borders strictly enforced,
> since the net economic contribution of MENA migrants currently is negative

Delete this sentence and the rest of your post is mostly good.

Simplifying bureaucracy? Mandating English as an option? Capping payroll taxes
at some reasonable level? All good ideas.

But the idea that we should turn away people fleeing poverty and violence
because their "net economic contribution... is currently negative" is racist
and gross.

Economic growth is nice, but it's a means to an end. The first step is to have
a society worth growing.

~~~
pas
> the rest of your post is mostly good.

No, it's not. It's hogwash. Especially the education one.

Income inequality is a lot more serious problem than uncapped payroll taxes.

