Logan Roy must be turning in his grave. The patriarch of the billionaire family protagonist of Succession, the series that triumphed at the Emmy Awards last week, would not tolerate that Brian Cox, the actor who played his character for four seasons, joins the request for 250 millionaires who at the World Economic Forum in Davos proposed that the rich pay more taxes.
But Cox is more than Logan and he put his signature on that manifesto. “Our request is simple: We ask them to tax us, the richest in society.”the millionaires said in an open letter to world leaders.
“This will not radically change our standards of living, nor deprive our children, nor harm the economic growth of our nations. But will transform extreme and unproductive private wealth into an investment in our common democratic future,” they wrote.
Among the signatories are Disney heiress Abigail Disney, Valerie Rockefeller, heir to the American dynasty, actor and screenwriter Simon Pegg and other millionaires from 17 countries.
“We are also the people who benefit most from the status quo,” reads the letter titled Proud to Pay More. “But inequality has reached a tipping point, and its cost to risk to economic, social and ecological stability is severe and growing every day. In short, we must act now“.
Marlene Engelhorn, one of the heirs of the German chemical giant BASF, expressed herself along the same lines. Marlene is Austrian, 31 years old, lives in Vienna and wants to donate most of the 25 million euros he received from his grandmother.
“Without having done anything about it, I inherited a fortune and, therefore, power. And the state doesn’t even want to tax it.”, he denounced in a statement published in the Austrian capital. Austria is one of the countries that practically does not apply inheritance taxes.
Marlene founded the “Tax me now” initiative in the German-speaking world, a variant of similar proposals in the United States, and also brought forward her call for paying more taxes in Davos.
The activist sent 10,000 letters to randomly chosen Austrian citizens, from whom they will be selected in the end 50 names. The aim is to help her propose ideas “beneficial to society as a whole” with which to redistribute 90% of one’s inheritance.
Between March and June the elected representatives will carry out work sessions at no cost in the city of Salzburg. Marlene will have no say in the outcome of the debates.
A former student of German literature, the rich heiress will soon be deprived of much of her income and will have to look for a job for the first time.
“I went from the top 1% of society to the bottom 99%. Some will see it as a setback, but I see it as progress in democratic society. “I’m leaving this dynastic ghetto of the rich,” he said in an interview with the German newspaper Tagesspiegel.
“In the face of government failure, it is up to us to right the injustices,” Engelhorn said.
““Let’s stop talking about philanthropy, let’s start talking about taxes” Rutger Bregman, a Dutch historian, said this in a conference in Davos. “The problem is that the rich don’t pay their fair share. It’s like we’re at a fire conference and no one can talk about water. “Something has to change.”
At the beginning of the Davos Forum, the NGO Oxfam once again denounced the “obscene inequalities” around the world, calling for more taxes on billionaires.
And they warned that the world could have its first billionaire – referring to someone who would have 1,000 times $1 billion – in less than a decade. If someone became a billionaire, they would be worth the same as the oil power of Saudi Arabia.
From Oxfam they point out that this happens in a context in which the The global social divide has “super-widened” following the coronavirus outbreak.
The group estimated that the fortunes of the five richest men in the world – Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault and his family of luxury company LVMH, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and l ‘investor Warren Buffett – they have increased by 114% in real terms since 2020.
“The five biggest billionaires have nearly doubled their fortunes, meanwhile nearly 5 billion people have become poorer“said Amitabh Behar, chief executive of Oxfam, in an interview in Davos.
Source: Clarin
