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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 07:05 AM Jun 2014

Wealthy Austrians Are Demanding Their Taxes Be Raised

http://www.businessinsider.com/wealthy-austrians-are-demanding-to-be-taxed-more-2014-6



Wealthy Austrians have gotten together to demand their government tax them more.

In a cover story in the Austrian weekly magazine Profil, a dozen or so bankers, CEOs, real estate moguls and inheritors say they have a civic duty to give back to a country that's allowed 70% of its wealth to concentrate in the hands of the top 10%, according to France's Libération.fr.

"A wealth tax is not only a question of morality, but also of pragmatism," says Christian Köck, a health economist and businessman who also inherited a large sum. "I don't want to be rich in a society that can't pay to invest in a fair education system."

Austria lacks an inheritance tax, and wealth brackets are not scaled. Property and rent taxes are practically non-existent.

***the Spiritual Home of Austerity.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/wealthy-austrians-are-demanding-to-be-taxed-more-2014-6#ixzz34ERxc9WD
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pampango

(24,692 posts)
1. Austria already has one of the fairest income distributions in the world. Nice to see they are not
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 07:23 AM
Jun 2014

satisfied with that.

Austria's gini coefficient is 26.1. Only the Scandinavian countries and Slovenia are (slightly) better in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

And international trade is 80% of their economy.

nxylas

(6,440 posts)
7. That's presumably not "Austrians" in the economic sense of the word
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 09:18 AM
Jun 2014

It does make for a gloriously ironic headline, though.

DirkGently

(12,151 posts)
8. "I don't want to be rich in a society that can't pay to invest ..."
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 09:36 AM
Jun 2014

This is it. This is what doesn't penetrate in America, somehow. The Koch-minded among us would prefer to live in diamond-plated palaces surrounded by mud and barbed wire than to pay a penny to support the civilization that enables their own wealth.

Maybe we're just too big a country to be smart, collectively. Too much stupid dilutes any reasonable thoughts we might have.

Nice to see other countries getting it, anyway.

BrotherIvan

(9,126 posts)
9. I believe it is because few Americans travel
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 06:39 PM
Jun 2014

I know it sounds over-simplified, but because many people don't leave their home state or get any further than Disney World, it is quite easy to lie to them about the rest of the world. It's easy to say Canadian healthcare is bad because they've never been there. They have not experienced clean, safe cities or a well-educated populace. They have not vacationed during the months Europeans travel because many Americans don't take or don't have vacation time. They can't afford to travel. They have not lived in a place that does not have guns.

Nor have they seen the flip side: what a true third world country looks like. That yes, even poorer Americans do not live in the appalling conditions that some do. What a society is like when they don't invest in the people. Those children that are making their gadgets and clothes, they have never looked a single one in the eye.

Americans are known the world over for being isolated monoglots with very little knowledge of other cultures. And this allows those who would take advantage of that ignorance do so with impunity.

DirkGently

(12,151 posts)
11. Yes. Isolation is clearly part of the problem.
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 09:45 PM
Jun 2014

Last edited Wed Jun 11, 2014, 09:41 AM - Edit history (1)

As you say, many Americans have not seen, and don't care to learn about, the way issues like taxation and worker's rights and infrastructure work in the rest of the world. We're more familiar with poorer countries than other parts of the developed world, and constantly pat ourselves on the back for having better conditions than the most impoverished countries in the world.

Michael Moore's Sicko opened a small window into universal health care, but the people who needed that perspective most would of course never seek it out.

BrotherIvan

(9,126 posts)
12. We are in perfect agreement
Tue Jun 10, 2014, 10:14 PM
Jun 2014

And that's is why the fight for education is paramount. I try to encourage all parents to help their children to adopt the European style of taking a year or two off before college. One, college is too expensive to be party/babysitting. Do that with a backpack in a hostel. Two, travel broadens the mind in every sense of the word. That way they can learn about the world and who they are. The internet made the world global in a sense, but physically experiencing a culture is a whole different story. I would be very happy to subsidize that as many countries do.

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