That is Janet Yellen, pictured. If you don't know who Janet Yellen is, click the link. Janet Yellen is the United States Secretary of the Treasury, and an economist.
The picture, which I obtained from the online version of an editorial published in the April 29, 2024 edition of The Wall Street Journal, is intended to associate Yellen with the possible imposition of a "Global Wealth Tax." The Journal advises its readers to "Watch Out." Here is what The Journal is warning us all about:
In our new socialist age, the demand to tax and redistribute income is insatiable. The latest brainstorm arrives in a proposal by four countries in the G-20 group of nations to impose a 2% wealth tax on the world’s billionaires. Don’t think this couldn’t happen.
“The tax could be designed as a minimum levy equivalent to 2% of the wealth of the super-rich,” write economic ministers of Germany, Spain, Brazil and South Africa in the Guardian. They say the levy would raise about $250 billion a year from some 3,000 billionaires and “would boost social justice and increase trust in the effectiveness of fiscal redistribution.” The countries plan to float this at the next G-20 meeting in June.
As you might expect, this would principally be a tax raid on Americans, who are the most numerous billionaires. It would also be taxation without representation, since it would be a body of global elites attempting to impose a tax without having passed Congress.
Presumably, the plan is to have the G-20 endorse the idea, including President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Then negotiate a global tax deal that would wait until Democrats control all of the U.S. government to approve it, even if that takes many years.
Pardon me for not having noticed the advent of "our new socialist age." That had escaped my attention. What I have noticed is the growing income and wealth inequality within the United States, and as between the United States and other nations in the world.
If we actually are, as Joyce Vance and I frequently reiterate, "in this together," then we need to make certain that the incredible wealth that has been generated by human society is used to address human needs, and to achieve human goals.
"Taxing" ourselves is how we mobilize resources to address collective problems, and to achieve collective goals.
My view? That's a really good idea!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comment!