{"id":50879,"date":"2025-09-29T15:47:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T15:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/50879\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T15:47:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T15:47:13","slug":"new-rock-star-economist-gabriel-zucmans-wealth-tax-transfixes-france-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/50879\/","title":{"rendered":"New rock-star economist Gabriel Zucman\u2019s wealth tax transfixes France \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"

“The merit of the Zucman tax is not the tax itself, it is the diagnosis and moving away from the idea that nothing can be done,” said Pascal Saint-Amans, a French official who for a decade led the push for global corporate taxation reform at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Zucmania\u00a0<\/p>\n

More than a decade after Thomas Piketty\u2019s wildly successful \u201cCapital in the Twenty-First Century,\u201d Zucman is taking the crown of France\u2019s next rock-star economist.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His work on wealth taxes helped inspire left-wing presidential candidates in the United States, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and netted him the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal in 2023<\/a>. Last year, he advised Brazil as it sought to push forward a global minimum tax on billionaires when the country presided over the G20<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zucman, who teaches alongside Piketty at the Paris School of Economics as well as the University of California, Berkeley,\u00a0has proven to be a master communicator willing to spar on social media or in in-person debates, which are many.<\/p>\n

\"\"LVMH chief Bernard Arnault said the tax would \u201cdestroy the French economy.\u201d | Pool photo by Gabriel Bouys\/EPA<\/p>\n

LVMH chief Bernard Arnault said<\/a> the tax would \u201cdestroy the French economy.\u201d Other influential economists argue<\/a> the measure would only bring in \u20ac5 billion, not the \u20ac20 billion Zucman says. Legal experts worry it’s unconstitutional.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then there’s the capital flight argument: that billionaires would simply leave France to avoid paying the tax, as Pierre-\u00c9douard St\u00e9rin did<\/a>, depriving French coffers of significant revenue. A body of independent economists advising the French government, however, found that<\/a> such an exodus would not have a significant economic impact, punching a small hole in that argument.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“The merit of the Zucman tax is not the tax itself, it is the diagnosis and moving away…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1347,72,1322,113,9146,1814,36915,36916,61,60,17137,16937,5066,36917,36918,115],"class_list":["post-50879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-brazil","tag-business","tag-debt","tag-economy","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-france","tag-french-political-crisis","tag-french-politics","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-national-budgets","tag-sebastien-lecornu","tag-tax","tag-tax-avoidance","tag-tax-harmonization","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}