{"id":173111,"date":"2025-09-22T03:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-22T03:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/173111\/"},"modified":"2025-09-22T03:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-22T03:17:07","slug":"french-wealth-tax-voodoo-economics-is-sticking-pins-in-the-rich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/173111\/","title":{"rendered":"French Wealth Tax? Voodoo Economics Is Sticking Pins in the Rich"},"content":{"rendered":"

France is having an on-brand month<\/a> as President Emmanuel Macron and his new prime minister begin the slog of trying to form a government and cobble together a budget. After a call by protesters to \u201cblock everything\u201d \u2014 including by paying for goods only in cash to starve the payments system \u2014 and a national strike over a since-canceled budget plan to scrap two public holidays, the country is locked in passionate debate over the introduction of a new wealth tax<\/a>. While it\u2019s perhaps one of the few ideas with near-unanimous support, it\u2019s not the kind of invention France needs right now.<\/p>\n

The wealth tax in question, devised by 38-year-old celebrity economist Gabriel Zucman<\/a> and pushed by the left as an anti-Macron rallying cry, would have the virtue of simplicity: A 2% levy on wealth past a threshold of \u20ac100 million ($117 million). (If that sounds familiar, it\u2019s because he\u2019s advised US politicians including Elizabeth Warren on similar plans.) Its backers say it would raise \u20ac20 billion a year from an estimated 1,800 households, equating to about half the national defense budget and one-quarter of the amount raised by income tax. No wonder it\u2019s insanely popular with the 99.99% who wouldn\u2019t pay it. Even the far-right National Rally<\/a> is frantically trying to cash in with its own version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France is having an on-brand month as President Emmanuel Macron and his new prime minister begin the slog…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,5849,110,5607,594,2420,103335,102759,1166,74,3266,1432],"class_list":{"0":"post-173111","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-budget-deficit","12":"tag-economics","13":"tag-emmanuel-macron","14":"tag-france","15":"tag-government","16":"tag-income-inequality","17":"tag-lvmh-moet-hennessy-louis-vui","18":"tag-startups","19":"tag-technology","20":"tag-view","21":"tag-wealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}