The minimum salary for a working couple in Geneva is 99k per year (23.14 CHF/hr). Under the proposal a mustachian family having saved enough money to be able to withdraw the equivalent of the min wage from their savings is considered part of the 1% wealthy
I am for progressive taxes but this is not a good solution in my opinion. The mechanism to tax the wealthy is already there with wealth tax. An increase in wealth tax for everyone would result in the wealthy contributing more and would also avoid an arbitrary distinction between dividends and capital gains.
FYI Annual budget items for a family of 4 in Geneva:
-Rent moderate house with garden: 60k
-Health insurance incl excess: 25k
A budget of 100k does not permit such a retirement. It could be possible to compromise to a 3 bed flat (50k per year, presumably social housing would not be available), cancel complementary health insurance, but even then there would be a gap. It would be necessary to leave Geneva and family, friends etc. Quite a hard core mustachian lifestyle choice!
Do you have that programmed into one of your Function keys, so you can paste your standard “argument” in quick n easy?
And I see your “Taxation is theft”, and raise you with a “Eigentum ist Diebstahl”.
As always, extremism is bad, and we won’t get any where as a society with extreme views and opinions.
After 159 posts can we agree there are 3 certanties in life
Death
Taxes
Patron could start a fight in an empty room
Sorry for the joke Patron - I actually agree with some of your underlying points but I think you know yourself that the strong way you put across your point is likely to cause an equally strong reaction
A working couple will benefit from 2x CHF 100’000 = CHF 200’000 combined threshold.
If unmarried, they will, according to current law. And if married, I guarantee you they will benefit from a higher threshold as well.
To be fair, the expectation of renting a house and that housing budget should exceed that of minimum wage earners you mentioned earlier and compared to.
I don’t even know where to start. This is such a ridiculous argument it blows my mind. There is all sorts of legislation that decides what you are allowed and not allowed to do. If you don’t behave it has consequences. Very simple.
I don’t know what to say. There are so many reasons where even you would consider taxes as legitimate, it doesn’t at all make sense to say “collecting taxes against their will”, I mean. Are you really serious here? Or are you just trolling.
[sarcasm on]
Why nobody thinks of the kids inheriting 50m+, making an honest living from their dividends? Why support the evil poor people trying to steal other peoples’ money when they can instead work? After all we all have the same opportunities in Switzerland/Europe/US.
[sarcasm off]
The fact this initiative is controversial for any reason other than:
the tax making billionaires leave Switzerland,
the tax making billionaires resort to tax avoidance/evasion instead of paying their share
blows my mind. If you end up making 250,000 CHF/year by dividends alone don’t you think you ought to pay more tax than a CEO/CFO/highly-skilled-professional working 80h per week to make the same amount of money?
The government’s fund allocation is a matter for the parliament, which is often a matter of parties, on the basis of whom we elect the members of the parliament. In a sense, we have our say in the rough composition of the budgets. This equilibrium has to be adaptative to face the current challenges, I don’t think putting it in the consitution would be an efficient way to handle it.
It’s important to view how the whole system functions, one government doesn’t have the same legitimacy as another, and both are not kept in check similarly. It’s all checks and balances in the end: the governement can’t do everything they want because they want to be elected and are watched over by the legislative and judiciary branches. The administration you seem to think lowly of is also an important counter-power to political grabs for power: it’s hard to make it move and they’re also hard to displace so things happen slowly and need to reach a large consensus before getting implemented.
A society without a governement would fall prey to different kinds of tyranny. Someone with enough wealth to hire a private army could rule a region as they see fit. In such a scenario, there would be “stealing” too…
We’d still need a way to settle conflicts without them ending in a bloodbath, so we’d need laws (you can’t steal your neighbors pigs) and tribunals to handle that. The governement would still be responsible for infrastructure (I would worry enough about the road I’m using daily to take care of it but the freeway going to a neighbouring city or allowing for the carrying of goods would be out of my reach). We’d still need an army and international treaties/diplomacy in order to preserve our interests and our wealth.
So, still taxes…
I know this is not the topic of this specific bout but just to make it clear, architects, structual engineers, electrical engineers and most scientists would absolutely not be affected by this initiative, unless they’re big time investors (in which case, it’s their activity as big time investors and not their main profession that makes it so).
By targeting this category, you’re basically asking “what if the middle class stoped caring?”. You are acting like if going on strike doesn’t carry consequences, they would first have to think if it is really worth it. Then, yes, there are structural engineers with the full skillset but a currently low salary that would step up. It would start to really become problematic if aquiring these skills would not be possible anymore i.e. : it’s the professors that go on strike. At that point, you have half of society on strike, that’s not possible with our current societal model (they don’t have enough resources pooled together to all be affected by overwhelming taxes).
This is the part we need to really worry for, and there again, our solutions differ. To me, it is paramount that we keep all living in the same boat. We need to face consequences for our actions and not be able to hide away while only others suffer. Letting people getting too rich is letting them get the means to shield themselves from the consequences happening to the rest of the society (“oh, look, the town is burning, good thing I’ve got A/C and am remote enough from the fire”). That’s part of why keeping pressure on the rich (as well as on the rest of society) is important. When I write “keep pressure”, I mean that the load must be evenly distributed and it’s critical to avoid systemic freeloaders. The pressure can be low but no part of society should be able to get away with no or only a very small part of the load.
I, indeed, don’t subscribe to @xorfish 's point of view, though luck does play an important role in our life path. Another very important part is environment: you may be met with the conditions necessary for growth, or have they denied throughout your whole career. A raspberry tree won’t grow to outshine the rest of the forest but a larch growing under a pine tree won’t grow too much either, while it could have done so otherwise.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s important to keep things dynamic and not make it too much easier to maintain wealth than to build it. It must be possible for a skilled poor person to become rich but it must also be possible for a skilless rich person to become poor. That part is very hard to implement and is part of what is hurting society (part of the bad decisions and a lot of waste of resources come out of it).
It is natural that people want the best for their family. If you forbid inheritance, they will look for ways to bypass it, to pass on their wealth to their kids. I believe possessions should be easily transferable, no subject to taxation. But possessions themselves should be taxable. What is the fundamental difference between a rich person and a poor person? Is it income? NO. It’s wealth.
What I’d like to know is why this initiative is put forward? Do we have a gap in Switzerland’s budget, or would the authors like to introduce some new programs to spend this money? Or do they want to introduce it, because it’s fair, and use the extra income to reduce other taxes (like that’s ever gonna go through a socialist’s mind).
I have a feeling that this initiative, and others like it, will finally win in 5 or 10 years time. Once the pension system cannot finance itself, the retired people will be in favor of more taxes. And the young people are overwhelmingly socialist. You can’t stop demographics. Please prove me wrong.
Interestingly, the highest income voters chose FDP as number 1, all others SVP. I think it does indicate that there is a high percentage of people who got there using their brain.
A typical populist argument. There is no other documented “will of people” except of what comes out at elections. In developed democracies, sure. If you didn’t vote, don’t complain that the Parlament doesn’t represent your opinion.
Again, you are not living in vacuum. It is not true that everything you achieved is only your achievement. You benefit from the society one way or another, you contribute.
When I made a political compatibility test for Switzerland a while ago, FDP came out on top, with the biggest difference being that I wanted some environment protection and they did not. So if they’re becoming more environment-aware then I’ll welcome it.
Why is it a problem for you? Do you not believe in the terrible effect that the human has on Earth? Loads of plastic particles in the oceans, rapid global temperature growth, mass extinction of many animal species and reduction of biodiversity?
I understand if you’re afraid that if only we cut back and others (China, India) don’t, they will eat us for breakfast. But I think at least locally we should reduce waste production (e.g. useless ads in my mailbox), tax pollution (ICE cars, jets), discourage mindless consumption.
Well, I would say that in a country like Poland where right-wing PiS is currently in power Youth want to vote against the corrupt establishment and therefore they vote for left/liberal left.
Same story in Slovakia and Czech rep. but for a long time we had left-wing coalitions in power so majority of Youth is voting for right-wing parties, (maybe less in Czech rep. where there are two big opposition blocs where the one led by Pirate party is modern european left)
Why? Do SVP politics not generally seem quite Mustachian-friendly?
To be fair, Switzerland has a higher degree of direct democracy complementing parliamentary elections and the parliamentary than other countries. It’s much worse pretty much everywhere around the world.
There were points made in this topic along the lines that all taxation is theft and all people live off dividends “deserve” it because they worked harder.
it is more likely the “socialist” young people will be in favor of more immigration (from the EU) than having to pay crushing taxes to support the boomers.
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