IMO, taxing the wealthy is not the long term answer because, like France, the wealthy are highly mobile and they will simply migrate to a lower taxed jurisdiction , if they haven't already done, or at least relocate their taxable assets to a tax haven.
France had a go at that and Belgium & Luxemburg were the beneficiaries:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-11-14/france-s-wealth-tax-should-be-a-warning-for-warren-and-sandersIMO, we have to tax our natural assets (eg coal , iron ore for example) that cant be moved offshore and that are predominantly foreign owned.
The arguement against this seems to be along the following lines:
"If we tax our resources higher, then foreign investment in these resources will dry up"
Lets just think about this:
-according to the Australian institute, 86% of our mines are already foreign owned
-that meands that the profits from these enterprises mostly go overseas.
-when our banks (majority foreign owned) need extra lollies to underwrite our increasing personal needs ( debt) they have to go overseas
to borrow ( sell Aussie bonds)
To have any chance of ever owning our natural resources ( the States are supposed to own them now but have sold them out) we simply have to keep more of the profits in Australia and the logical interim strategy of achieving that is to simply tax our resources higher until we reach an optimum
mix of profits retained in Aus and foreign investment ( not one or the other but a combination of both ). In business its all about achieving the maximum profit by matching volume to unit profit. (If too much of a good is produced then the unit profit decreases)
I have said previously that Australia & Brazil produces almost all of the Global seabourne iron ore, so an OPEC like agreement between both to
adjust production to meet demand and in the process maintain higher pricing is the go.
Who are the "rich" who wouldn't like that?
My guess is Ms Reinhard, Twiggy, Clive Palmer etc.
But is this not a better solution than putting a super tax on their already gained wealth because an extra wealth tax is like a retro tax and they, like the French wealthy, would simply migrate elsewhere. The Murdocks have already fled and with the tax free treshold on Super being reduced by the Libs to $1.6 million, many more are following.
The mines cant migrate but........ despite Rio & BHP attempting to transfer profits to Singapore!
