{"text":[[{"start":5.9,"text":"Last week it became official: in November, Californians will vote on a 5 per cent tax on billionaires’ wealth. Coming on the heels of a similar debate in France, in theory this is a marvellous opportunity for rich economic discussion. In practice I worry the choice will be reduced to a grim question: are you a jealous wealth-basher or a shameless shill for the rich? In an effort to avoid that, here is my contribution: a light(er)-hearted guide to the key characters."}],[{"start":33.55,"text":"First in the advocates’ camp are the entrepreneurial academics whose business is constructing statistical rage bait. Did you know, for example, that France’s approximately 100 billionaires pay a tax rate half that of the average French person? And did you know that California’s billionaires have wealth equivalent to half the state’s GDP? These academics regard tax loopholes the same way Parisians regard tourists: with hostility. They are probably French."}],[{"start":58.349999999999994,"text":"Next, meet the democracy defenders. They don’t want much — just to gently crush the billionaires’ fortunes until no one can donate their way to political influence or buy a large social media platform on a whim. They talk in terms of fairness and societal fabric and have a strong sense of right and wrong. They are not very fun at parties."}],[{"start":79.3,"text":"Then we have the cash grabbers, including nurses and teachers in California, trade unions in France and anyone wearing one of those “tax wealth not work” T-shirts. Their idea of fairness includes a one-off billionaires’ tax of 5 per cent raising $100bn over five years in California, or a 2 per cent wealth tax pulling in €20bn a year for the French Treasury. For Christmas they will receive a T-shirt emblazoned with “tax them not me”."}],[{"start":107.65,"text":"Now for the sceptics, many of whom share the popular view that billionaires should pay more tax. Loudest among them are the mother ducks, quacking at anyone threatening their precious innovation ducklings. Don’t you dare attack the smallest of her brood: the paper billionaires, with stakes in companies that make no profit, and whose value could collapse to zero. Over the past few decades, some 84 per cent of founders funded by US venture capital have been wiped out with nothing."}],[{"start":135.65,"text":"Under one of the mother duck’s wings is Silicon Valley’s cluster of start-ups; under another are France’s dreams of growing some of the competition. Yes, these sceptics might have seen the recent study finding that in Scandinavian countries a 1 percentage point increase in wealth taxes cut employment by 0.02 per cent and investment by 0.07 per cent, hardly catastrophic. But they squawk that the effects from a bigger tax on a smaller slice of billionaires could be larger."}],[{"start":168.35000000000002,"text":"Then we have the quibblers, who worry about the assumptions underpinning the advocates’ outrageous statistics. They fret about whether the tax rate calculations adequately account for benefits received or the taxes paid towards the ends of billionaires’ lives. (They also doubt that popular billionaire lists such as the Forbes 400 are an accurate indicator of tax residency.) They believe that facts matter and want the debate to be about statistical methodology. Few agree."}],[{"start":194.10000000000002,"text":"Closely related are the practical pessimists, who worry that billionaires will find ways to avoid coughing up, severely reducing the tax take. Emigration is one option, as several California billionaires have already demonstrated. They mourn that historical evidence might not be much help, given how few billionaires a new tax would rely on. When it comes to fixing fiscal deficits, their T-shirts say “tax them and me”. They also note that 95 per cent of a multibillion-dollar fortune is still enough to buy a social media company on a whim. They don’t get invited to many parties either."}],[{"start":226.85000000000002,"text":"The prudish perfectionists are eager to tax billionaires, but question whether a wealth tax on its own is the best approach. If capital gains or the corporate profits flowing to individuals are undertaxed in America, fix those. If assets can be parked in holding companies to escape income tax as in France, clamp down on that. A one-off wealth tax is at best a complement to plugs for the holes in the income tax system, not a substitute. After all, since when was taxing wealth easier than taxing income? "}],[{"start":256.35,"text":"Finally, there are the billionaires themselves. Some are keeping quiet, perhaps hoping that if California’s version passes, it will at least quieten the demands for them to pay their fair share. Which would make them the most idealistic of the lot."}],[{"start":276.6,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1783595174_5837.mp3"}