The EU thread

[Sheilbh]

I agree with your post in general, but wanted to submit the following idea in response to this part: we need to figure out ways to get the money to sustain our social models. States need to get that money where it actually is these days, and increasingly it is not (barring the odd trillionaire) with the general population. We need to tax financial transactions and we need to tax corporations more.

Something like this could be a start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_financial_transaction_tax

So I'm not totally sold because I think the level of revenue to sustain a social democratic system is far higher than you can get from soaking the rich, or corporations. And what worries me is that I think there is less buy-in for the broad based, everyone pays sort of system you need to sustain it - in part, I think, because fewer people feel like they benefit. I'd also add that the estimate for that FTT tax is that it'd raise €55-60 billion a year which is not nothing but split between states is not huge - it's also significantly less than the €150+ estimated revenue EU states could generate by ending the internal tax shelters (Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta). I think building new complex taxes may be more work than it's worth, especially compared to reforming and properly enforcing existing ones (but this is my answer to everything: build back state capacity).

But I also think the bigger challenge is that it slightly hits into the challenge of globalisation. Because we've spent the last 40-50 years encouraging the free flow of capital - it is one of the EU's four freedoms - and part of moving to an economics-dominated world. So in the same way as I don't disagree with the idea of a wealth tax, taxing corporations or financical transactions - all of that seems sort of meaningless if we're still committed to allowing the free flow of capital. It's like using a sieve to bail out - we need less free flowing capital, more control by states with coercive powers to police and punish.

I'd add to the point with Valmy - as I think this is true across Europe - that our discourse is very Americanised on this (it reminds me of the campaigns in the US pushing for a $15 minimum wage, which got pickd up by campaigners here who wanted a £15 minimum wage ). In the UK, income inequality has basically plateaued since the 80s. Wealth inequality for longer - so the share of wealth held by the top 1% in the UK is just over 20%, it was at about 20% in 1980. In the US it's gone from below 25% to over 35%.

[Tamas]

Yes it's too americanised but also the whole world economy depends on how America is going to handle wealth inequality and the billionaire ketaminite ruling class they have created, so to some degree it should be.