We live not in democracies but, rather, under oligarchic rule, Sverige ett attraktivt alternativ
France, the United Kingdom, the United States, and even Germany are all in fiscal jeopardy, with ballooning liabilities for pensions, welfare programs, and military expenditure that politicians dare not shrink nor fund through higher taxes.
Some conclude that democracy cannot deliver fiscal prudence because the demos cannot be persuaded to live within its means.
But there is an alternative explanation: The cause of our fiscal woes is that we live not in democracies but, rather, under oligarchic rule punctuated by periodic elections.
Free and fair elections enable people with spare time and money to win office, which is a very different thing from gaining power.
Once elected, central-bank independence denies them control over monetary policy, while already overburdened budgets and fear of bond vigilantes limit what they can do in the fiscal domain.
In France, the latest ground zero of fiscal distress, the richest 500 families’ wealth has soared from 6% of national income in 1996 to 42% in 2024.
Something similar has happened across the rest of Europe, including in Germany and even the Nordic social-democratic havens.
They lecture the overtaxed, exploited, underpaid, and underserved on their patriotic duty to grin and bear it. And, of course, none of this belt tightening advances the declared goal of fiscal consolidation, because they offer tax cuts to those who have turned tax avoidance into an Olympic sport.
When they say “everyone,” they don’t mean it.
While few dare openly dispute the ethical case for taxing the super-rich more, the moment proposals for wealth taxes surface, the oligarchs trot out a seemingly irresistible argument:
if you tax us, we will flee to Dubai, Monaco, maybe even Mars. Viewing it as axiomatic that this would be a bad thing, the governing politicians buckle and take wealth taxes off the table.
Yanis Varoufakis Project Symdicate Oct 28, 2025
The Zucman tax would be a supplementary levy, ensuring that the total amount of income tax paid by the super-rich each year equated to 2pc of their net wealth.
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-wealth-tax-tearing-france-apart.html
Vi ser nu en ny våg av skatteförändringar riktade mot förmögna individer i flera länder runt om i världen.
Just nu är Sverige ett attraktivt alternativ skriver Joel Uddenäs, Head of Tax & Legal Formue.
I Sverige har det under det senaste året aviserat förslag till förändringar i de så kallade 3:12-reglerna och carried interest-arrangemang.
Sverige saknar: förmögenhetsskatt, arvs- och gåvoskatt, exitskatt och fastighetsskatt på privata bostäder.
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/05/sverige-ett-attraktivt-alternativt.html
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