2023-10-23 02:00:04
Abigail Disney, filmmaker and “Patriotic millionaire,” during a press conference in front of the Capitol in Washington, April 18, 2023. TASOS KATOPODIS / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP
Summer 2013, lunch break. At the top of a tower in downtown Athens, Morris Pearl approaches the dessert tray. He is a managing director at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, and his team was commissioned to assess the health of Greek banks. “I looked out the window and saw a crowd moving in the streethe says via video, from his New York office. When I realized that these were Greeks desperate for austerity, I looked at the well-fed bankers around me: what good are we doing for this country, exactly? »
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A few months later, he resigned and joined the Patriotic Millionaires, an organization bringing together 250 Americans whose annual income exceeds 1 million dollars (approximately 950,000 euros) or whose assets are worth more than 5 million dollars. “Not all rich people are greedy: we want the world to be better, and that will only be possible if people like me pay more taxes. »
Gary Stevenson pictured in Canary Wharf, London on February 27, 2020. He made his first million dollars at the age of 24, betting on the outcome of the 2011 Greek financial crisis. BEN QUINTON / GUARDIAN / EYEVINE / OFFICE233
Gary Stevenson was a trader in London between 2008 and 2012. In 2010, at just 23 years old, he earned his first million euros: he was the rising star of Citibank. “I became a multimillionaire by betting that interest rates would not rise and that inequality would explode,” he confesses. In 2014, he quit his job, disgusted, and resumed studying economics. Now, he publishes videos on YouTube in which he explains why the financial system is crushing the middle classes, and supports the Patriotic Millionaires. “I have earned enough to no longer work for the rest of my life: taxation must target the wealthy, including me, to redistribute wealth. »
“I was taxed more on my income as a teacher”
Millionaires demanding to pay more taxes? This may seem incongruous, but there are more and more of them in the United States, Canada and Europe – but hardly in France. They come together within associations such as Patriotic Millionaires, Millionaires for Humanity, Ressources en Mouvement, in Quebec, Resource Generation, in the United States, or Tax me now (“Tax me now”) in Germany.
They all demand the same thing: “I’m rich, tax me!” I want to pay as much tax as everyone else to prevent society from imploding”declares Briton Phil White, 71, who sold his consulting company for a handful of millions a few years ago. ” Me too ! It is the very wealthy like us who have to pay a real wealth tax – which in fact they would barely feel – and not the doctors or engineers of the middle class.insists Stefanie Bremer, a German heiress who campaigns under a pseudonym – her family does not necessarily share her ideas.
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