On a wealth tax

In our con­di­tions, a wealth tax would ben­e­fit prac­ti­cally no one.

The poor dream of “pay­back” and “fair dis­tri­b­u­tion”. Before elec­tions, politi­cians toss them the bait of a tax on the rich.

But what can a tax like that achieve in a coun­try where the budget is sawed up, as we call embez­zle­ment here, in every way imag­in­able? A plain redis­tri­b­u­tion of money from one set of oli­garchs, who have already “stolen their fill”, to those who now con­trol the budget’s spend­ing lines: at best to other oli­garchs, at worst to the same ones.

And the point? Social jus­tice? Only its ghost, which the poor elec­torate glimpses in the heat of its heavy wor­ries “about life”.

Now let’s assume for a second some­thing unlikely but still possible. Suppose we have honest rich people. They’ll have to pay the tax, and since they’re honest, they won’t get it back (through the sawing that fol­lows). So the “wealth tax” should be renamed the “tax on hon­estly earned wealth”.

There. That’s exactly what the system is after: to make people not “live by the law” but “play by their rules”. And if you want to be honest, you’ve got no busi­ness here. Painfully clever, are you? Painfully.

And the tax itself, even if it worked as intended, is, like a pro­gres­sive income tax, soci­ety’s admis­sion either that you can’t earn money hon­estly in this coun­try, so “ya gotta share”, or that this soci­ety doesn’t need rich and enter­pris­ing people.