Why The Economist hates wealth taxes

Very interesting, bar the repetition. Keep it up!

Thanks Gary - keep up the fight. We are behind you!

The longer they keep us arguing about the best way to do it, the longer they get away with it (Barry’s Economics)

Inheritance tax is only paid by middle-class, rich people often move money into trusts which isn't seen as inheritance.

To the economist there's nothing more innovative than owning resources and charging rent for other's to use them.

I have subscribed privately to the Economist for 30+ years but was as shocked as you were by the incoherence of that article. Astonishing. And by the way roughly half of the super-rich simply inherited it, no innovation..

“Seizing the assets of the most productive people”. What a line.

Calling the current system in the US and UK a meritocracy is hysterical

"The Economist Group is privately held and funded by a mix of family, institutional, and individual shareholders, including Exor N.V. (43.4%), the Agnelli family, and Canadian billionaire Stephen J. R. Smith's Smith Financial Corp (26.9% as of March 2026)" - Wikipecdia

because they're owned by billionaires, gary. You know you should never listen to what people say, look who pays them.

I'm a regular gardener, but since college I've subscribed to the economist. For most of the time mostly reading the international and science sections. I read the wealth tax articles with interest but very low expectations, and low and behold, trashed the idea. Turkeys won't vote for Christmas. Loving your take on their absurd argument. However, I probably think the rich favour inheritance tax because they can use various mechanisms to avoid it, in trusts or assets etc. So it's the devil you know. Keep up the good work Gary, big fan

"Seizing the assets of society's most productive people is a road to economic ruin". What a beautifully phrased argument in favour of wealth taxes... The most productive people in our society are not those increasing their wealth by acquiring a greater and greater proportion of assets every year.

The most productive people in our society are those who work tirelessly for 60%+ of their lives to keep the wheels of our civilisation turning.

By taxing the latter and not the former, we continue down the road to economic ruin.

To counter the 'productivity' argument, maybe we should call it a Hoarding Tax - pretty hard to claim hoarding is productivity

17:00 - another reason people are less likely to start a business these days is that normal working people have less and less disposable income to spend in local business in the first place!

They earn millions in Passive income every year, but taxing this would deter innovation? 😅

What deters innovation is not being able to afford to innovate.

The pandemic showed us that billionaires are not essential workers.

I wonder how much it would blow the zillionaire class's mind if they found out some of us down at the bottom are actually fine with paying taxes...(we just wish everybody pulled their own weight too)

Inheritance tax gives 30 extra years to use loopholes to avoid the tax. That's how they are different from wealth taxes.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." – Upton Sinclair

They want an inheritance tax because they only need to dodge it once, vs a wealth tax that they need to dodge every year