That's from 2006 and yet, France still roars along even without the rich who were apparently so un-attached to where they lived that they'd rather ditch the country than pay their taxes.
What exactly is the argument made by all these alarmist "who will think of the the wealthy"? Tax the rich and many leave, so you don't get as much tax revenue. Don't tax the rich and you just don't get the revenue. The implication in all these seems to be "well then why not just lower taxes so then the wealthy will grace us with their presence?"
Um, because they're not paying their fair share, and the few who leave don't lead to a net loss in tax revenue/economic prosperity, that's why.
Everything in that article seems quite twisted in its presentation. Quotes like the following:
> Eric Pinchet, author of a French tax guide, estimates the wealth tax earns the government about $2.6 billion a year but has cost the country more than $125 billion in capital flight since 1998.
The implication in that quote is "$2.6 gained but $125 lost, wow what a bad tax scheme", which is horribly irresponsible presentation. That's $2.6B/year in increased yearly tax revenues, but a loss of $125B/8 years (1998-2006) in capital, e.g. assets of some kind in the country. In most real-world cases where most of that flight happened early in those 8 years and the year-over-year capital flight goes down as folks acclimate to a tax regime, that's a totally acceptable trade off! In fact, that trade off might be a HUGE boon to France in the near term, let alone the long term. To actually know though, we need tons more information, information that isn't presented at all.
In short, bad article quotes rich guys who don't want to pay taxes saying "our life is so hard now that we've left a country that we liked but not enough to pay taxes on our insanely valuable assets, and that's actually hurting you more than us, so you should totally lower the tax rates on us."
i think the cost is seen more in opportunity losses. “if the rich investor leaves then who will pay. for the hermitage!”, as if investment is not entirely globalized at this point.
That is my question for all those prognosticating an upcoming violent uprising. The disparity in power has only risen in the last 100 years. A single well armed solider could kill tens to hundreds of civilians in minutes given the right conditions. How do you rise up in the face of such disparate conditions?
You seem to have missed the last twenty five years where the people of Afghanistan and Iraq beat the world's most powerful military and unlimited budget.
Asymmetric warfare is only going to get easier for the underdog with the advent of cheap drones.
If I was calling my campaign a victory, I’d be able to walk in my new territory without fear of being attacked and killed.
It might be a military success by some sort of conventional military definition. But it was a complete failure and utter waste by pretty much every other measure.
The person I originally responded to claimed that "the people of Afghanistan"(Actually the Taliban) defeated the "worlds most powerful military".
This is objectively false. Eventually, occupation became politically hard to motivate for an American public that was tired of war. But to claim the Taliban beat the US military is ridiculous. FWIW I was there.
People struggle to wrap their head around logic like yours because it is essentially just being pedantic.
- Before the war the Taliban controlled Afghanistan.
- The US (+ Allies) invaded and conquered the country.
- 20 years later the US Military has left the county.
- The Taliban now controls the country again.
- At no point during that 20 years was the Taliban actually "defeated" like claimed.
Whether you like it or not "Money and patience ran out" = losing the war.
There are many other "lost wars" where they were lost for the same reason. The most obvious one in this context being the Vietnam war.... which is also a popular one for people to argue that the US Military didn't lose either.
I was under impression that the Taliban is in charge of things in Afghanistan in 2025.
Is this not the case?
And furthermore to my original point do you think that the ubiquity of cheap drones on the battlefield in 2025 would make similar attempts to conquer Afghanistan by the US easier or more difficult if the US were to try the same again?
You are not at all addressing the point I made, that the military campaign against the Taliban was a swift and successful action. You stated that the Taliban beat the worlds most advanced military, which they didn't.
That the subsequent occupation ended with the Talibans return to power has nothing to do with the war itself but has political reasons.
In my opinion, the occupation could have ended completely different with a longer commitment. Unfortunately, the Iraq invasion happened and the American population had little long term interest in nation building, two nations at once.
FWIW Iraq and Afghanistan are very different places.
But this has nothing to do with the military campaign itself. When I was there and where I was(2010, northern Afghanistan), it was a fairly peaceful place. Things were progressing in the right direction.
Regarding your second question, I don't think that the Taliban would have great use of drones considering that we could use essentially the same counter measures we used against remotely operated IEDs(jamming).
Ukraine does not have access to the same equipment we did in Afghanistan.
EDIT:
This article pretty much reflects my views on what went wrong. The US government half assed the occupation and withdrew too early.
I'm not addressing the point you made because it's nonsensical.
Could you imagine a different set of circumstances where the year is 1950 and Adolf Hitler is still Fuhrer of the Third Reich and someone is arguing that America won WW2?
America lost in Vietnam, they lost in Iraq, and they lost in Afghanistan. The sooner you come to realize this and that your time spent in Afghanistan was a waste the sooner you'll have a more accurate worldview and can make better decisions than to sign up for what was at that point an obviously pointless war.
> I don't think that the Taliban would have great use of drones considering that we could use essentially the same counter measures we used against remotely operated IEDs(jamming).
Doesn't seem to be working out for either side in Ukraine.
No, I made a specific argument that the people of Afghanistan defeated the US military.
This absolutely did happen and their long fought victory has saddled the US with an tremendous monetary debt and social debt in the form of a fractured American society the consequences of which are an increasingly authoritarian America that is brutishly lashing out at their allies in that conflict.
America's loss in that conflict has cost America far more than we can imagine right now and the cost is only increasing by the day.
Exhausting the enemy’s desire to continue a fight is not only a way of winning a war militarily, most military victories are achieved that way; the surrender to the Taliban was not unusual in that regard.
That isn't what happened and there was no surrender. The commander in chief made primarily a political decision, and politics was the only motivation for the withdrawal.
Yes, Trump’s release of Taliban priosners and subsequent surrender of Afghanistan to them was a surrender.
> The commander in chief made primarily a political decision
Yes, the decision to abandon a war is always a political decision. It is, in fact, the political decision that every act in war is directed at getting the enemy to make.
There's this weird and frankly dolschtosslegende-ish trend in America post-Vietnam to characterize American victories in war as military and American losses as “political” as if the two were orthogonal categories, but the only military victory is achieving the desired political end, and if you feel like you were “winning militarily” and didn’t do that, then you just didn’t understand the context of the war and your sense of victory was misplaced.
Only after a voluntary retreat, so that is irrelevant since they didn't have power at the time of the treat, and were not a factor in the decision to retreat.
> It is a weird definition of "victory", when the end of the war was a hasty and poorly executed retreat.
Of course it was a victory. The Taliban were ousted within weeks and then the place was under US control for 20 years. If it wasn't a victory, the last 20 years would have been like the last year instead of what they were like.
I think you're taking the analogy too far with that, although it's my fault for using an analogy that makes it so easy.
My point was simply that the US had complete dominion over the area for 20 years and left voluntarily, not due to any pressure from the enemy. If you don't want to call that a victory, fine, whatever, but it doesn't seem like a surrender or loss to me.
This is such a silly argument. They held the place for 20 years uncontested.
Retreating voluntarily because of nothing to do with their opposition, sure as hell isn't losing.
Instead of going back and forth constantly with this semantic bullshit, can we just agree at the least the US didn't retreat because the taliban forced and pressured them to?
It improved the quality of life and security for the people their immeasurably positively. If the withdrawal had not happened, and better leadership was displayed, the would have been completely wiped out.
What they were trying to get, was another ally in the region. They could have to, if it weren't for poor leadership.
I know some of the things they were tying to get, and I’m also not convinced it was as altruistic as that. But I’m not talking about goals. What was achieved? It isn’t safer and the US hasn’t made an ally.
Those things have not been achieved. If those were the aims, the US lost and the Teliban won.
> From a purely force against force perspective though, they didn't come anywhere close to losing
Yes, I agree.
The US saw this as a military problem, but that was only part of it. Winning a particular ground battle, capturing a town etc was only part of what was needed.
Technology is a race between offense and defense and right now we're seeing offense leapfrog defense.
The status quo that we've known our whole lives has meant that anyone trying to assassinate a powerful figure will only get one shot at it before they're caught which does not allow them to learn from their mistakes and sends a chilling message to others who would do the same.
With remote controlled or autonomous drones the dynamic changes because people can operate from a distance -- perhaps even in an entirely different country that doesn't extradite. What's the defense against that?
At the end of the day the attacker only has to succeed once whereas the defender has to succeed every single time.
There may come a time where the ultra-wealthy and powerful decide that it isn't viable for them to be out in public due to the security risks so they will retire to a gilded cage -- which is still a cage -- and what's worse it reduces the search space for attackers to find them.
This doesn't even get into the near future advancements in biotechnology that will allow small groups of dedicated people to develop biological weapons that selectively target a wealthy person's family -- how can they defend themselves against that other than going into a fully sealed environment?
At the end of the day it'll end up being easier and better for these people to just make decisions that benefit the world at large instead of decisions that benefit themselves to the detriment of everyone else.
If you piss less people off less people want to kill you and in fact more people will want to defend you.
What are they going to do, pack up all the factories they own into a suitcase and fly away with them? Oh wait, they already gave them all away to China? So what's suppose to be the downside? Where's the threat?
