“Choose among the richest, in order to sacrifice fewer citizens; but choose; for must not a few perish to save the mass of the people? Come on, these two thousand notables have enough to make up the deficit!” This is how Mirabeau expressed himself before the Constituent Assembly on September 26, 1789, to avoid a “hideous bankruptcy” for the country. More than two centuries later, this myth of the “people and the fat” (The People and the fat, story of a myth, by Pierre Birnbaum, Grasset, 1979) still works just as well. Whether they are called the 2,000 notables, the 200 families or today the billionaires (43 in France), the mere mention of the small club of the wealthy triggers the hallali.
From the EELV national secretary, Marine Tondelier, who dreams of a France “without billionaires”, to Oxfam’s anti-rich rant, the tone is set: out of jealousy, ideology or demagoguery, the detestation of the super-rich has never as much recipe. It is even THE recipe: to finance pensions, fill the coffers of the State, save the hospital or reduce inequalities, it would be necessary, we are told over and over again, to tax the rich… Even if it means twisting some economic truths.
First of all, these famous billionaires are already taxed, at least in France. Then, when we look at the world rankings compiled each year by Forbes, we see that most of the time they are outstanding entrepreneurs and incredible creators of wealth. Even if the tech giants are currently going through an air pocket, let’s not forget that since their respective births, Tesla (Elon Musk) has generated more than 100,000 jobs, Microsoft (Bill Gates) 221,000 jobs, Google (Mark Zuckerberg ) almost 200,000, not to mention Amazon (Jeff Bezos) and its 1.5 million jobs… 000 people in France alone last year, making him the leading private recruiter in France… If billionaires are vampires, as Marine Tondelier describes them, they are useful vampires.