There are moments when one wonders how much cynicism a society can actually endure. 2025 is such a moment. The French Senate is debating a tax that can hardly be called radical – 2 percent. Two measly percent on wealth beyond 100 million euros. And yet a privileged elite is outraged as if it were about expropriation or class struggle.
Two percent – that is less than the annual inflation. It is less than what every ordinary worker pays daily when they get up, work, consume, and live. Two percent – that is the drop a billionaire wouldn’t even notice while the welfare state withers before their eyes.
How far has this society drifted from the idea of justice when even a minimal contribution from the wealthiest to the common good is considered “harassment”? When lobbyists and liberal think tanks reflexively argue with “performers” – a term that has long since become a mocking cliché. Who really carries the load here? The millionaire heir on his yacht off Monaco? Or the elderly caregiver who ruins her health and goes home with 1,800 euros gross?
Gabriel Zucman is right: Tax law has been hollowed out, manipulated, and bent over decades. Not by the poorest. But by the smartest, richest, most influential. Those who can afford an army of advisors to avoid taxes. Those who shield their wealth through holdings, foundations, and shell companies. Those who already consider themselves untouchable.
And when someone finally says: Let’s at least establish symbolic justice, the outcry echoes through the talk shows: “That will drive away investors!”, “That endangers entrepreneurship!”, “That’s envy of the rich!” No. It is moral hygiene. It is the attempt to regain balance in a world that has long gone awry.
2 percent – that’s not much. But it is a beginning. It is a sign that democracy fights back against the creeping disempowerment of the state by private capital power. That we do not accept everything. That we still know what solidarity means.
Whoever owns hundreds of millions in this country has also benefited hundreds of thousands of times – from infrastructure, the rule of law, workers, peace. They owe something to society. And if they don’t acknowledge that, then the problem is not the tax. But their arrogance.
A commentary by P.T.