It was during my lunch break in the summer of 2013. At the top of a tower in downtown Athens, Morris Pearl approaches a dessert tray. He is one of the managing directors of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, and his team was asked to assess the health of Greek banks. “I glanced out the window and saw a large crowd gathering in the street,” he said in a recent video call from his New York office. “When I realized that these were Greeks who had become desperate due to austerity, I looked at the wealthy bankers around me. What on earth are we doing for the good of this country? I wonder?”
A few months later, he resigned and joined Patriot Billionaires, an organization made up of 250 Americans who earn more than $1 million a year (approximately 950,000 euros) or have assets valued at more than $5 million. . “Not all wealthy people are greedy. We want the world to be a better place, and that can only be done if people like me pay more taxes.”
Gary Stevenson was a trader in London from 2008 to 2012. In 2010, he won his first million euro at just 23 years old. He was a rising star at Citibank. “I became a millionaire by betting that interest rates wouldn't go up and that inequality would explode,'' Gary Stevenson confessed. In 2014, he quit his job in disgust and returned to his economics studies. Now he shoots his YouTube videos explaining why the financial system is annihilating the middle class and supporting patriotic millionaires. “I earned enough money to never have to work for the rest of my life. To redistribute wealth, we should tax the wealthy, of which I am a member.”
“More taxes were levied on my income as a professor.”
Are the millionaires demanding to pay higher taxes? It may seem strange, but while the number of such people is increasing in the United States, Canada, and Europe, it is almost non-existent in France. They have founded associations such as Patriotic Millionaires, Millionaires for Humanity, Ressources en Mouvement in Quebec, Resource Generation in the United States, and Tax Me Now in Germany.
they all want the same thing. “I want to pay as much tax as everyone else so society doesn't collapse,” said Phil White, a 71-year-old Brit who became wealthy by selling several shares in his consulting firm. years ago. “Me too! It's the millionaires like us who should pay the real wealth tax, and by the way, not the middle-class doctors and engineers, although they will hardly feel it,” said the German heiress. Stephanie Bremer, a campaigner in It is a pseudonym because her family does not necessarily share her views.
“Because I was receiving dividends, I was being taxed more on my income as a professor than I am now. This is not normal!” Claire Trottier said. In 2021, this young woman from Quebec left her position at McGill University in Montreal to devote herself to the Trottier Family Foundation, founded by her parents. Her father Lorne made his fortune in the high-tech field.
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