Rutger Bregman's viral tax speech did not go down well in Davos | 7.30

0:00 Rutger Bregman how surprised were you by the huge reaction to your comments at Davos oh I was totally surprised you know I went home actually on on Friday the last day of the forum I went back to Amsterdam and I I didn't expect much of it you know after I given my short speech the response in the room you know from the audience was quite aggressive and no one really came up to me to say hey that was a good speech so you know I

0:29 went home with a bit of a bad feeling to be honest it was only a couple of days later that it completely exploded you said the reaction in the room was aggressive beyond that room more broadly among the people there at Davos did it spark any discussion about taxation rather than philanthropy among those people rich enough to have those kind of concerns well not really I'm afraid I mean the Tea Ward is really the forbidden word in places like Davos you

0:57 can talk about anything about education about feminism about climate change as long as you don't talk about higher taxes on the rich but I said to myself I just got go on and talk about these issues when when no one raises talks about the elephant in the room which is you know we've got to be talking about taxes taxes taxes free marketeers would argue that high taxes curtail the free market and therefore stifle economic growth what would you say to that so

1:25 what I was advocating in Davos was simply lower taxes you know for the lower classes in the middle classes people will actually do the real valuable work and higher taxes on the rich this is what we had in the past and and in those times we had much higher rates of economic growth a much more technological innovation to support say 70 percent taxation I'd have to believe that my government would spend that money efficiently why would I trust

1:51 that my government would spend that money efficiently given the revelations that we've heard over the decades about corruption and waste in many governments around the world what I think we should do is to zoom out and to look at the broader research there's been recent interesting evidence from two Dutch economists that looked at a poll that was done among 27,000 employees in more than 30 countries and they ask people a very simple question the question was do you think

2:17 your job is valuable or not turns out that actually 25% of all employees say well you know my my job doesn't contribute anything really at all and that number is four times as high in the private sector as in the public sector so there are a huge amount of really valuable jobs in the public sector think about firefighters think about police officers think about care workers nurses doctors you name it a huge amount of things that we you know really really

2:43 need education health is often you know being done by people on the government payroll so I think that we need to move towards a different narrative about about government and work and where the real wealth creators let me put the devil's advocate argument to you if one believes in liberal democracy philanthropy is a better idea than taxation because then it's my choice if I want to give my money away so in places like that votes philanthropy is

3:13 you being used as a way to distract people from simply immoral things that are going on at the same time so what we have there are billionaires with totally corrupt business models you know they're not paying their workers a living wage they're avoiding their taxes and they're polluting the environment and then to distract from all that they say oh I've got a nice plan for some education for girls in Uganda or whatever I'm not against philanthropy I mean by all means

3:40 come up with all those wonderful plans but pay your taxes first with taxes we buy civilization and it's simply you know a prerequisite for a well government Society let me put another argument to you that's often made against higher taxation that higher taxation is a disincentive against ingenuity and hard work well it certainly is if we put higher taxes on the lower classes in the middle classes on labour but what I'm advocating is higher taxes mainly and wealth you know

4:12 on people who are just sitting back relaxingg who have inherited much of that wealth or who have a business model that is pretty much about rent-seeking think about the financial sector we've got a huge amount of evidence that actually a big part of the financial sector is not being productive at all so if you have higher taxes on those people it's indeed disincentives for those kind of activities and that they may actually start doing something that is useful

4:37 Rick Bregman thanks so much for joining us thanks for having me