“Millionaires for Humanity” founder, investor Djaffar Shalchi, is pushing, together with a few other millionaires and the worker-friendly Momentum Institute, for global taxes on the wealthy. Quoting Mahatma Gandhi’s famous line, “Poverty is the worst form of violence,” in his speech in Vienna, Shalchi also emphasised that, as a seven-year-old Iranian refugee, he himself was only able to climb the ladder thanks to the social security system in Denmark, the country that welcomed his family. He expressed his conviction that “Just one percent tax on the world’s great fortunes would be sufficient to solve all the world’s problems,” and insisted that taxes are not bad, citing as an example the Scandinavian countries with a high level of taxation, matched by one of the highest levels of happiness. For his part, Momentum economist Mattias Muckenhuber estimates that a one percent tax on large assets of one million euros or more would generate five billion euros in Austria, thus “abolishing poverty” in the country. For Shalchi, every democracy has this in its own hands, and he hopes that young, democratically elected forces will soon be able to effect change.
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