64
Three Australian millionaires say the nation’s super-rich should face higher taxes
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
64 points (100.0% liked)
Australia
4899 readers
120 users here now
A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.
Before you post:
If you're posting anything related to:
- The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
- Politics, post it to Australian Politics
- World News/Events, post it to World News
- A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian
If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News
Rules
This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:
- When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment
Banner Photo
Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australian News
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Australian Politics
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
- Aussie Memes
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
Moderation
Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.
Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
More tax isn’t the answer given how utterly disgracefully wasteful our government and politicians are with our tax dollars. Give them more and they’ll waste more and enrich themselves more. It also doesn’t fix anything, especially not things like political “donations”/bribes - laws fix things like that, but who make laws? Oh right, the politicians on the take, which is why it won’t happen.
What the billionaires need to do is start and run highly efficient charities that actually help people. They could even just not claim deductions if they want to pay more tax as well.
They should do things like make subscription services for essentials, sold at well below cost, so families and people that are struggling can have guaranteed necessities like basic food, clothes, toiletries, and so on for day $50 a week. This way their money goes directly to the people, not the politicians and their mates. Look at what Mark Cuban has done with his pharmaceutical company for example.
That’s what billionaires should be doing. Pledging to pay more tax when you know you’re never going to have to is just more pathetic virtue signalling. Open a supermarket where nothing is over $5. Start your own health insurance company where there are no exclusions and no excess/deductible for making claims, and it only costs $25 a month. The list of ways they can actually help are endless, they just don’t want to actually do any of them - they just want you to think they want to help.
This part is absolutely correct. A social billionaire is a direct contradiction.
The idea of billionaires self-regulating is utopian - if they were willing to do this without external coercion, they would already be doing it. At least something like a tax can be enforced, but even then, like you said, politicians who make laws are in the pockets of the owning class. We'd need a radical overhaul of the whole rotten system to be able to enforce any seriously important financial law on them.
That said, creating charities and aid isn't a bad idea, it would be far better for them to support ones which already exist and are struggling. And it's particularly difficult to trust billionaire claims of being charitable when so many already perform investment and other financial activity under the guise of philanthropism. Supporting grassroots aid efforts rather than building charities from scratch would demonstrate legitimacy. And like you said, there is no legitimacy in these claims.
I’ve done lots of work for some big charities, and they’re rotten to the core in terms of how much money actually goes to the cause vs how much is spent on “administration” etc.
I completely agree. In fact, some of the best work I see are from tiny volunteer groups like Food Not Bombs, who literally won't accept money (I've tried - my schedule doesn't align with volutneering).