Technology companies they are grinding out turnover and profits like never before. The six queens (Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta and Netflix) in the last quarter they had a turnover of something like 410 billion dollars. Italian GDP in the same quarter amounted to approximately 480 billion. The same companies took home profits of 88 billion in just three months. Which means that for every five dollars of turnover they make a net profit of 1 dollar. Not bad. In words, the super-rich Americans have repeatedly, hypocritically, asked for a tax on people like them. The appeal of George Soros, which Facebook co-founder Meta immediately joined in calling for the introduction of a wealth tax. An American state is actually thinking about it, and that is Washington (Seattle).
The owners of these large corporation they are the standard bearers of the new American woke trend, and they are tremendously committed to sustainability, diversity, inclusion and a thousand politically correct balls. And sometimes they even pretend, as we have seen, that they want higher taxes for themselves. But it’s a fabulous party game. This double standard of the most powerful men on earth (from an economic point of view and not only) is striking. A couple of days ago one of them, the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezosannounced that he wanted to leave Seattle and the left-wing state of Washington to migrate to the other side of America: to Miami, Florida.
He claims that his move stems from emotional reasons and that is to be closer to his parents. Yes, certainly. More likely to believe that, thanks to the conservative governor Ron DeSantisFlorida has also become more attractive for Bezos thanks to reduced taxes and very light regulations.
It is perhaps misguided to believe that if he had remained in Seattle he would have paid 7 percent on capital gains and would have risked paying a wealth tax, which is now being introduced, and which would have cost him 1.6 billion dollars a year ? The purchase of an 80 million mansion in Miami is ultimately a small price to pay, given the tax savings that he will be able to realize. Only a few months ago, another billionaire from one of the six tech queens behaved in the same way, namely the former president of Google, Erich Schmidt.
Alan Greenspan, the former president of the Fed, said: «Whatever you tax, you get less of», that is, whatever you tax, you will receive less. This is a lesson for our government. Italy is one of the 27 states of the European Union. Meloni is like DeSantis, don’t worry about making the rich cry, don’t reduce the incentives for billionaires who want to enjoy the Bel Paese. Return of brains and flat taxation of 100 thousand euros for wealthy foreign income earners are the key to attracting capital and consumption. And he will see that Italy will become more attractive.