Multiple parties are jockeying for position in the aftermath of France’s seismic snap election. The leftist New Popular Front (NPF) insists its ideas should be implemented.
France’s left wing New Popular Front (NPF) - now the largest group in parliament - has called for a prime minister who will implement its ideas including a new wealth tax and petrol price controls.
The leftist alliance secured the most seats in the recent French elections but fell short of the 289 needed for a majority in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of parliament.
President Emmanuel Macron’s Together bloc came in second and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally (RN) party finished third.
France’s parties are now jockeying for position and it’s unclear exactly how things will shake out, but the NPF has insisted it will implement its radical set of ideas.
Problem with taxing unrealized gains is that there’s a fair argument that unrealized gains are, largely, fictitious. For example if Musk said, today, “I am selling all my stock, give me 250 billion now”, he would not get 250 billion dollars, because there isn’t 250 billion dollars of money actually primed to buy Musk’s stock.
Analagous, if your house went up by $150k, then they said “oh, you ‘earned’ $150k, you owe $80k”, your only way to cover that would be to sell the house, which isn’t fair because you were living in it, not using it as a financial instrument. However, if you borrowed $150k and used it to buy a couple of corvettes based on that equity increase, well that’s weird but maybe ok depending on how you ultimately pay back that $150k you borrowed, but at least in the short term, you made $150k appear out of thin air, which might be janked in the long term…