US billionaire Warren Buffett’s call for higher taxes on the rich in the US has been met with disdain by other super-rich in the US.
While in France, the rich are having tax loopholes which benefit them eliminated in order to raise between 5 and 10 billion Euros in additional revenue in 2012 to reduce the French deficit, and the French super-rich have responded with a petition published in the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur in which they ask to be taxed more.
The 16 French super-rich who signed the petition are asking the French government to implement a 'special contribution' which would target the rich. In the petition the signatories state
We are conscious of having benefited from a French system and a European environment that we are attached to and which we hope to help maintain.
…
When the public finances’ deficit and the prospects of a worsening state debt threaten the future of France and Europe and when the government is asking everybody for solidarity, it seems necessary for us to contribute.
Le Nouvel Observateur
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