{"id":1511296,"date":"2024-02-21T06:50:47","date_gmt":"2024-02-21T06:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=313845"},"modified":"2024-02-21T06:50:47","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T06:50:47","slug":"the-next-billionaire-thing-hunting-humans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/02\/21\/the-next-billionaire-thing-hunting-humans\/","title":{"rendered":"The Next Billionaire Thing: Hunting Humans?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n

Collecting signatures takes energy, and young people in Switzerland seem to have an abundance of just that. The young who belong to the youth wing of Switzerland\u2019s Social Democratic Party earlier this month \u2014 after a two-year campaign \u2014 deposited<\/a> over 140,000 signatures at the Federal Chancellery in Bern.<\/p>\n

Why go to all that effort? Activists in Switzerland\u2019s Young Socialists group want to seriously tax the huge inheritances their nation\u2019s fabulously rich routinely pass on to family and friends. The 140,000 signatures the activists\u2019 \u201cFor the Future\u201d initiative has collected add up to much more than enough to place on the Swiss ballot a proposition that would, if enacted, subject all inheritances over 50 million Swiss francs \u2014 the equivalent of about $57.3 million \u2014 to a 50 percent tax.<\/p>\n

The proceeds from that tax \u2014 an estimated $6.8 billion a year \u2014 would enable what the \u201cFor the Future\u201d initiative is calling a \u201csocially equitable financing of climate protection.\u201d Swiss federal and canton authorities would be able to use the billions in proceeds from the proposed tax on everything from developing renewable energy to boosting public transportation.<\/p>\n

All this Swiss activist interest in curbing the wealth of the wealthy should come as no surprise. Switzerland currently boasts more billionaires per capita<\/a> than all but two of the world\u2019s political nation states.<\/p>\n

Swiss billionaires range from Rafaela Aponte-Diamant and Gianluigi Aponte, shipping magnates worth $29.4 billion each who share 54th place on the Forbes<\/em> real-time world billionaire list<\/a>, to Stephane Bonvin, a real-estate king who sits in 2,394th place with a fortune worth a mere $1.1 billion.<\/p>\n

On that same Forbes<\/em> billionaire list, all the way down at the bottom, sits South Korea\u2019s Lee Jay-hyun in 2,532nd place. Lee just happens to boast a bio<\/a> that touches all the billionaire bases, encompassing everything from corruption and corporate power to inherited grand fortune and political clout.<\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s granddad, for starters, founded the Samsung global electronics empire. That gave Lee a head-start in life that surely didn\u2019t hurt his climb to the top of the CJ Group, the giant food and beverage conglomerate that Lee currently chairs.<\/p>\n

Back in 2014, Lee held that same corporate power position. But a South Korean court that year found Lee, then his nation\u2019s tenth-richest man, guilty of embezzling $156 million and stashing that tidy sum offshore. The judge in the case, citing<\/a> Lee\u2019s \u201csocial status and social responsibility,\u201d ruled he deserved a \u201ctough punishment\u201d and sentenced him to four years in prison \u2014 on top of a stiff fine.<\/p>\n

Lee ended up never having to serve that prison sentence. In 2016, \u201cafter gathering diverse opinions to unite our people and overcome an economic crisis,\u201d South Korea\u2019s Justice Ministry announced<\/a> that the nation\u2019s president had decided to pardon the then 56-year-old Lee in honor of the nation\u2019s upcoming Liberation Day holiday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

That a man of awesome means can get away with committing a major crime comes, of course, as no surprise to those of us who have watched our global rich bounce all the way back and then some from the \u201cdark\u201d days of the mid-20th century, a time when the developed world\u2019s highest incomes faced<\/a> tax rates of up to 91 percent.<\/p>\n

How much \u2014 in our current 21st-century plutocratic climate \u2014 can our richest now get away with? They can, two Austrian filmmakers posit, get away with murder. Literally.<\/p>\n

The two filmmakers, Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann, gave their latest collaboration a world premiere<\/a> last month at the Sundance Film Festival.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always follow the money,\u201d says<\/a> Hoesl, the screenwriter of their just-released Veni Vidi Vici<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And the money this time led them to the story of Amon Maynard, a lavishly endowed billionaire who enjoys hunting humans.<\/p>\n

\u201cDecked in the epitome of rich-people elegance, Maynard seems to be the kind of man who has never heard no for an answer,\u201d writes<\/a> film critic Jose Sol\u00eds in the journal Film Stage<\/em>. \u201cKilling a person doesn\u2019t even seem to thrill him much as a fetish \u2014 it\u2019s just something else he does in his free time.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what does Solis see as the \u201ccraziest thing\u201d about Hoesl and Niemann\u2019s \u201cpitch-black satire about a wealthy family with a predilection for human-hunting\u201d? The film, he notes, just \u201cdoesn\u2019t seem that<\/em> crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why should it? As filmmaker Hoesl puts it<\/a>: \u201cDidn\u2019t some country\u2019s president say something like \u2018I could kill someone on Fifth Avenue but still get elected?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post The Next Billionaire Thing: Hunting Humans?<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Collecting signatures takes energy, and young people in Switzerland seem to have an abundance of just that. The young who belong to the youth wing of Switzerland\u2019s Social Democratic Party earlier this month \u2014 after a two-year campaign \u2014 deposited over 140,000 signatures at the Federal Chancellery in Bern. Why go to all that effort? More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post The Next Billionaire Thing: Hunting Humans?<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511296"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1511296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1511297,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1511296\/revisions\/1511297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1511296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1511296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1511296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}