This is not an article about tax. This is an article about a wrongly-arranged society, in which the people who make prosperity pay the price for the people who consume it — and are then also blamed for it.

It concerns something simple that we have forgotten. Whoever makes something is entitled to live from it. Whoever makes nothing is not entitled to live from what another makes. And certainly the second group must not sit in judgement over the first, as though they knew how it should be done.

That is what is happening in Europe. We have placed the financing of our benefits, our pensions, our care, our public wishes — everything we want at the bottom and in the middle — on the shoulders of those who give us the space to earn money. The entrepreneur. The inventor. The factory. The family that has built through generations. We pluck them.

Then we restrict them. They keep less than their business needs to keep up with China, with America, with India. Their factories age. Their research slows. Their production falls behind.

And then — when the consequences become visible, when German cars lose their lead, when Dutch chemistry misses the boat, when French industry shrinks — then we point to those same entrepreneurs and say: they did not do it well.

First pluck. Then restrict. Then judge.

That is the circle in which Europe is currently destroying itself. And we, the majority, are its executors.

What a wage really is

Begin at the simplest. A wage is not a gift. A wage is what someone earns by what he produces in an hour, in a week, in a year.

A plumber who works eight hours produces eight hours of value. For that he receives a wage in proportion to that value. If he wants more, he must work more hours, deliver better work, become more skilful, start his own business. That is not injustice. That is how it should be.

What has happened in Europe is something different. We have decided that the plumber, alongside his wage, is also entitled to healthcare at the highest level, to a pension providing thirty years of coverage, to six weeks of holiday, to two years of unemployment protection, to childcare subsidy, to rent allowance, to healthcare allowance, to a study advance for his children, to benefits whenever he wants them. Added together it costs far more than his labour is worth.

The difference must come from somewhere. We have decided it comes from somewhere: from the people who actually do produce a surplus. The entrepreneur. The inventor. The third-generation family business. Their surplus — the profit remaining after they have paid everyone — is skimmed off and distributed to those who did not make it themselves.

This we call solidarity. We also call it redistribution. We call it justice. But the honest name is another. We live beyond our means at another's expense. That is all it is.

What a profit really is

Now the other side. What is a profit?

A profit is what remains after an entrepreneur has paid his workers, paid his raw materials, depreciated his machines, paid his taxes, borne his risk. It is the last thing he gets, not the first.

That profit has a purpose. Not luxury. Not a yacht or a villa. The real purpose is this: to renew his factory before the Chinese manufacturer overtakes him. To finance his research before the American competitor passes him. To train his personnel before they become worth more elsewhere than with him. To arrange his estate so the third generation can continue the factory.

That is not privilege. That is duty. An entrepreneur who does not put his profit to work to keep up will perish. And when he perishes, his five hundred workers go with him. His supplier goes with him. His customer looks for an Asian replacement. A piece of Europe is lost.

What we have done is skim off that profit for consumption at the bottom. We have sacrificed the source of future prosperity — investment in production, modernisation, research — for immediate spending on things that build nothing. A benefit builds nothing. A pension builds nothing. A subsidy to a sector that would not exist without that subsidy builds nothing. It is consumed and it is gone.

That money should have been used to modernise European factories, to keep European researchers at the front, to make European industry resilient against what comes from outside. We have spent it.

The circle begins

This is how the circle works.

Step one — we pluck. Higher corporate tax. Higher wealth tax. Box 3 "actual return". Exit levies that pursue you to the grave. Brussels coordination so there is nowhere left to escape. We have voted for all of this, time and again with majorities, in every country.

Step two — he can no longer do what he ought to be able to do. The German Mittelständler who wanted to convert his factory to electric no longer has the money for it — he paid it to the tax authority. The Dutch chemist who wanted to invest in new processes cannot afford it — his profit was skimmed off for general funds. The Italian family firm that wanted to prepare the fourth generation instead goes to the Chinese buyer because the transfer tax makes succession impossible. His production lags behind the world, not because he can do less, but because he is allowed to keep less.

Step three — we judge. And then, when the German car industry loses its lead, when Dutch chemistry shrinks, when the Italian fashion industry sells out to Asian conglomerates, then the European newspapers open with the same story: "Our industry missed the transition." "Our entrepreneurs did not invest enough." "The German Mittelstand has grown drowsy." "Europe missed the boat." As though it were the entrepreneurs who had failed — and not the majority that took from them the money with which they could have succeeded.

The cruellest lie is this: we blame them for what we made impossible for them to do. We cut off their legs and blame them for no longer being able to walk.

Who carries out this circle

Here we come to the uncomfortable point. Who is inside this circle?

The easy escape is to point at the politicians. Or at Brussels. Or at Zucman and his academic followers who designed the European wealth tax. But that is deception.

Politicians are elected by voters. The voters do not live in Brussels. They live in Maastricht, Groningen, Den Bosch. In Hamburg, Bremen, Stuttgart. In Lyon, Marseille, Lille. They have chosen the parties that introduced these laws. They have re-elected the governments that carried them out. They have at every election again chosen the side that says: let the rich pay more, let the factory contribute more, let the family firm do its share.

We are that. You who read this. I who write this. Our neighbours. Our parents who vote PvdA because they want their pension defended. Our aunts who vote Bündnis 90 because "the rich can contribute more". Our uncles who vote La France Insoumise because "the system is unfair". We. Not they. We.

And when our enterprising nephew sells his factory to an Indian buyer because he cannot afford the transfer tax, we say he was "not entrepreneurial enough". When the German neighbour of our sister-in-law closes his machine factory because he can no longer finance his modernisation, we say "the German model is outdated". We do not see the circle, because we are inside it and do not want to see it.

What an entrepreneur really does

Perhaps this is the part we have most forgotten. What does an entrepreneur actually do?

He gets up in the morning earlier than his workers. He lies awake at night over orders that have not come in. He pays his staff before he pays himself — in bad years he pays his staff while he does not pay himself. He bears the risk that the market shifts, that the raw material becomes more expensive, that a large customer walks away. He is the one addressed when someone hurts himself on his machine. He is the one at the bank when a loan is called in. He is the one who testifies in court when something goes wrong. He is the one who mortgages his house to guarantee next month's payroll.

And he is the one who — when it succeeds, when the factory runs, when the invention is patented, when the export gets going, when he finally builds something up for his children — hears from his neighbours that he "profits from the system". That his profit is "unfairly high". That his wealth "must go more to the community". That his legacy "must be spread around".

This is no melodrama. This is what every entrepreneur in Europe experiences right now. It is the reason the baker's son would rather become a civil servant. That the electrician's daughter would rather become a consultant. That the manufacturer's grandson would rather become an activist. Our whole culture teaches our young that entrepreneurship is improper, that making a profit is something shameful, that building is suspect. Then in ten years we can hardly complain that no-one is building any more.

The South African mirror

We do not need to speculate where this path leads. We can read it in the figures of South Africa, June 2026.

Unemployment: 32.7 per cent. Broadly measured, including people who have given up looking for work: 43.7 per cent. Almost one in two economically active South Africans has no job. Youth unemployment is 60.9 per cent — six in ten young people who want to work cannot find work.

Electricity generation in 2026 has now fallen for six consecutive quarters. A country with gold under its ground can no longer keep its own lights on. Industrial production has shrunk for the sixth quarter in a row in heavy industry. Technical talent is leaving by the thousand — AI specialists, cyber specialists, doctors, engineers. According to estimates the South African tech sector has a talent exodus that threatens national security.

How did it come to this? Through exactly the same pattern we are following in Europe. South Africa decided in the 1990s that its productive class — farmers, engineers, manufacturers — had to pay for the redress of historical inequality. The moral justification sounded convincing. The practical execution was plunder. Taxes on agriculture. Quotas on workers. Expropriation of land. A political climate in which the farmer and the manufacturer were declared enemies of the nation.

The result after thirty years: a country where bread is more expensive, the electricity fails, the youth leaves, and the people who stayed behind march through the streets with the reproach that "they did this to us". But they do not point at the plunder. They point at the migrant from Zimbabwe, at the Mozambican market seller, at the neighbour. At whoever still has something.

This is what awaits us. Not tomorrow. But in 2040, in 2045. A Europe in which the prosperity we inherited has slowly been used up. Where our factories have closed because they could no longer modernise. Where our pensions are cut because the productive base has evaporated. Where our young leave for Texas and Singapore. Where our elderly march with the same slogans as the South Africans today: "let those who have left return with what they took with them".

They will not return. And what they took with them — their knowledge, their willingness to take risk, their capacity to build something — does not come back.

What this means for you

You who read this may think: this is about millionaires. This is not about me.

It is about you. Because you are the one who will suffer, not the millionaire.

The millionaire currently leaving France buys a house in Italy or Switzerland and lives comfortably on. His capital is spread over three jurisdictions. His intellectual property sits in a Singaporean holding. His children study in America. He has adapted to our plunder. His life goes on.

Not yours. You who have coupled your life to a Dutch or German or French pension. To a welfare state that promised you would be cared for. To an old-age pension that in 2040 would mean the same as now. You are the one who gets the bill when the productive base has evaporated and the treasury is empty.

We have in our majority chosen the security of the state over the security of our own labour. The entrepreneur has done the opposite. He has attached himself to the market, which can be hard, but which he understands. We have attached ourselves to promises, which sound soft, but which at some point cannot be kept. The entrepreneur survives what comes. We do not.

And when that moment comes — not even so far off, probably between 2030 and 2040 — we will not say: "we chose this ourselves". We will say: "they did this to us". We will march through the same streets as the South Africans today, with the same slogans, in search of the same scapegoats. The departed entrepreneur. The foreign worker. The young German who moved to Dubai. Everyone except ourselves.

Four principles from a healthy society

This is not an article with solutions. Whoever wants solutions reads another piece. This is a diagnosis. But one principle must still be spoken here, because without principle a diagnosis is meaningless.

Whoever wants more must work more. No more complicated than that. Whoever lives at the bottom or in the middle of a society, and wishes for more prosperity than his labour produces, has one honest path: work harder, work longer, work better, become more skilled, or start his own business. No other path is just.

Whoever makes a profit must be allowed to reinvest it. The profit of a productive enterprise is not a surplus that can go to general funds. It is the seed for the next generation of investment. Modernisation. Research. Expansion. Defence against external competition. Whoever skims off that seed eats today what tomorrow should have grown.

Whoever cannot work receives sober support. For those who truly cannot — through illness, old age after a life of effort, disability — reasonable care exists. But sober. Enough for a dignified existence, not for comfort. Financed from the community as a whole, not from the one-sided plunder of those who still can.

Whoever squeezes the entrepreneur may not afterwards judge him. This is perhaps the most important. Whoever has voted for the laws that deprive the entrepreneur of his means may not then say with raised finger that the entrepreneur "did not invest enough". Whoever has decided that the manufacturer must hand over his profit may not then complain that the factory is outdated. That is the cruellest form of injustice possible in a democracy: the accusation reversed, the victim as culprit.

Close

This is a wrongly-arranged society. We have placed the financing of what we want with those who give us the room to want anything. We have treated the people who work for us as an inexhaustible source. And we have then judged them for the exhaustion we ourselves caused.

This cannot go on endlessly. It ends as it ends in South Africa: in an impoverished, ageing, polarised country where the people who stayed behind march in search of scapegoats. Where bread becomes more expensive, the electricity fails, the youth leaves and the elderly blame each other.

When that moment arrives in Europe — and it comes, because the arithmetic allows no other outcome — we will remember that we had every chance to do it differently. We chose otherwise every time.

And when our factories stand empty, we will not say that we emptied them. We will say that our entrepreneurs failed to save them.

That is what we do. First pluck. Then restrict. Then judge. And then, when it is all over, complain that someone else is guilty.

Read in the four parts that follow how this circle works. Which figures underpin it. Which mechanisms execute it. Which end awaits us. Which political forces carry it. But remember with every line you read: this is not a what-others-do story. This is a mirror. We do this. No-one else.

PART I OF FOUR