This is not an article about taxation. This is an article about a badly designed society, in which the people who create the wealth pay the price for the people who consume it — and then get blamed for the consequences as well.

It concerns something simple that we have forgotten. Those who make something ought to live from it. Those who make nothing ought not to live from what someone else makes. And certainly the second group may not sit in judgement over the first, as though it knows better.

That is what is happening in Europe. We have placed the financing of our benefits, our pensions, our healthcare, our public ambitions — 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 across generations. We pluck them.

Then we constrain them. They are left with less than their business needs to compete 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 chemicals miss the boat, when French industry contracts — then we point at those same entrepreneurs and say: they did not do well enough.

Pluck first. Constrain next. Judge last.

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

What a wage really is

Start with the simplest thing. A wage is not a gift. A wage is what someone earns with what they produce 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 proportionate to that value. If he wants more, he must work more hours, deliver better work, become more skilled, or start his own business. That is not injustice. That is how it should be.

What has happened in Europe is something else. We have decided that the plumber, beyond his wage, is also entitled to healthcare at the highest level, to a pension providing thirty years of cover, to six weeks' holiday, to two years of unemployment protection, to childcare subsidies, to housing benefit, to healthcare allowance, to student loans for his children, to benefits when he wishes. Added together, that costs far more than his labour is worth.

The difference must come from somewhere. We have decided where: from people who do produce a surplus. The entrepreneur. The inventor. The family business in its third generation. Their surplus — the profit that remains after they have paid everyone — is skimmed off and distributed to those who have not made it themselves.

We call this solidarity. We also call it redistribution. We call it justice. But the honest name is different. We are living beyond our means at someone else'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 employees, paid for his raw materials, depreciated his machinery, paid his taxes, and borne his risks. It is the last thing he receives, 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 fund his research before the American competitor overtakes him. To train his staff before they are worth more elsewhere than at his firm. To arrange his legacy so that the third generation can continue the factory.

That is not privilege. That is duty. An entrepreneur who does not use his profit to keep up will go under. And when he goes under, his five hundred employees go with him. His supplier goes with him. His customer goes looking 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 frontier, to make European industry resilient against what comes from outside. We 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 no escape route left anywhere. We have voted for all of this, consistently with a majority, in every country.

Step two — he can no longer do what he should. The German Mittelständler who wanted to convert his factory to electric no longer has the money — 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 revenue. The Italian family firm that wanted to prepare the fourth generation instead sells to the Chinese buyer because succession tax makes handover impossible. His production falls behind the world's, not because he can do less, but because he is allowed to keep less.

Step three — we judge. And then, when the German auto industry loses its lead, when Dutch chemicals contracts, when Italian fashion sells to Asian conglomerates, the European newspapers run the same story: "Our industry missed the transition." "Our entrepreneurs did not invest enough." "The German Mittelstand fell asleep." "Europe missed the boat." As though it was the entrepreneurs who failed — and not the majority that took away the money with which they could have succeeded.

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

Who executes this circle

Here we come to the uncomfortable point. Who sits in this circle?

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

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 chose the parties that introduced these laws. They re-elected the governments that implemented them. At every election they chose the side that says: let the rich pay more, let the factory contribute more, let the family business do its share.

That is us. You who read this. I who write this. Our neighbours. Our parents who vote Labour because they want their pension defended. Our aunts who vote Greens because "the rich can contribute more". Our uncles who vote for the hard left because "the system is unfair". Us. Not them. Us.

And when our entrepreneurial nephew sells his factory to an Indian buyer because he cannot raise the succession 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 that "the German model has grown stale". We do not see the circle, because we are in it and do not want to see it.

What an entrepreneur really does

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

He gets up earlier than his employees. 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 not paying himself. He carries the risk that the market shifts, that raw materials become more expensive, that a major client walks away. He is the one called to account when someone is injured at his machine. He is the one sitting at the bank when a loan is called in. He is the one who testifies before the judge 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 works, when the factory is running, when the invention is patented, when exports take off, when he finally builds something for his children — hears from his neighbours that he is "exploiting the system". That his profit is "unfairly high". That his wealth "should go more to the community". That his legacy "should be distributed".

This is not melodrama. This is what every entrepreneur in Europe is experiencing right now. It is why the baker's son prefers to become a civil servant. Why the electrician's daughter prefers to become a consultant. Why the manufacturer's grandson prefers to become an activist. Our entire culture teaches our young people that entrepreneurship is indecent, that making profit is shameful, that building is suspect. Then in ten years' time we will find it hard to complain that nobody builds any more.

The South African mirror

We do not need to speculate about where this path leads. We can read it in the figures from 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 production has fallen for six consecutive quarters in 2026. A country with gold under its soil can no longer keep its own lights on. Industrial production contracted for the sixth consecutive quarter in heavy industry. Technical talent is leaving in their thousands — AI specialists, cyber specialists, doctors, engineers. Estimates suggest the South African tech sector faces a talent exodus so serious it threatens national security.

How did it come to this? Through exactly the same pattern we are following in Europe. South Africa decided in the nineties that its productive class — farmers, engineers, manufacturers — had to pay for the repair of historical inequality. The moral justification sounded convincing. The practical execution was plunder. Tax on agriculture. Quotas on employees. 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 power fails, the young leave, and the people who stayed behind march through the streets blaming "them" for what happened to them. 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.

That is what awaits us. Not tomorrow. But in 2040, in 2045. A Europe in which the prosperity we inherited has been slowly ground down. 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 people leave for Texas and Singapore. Where our elderly march with the same slogans as the South Africans today: "let those who left return with what they took".

They will not return. And what they took — their knowledge, their appetite for risk, their capacity to build — 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 who is currently leaving France buys a house in Italy or Switzerland and lives there comfortably. His capital is spread across three jurisdictions. His intellectual property sits in a Singaporean holding company. His children study in America. He has adapted to our plunder. His life continues.

Yours does not. You who have tied your life to a Dutch or German or French pension. To a welfare state that promised you would be looked after. To a state pension that would mean the same in 2040 as it does now. You are the one who gets the bill when the productive base has evaporated and the treasury is empty.

In our majority, we chose the security of the state over the security of our own work. The entrepreneur did the opposite. He committed himself to the market, which can be hard, but which he understands. We committed ourselves to promises, which sound soft, but which at some point cannot be kept. The entrepreneur will survive what comes. We will not.

And when that moment comes — not so far away, presumably 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, looking for the same scapegoats. The entrepreneur who left. The foreign worker. The young German who moved to Dubai. Everyone but ourselves.

Four principles from a healthy society

This is not an article with solutions. Those who want solutions read something else. This is a diagnosis. But one principle must be stated here, because without principle a diagnosis is meaningless.

Those who want more must work more. No more complicated than that. Those who live at the bottom or in the middle of a society, and want more prosperity than their labour produces, have one honest path: work harder, work longer, work better, become more skilled, or start their own business. No other path is just.

Those who make profit must be allowed to reinvest it. The profit of a productive enterprise is not a surplus that can go into general revenue. It is the seed for the next generation of investment. Modernisation. Research. Expansion. Defence against external competition. Those who skim off that seed eat today what should have grown tomorrow.

Those who genuinely cannot work receive sober support. For those who truly cannot — through illness, old age after a life of effort, disability — there is reasonable care. But sober. Sufficient for a dignified existence, not for comfort. Financed by the community as a whole, not from one-sided plunder of those who still can.

Those who squeeze the entrepreneur may not then judge him. This is perhaps the most important. Those who voted for the laws that stripped the entrepreneur of his means may not then point a finger and say the entrepreneur "did not invest enough". Those who decided the manufacturer must hand over his profit may not then complain that the factory has aged. That is the cruellest form of injustice possible in a democracy: the accusation reversed, the victim made the guilty party.

Conclusion

This is a badly designed society. We have placed the financing of what we want on those who give us the space to want anything. We have treated those who work for us as an inexhaustible source. And we have then judged them for the exhaustion we caused.

This cannot go on indefinitely. 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 gets more expensive, the power fails, the young leave and the elderly blame each other.

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

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

That is what we do. Pluck first. Constrain next. Judge last. And then, when it is all over, complain that someone else is to blame.

Read in the four parts that follow how this circle works. Which numbers underpin it. Which mechanisms execute it. Which outcome awaits us. Which political forces carry it. But remember with every line you read: this is not a story about what others do. This is a mirror. We do this. Nobody else.

PART I OF FOUR