This is not an article about taxation. It is an article about a society built on the wrong foundations — one in which the people who create prosperity pay the price for those who consume it, and then get blamed for the consequences.

It comes down to something simple that we have forgotten. Whoever produces something should be able to live from it. Whoever produces nothing should not live off what someone else produces. And the second group certainly has no right to judge the first, as though it knows better.

That is what is happening in Europe. We have placed the financing of our welfare payments, our pensions, our healthcare, our public desires — everything we want at the bottom and in the middle — on the shoulders of those who give us the room to earn a living. The entrepreneur. The inventor. The factory. The family that has built across generations. We plunder 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 output falls behind.

And then — when the consequences become visible, when German cars lose their edge, when Dutch chemicals miss the boat, when French industry shrinks — then we point at those same entrepreneurs and say: they did not do well enough.

First plunder. Then constrain. Then judge.

That is the circle in which Europe is currently destroying itself. And we, the majority, are the ones carrying it out.

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 decided that the plumber, on top of his wage, also has a right to healthcare at the highest level, to a pension covering thirty years, to six weeks of holiday, to two years of unemployment protection, to childcare subsidies, to housing benefits, to healthcare allowances, to an education grant for his children, to welfare whenever he wants it. Added together, all of this costs far more than his labour is worth.

The difference has to come from somewhere. We decided it would come from the people who genuinely produce a surplus. The entrepreneur. The inventor. The family business in its third generation. Their surplus — the profit left over after they have paid everyone — is skimmed off and distributed to those who did not earn it.

We call this solidarity. We also call it redistribution. We call it justice. But the honest name is something else. 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 risk. It is the last thing he receives, not the first.

That profit has a purpose. Not luxury. Not a yacht or a villa. Its real purpose is this: to renew his factory before the Chinese manufacturer overtakes him. To fund his research before the American competitor pulls ahead. To train his staff before they become more valuable elsewhere. To arrange his succession so the third generation can continue the business.

That is not a privilege. That is an obligation. An entrepreneur who does not use his profit to stay competitive goes under. And when he goes under, his five hundred employees go with him. His supplier goes with him. His customer looks for an Asian replacement. A piece of Europe disappears.

What we have done is skim that profit for consumption at the bottom. We have sacrificed the source of future prosperity — investment in production, modernisation, research — for immediate expenditure on things that build nothing. A welfare payment builds nothing. A pension builds nothing. A subsidy to a sector that would not exist without it 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 plunder. Higher corporate tax. Higher wealth tax. Box 3 "actual return" (Dutch capital income levy). Exit taxes that pursue you to the grave. Brussels coordination to close every remaining escape route. We have voted for all of this, always by majority, in every country.

Step two — he can no longer do what he should be able to do. The German Mittelstand entrepreneur who wanted to retool his factory for electric production 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 for the public purse. The Italian family business that wanted to prepare the fourth generation instead sells to the Chinese buyer, because the transfer tax makes succession impossible. His output falls behind the world's, not because he is less capable, but because he is allowed to keep less.

Step three — we judge. And then, when the German automotive industry loses its edge, when Dutch chemicals shrink, 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 were 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 impossible for them to do. We cut off their legs and blame them for not being able to walk.

Who executes this circle

Here we come to the uncomfortable point. Who is 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 dishonest.

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

That is us. You reading this. I writing this. Our neighbours. Our parents who vote for the PvdA (Dutch Labour Party) because they want their pension defended. Our aunts who vote for Bündnis 90 because "the rich can contribute more". Our uncles who vote for La France Insoumise because "the system is unfair". Us. Not them. Us.

And when our entrepreneurial nephew sells his factory to an Indian buyer because he cannot afford the transfer tax, we say he "was not entrepreneurial enough". When our sister-in-law's German neighbour closes his machine factory because he can no longer finance its modernisation, we say "the German model has become 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 forgotten most. What does an entrepreneur actually do?

He gets up earlier in the morning 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 bears the risk that the market shifts, that raw materials become more expensive, that a major customer walks away. He is the one called when someone is injured by his machinery. He is the one sitting in the bank when a loan is called. He is the one testifying in court when something goes wrong. He is the one mortgaging his home to guarantee next month's payroll.

And he is the one who — when it works, when the factory runs, when the invention is patented, when exports take off, when he finally builds something for his children — hears from his neighbours that he "benefits from the system". That his profit is "unfairly high". That his wealth "needs to go back 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 something shameful, that building is suspicious. Then we can hardly complain in ten years that no one builds anything anymore.

The South African mirror

We do not need to speculate where this road leads. We can read it in South Africa's figures, June 2026.

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

Electricity production fell for six consecutive quarters in 2026. A country with gold in the ground can no longer keep its own lights on. Industrial output contracted for the sixth consecutive quarter in heavy industry. Technical talent is leaving by the thousands — AI specialists, cyber specialists, doctors, engineers. Estimates suggest the South African tech sector is experiencing a talent exodus that threatens national security.

How did it come to this? Through exactly the same pattern we are following in Europe. In the nineteen-nineties, South Africa decided that its productive class — farmers, engineers, manufacturers — should pay for redressing historical inequality. The moral justification sounded compelling. The practical execution was plunder. Taxes on agriculture. Employment quotas. 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, power cuts out, youth leaves, and the people who remained march through the streets blaming "them for doing this to us". But they do not point at the plunder. They point at the migrant from Zimbabwe, at the Mozambican market trader, 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 worn away. Where our factories are 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 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 something — will not come back.

What this means for you

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

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

The millionaire 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 goes on.

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 taken care of. To a state pension that in 2040 would mean the same 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 bound himself to the market, which can be harsh, but which he understands. We bound ourselves to promises that sound soft but that at some point cannot be kept. The entrepreneur survives what comes. We do not.

And when that moment arrives — not that far away, 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 South Africans do 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 should read a different piece. This is a diagnosis. But one principle must be stated here, because without a principle a diagnosis is meaningless.

Those who want more must work more. No more complicated than that. Whoever lives at the bottom or in the middle of society, and desires more prosperity than their labour produces, has 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 a profit must be allowed to reinvest it. The profit of a productive enterprise is not a surplus that can flow into the public purse. It is the seed for the next generation of investment. Modernisation. Research. Expansion. Defence against external competition. Whoever skims that seed eats today what should have grown tomorrow.

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

Those who throttle the entrepreneur themselves may not then judge him. This is perhaps the most important point. Whoever voted for the laws that strip the entrepreneur of his resources may not then raise a finger and say that the entrepreneur "did not invest enough". Whoever decided that the manufacturer must hand over his profit may not then complain that the factory has become outdated. That is the cruelest form of injustice possible in a democracy: the indictment reversed, the victim made the guilty party.

Closing

This is a society built on the wrong foundations. We have placed the financing of what we want on the shoulders of those who give us the room to want anything at all. We have treated the people who work for us as an inexhaustible source. And then we have judged them for the exhaustion we caused.

This cannot go on indefinitely. It ends the way it ends in South Africa: in an impoverished, ageing, polarised country where the people who remain march in search of scapegoats. Where bread becomes more expensive, power cuts out, youth leaves and the elderly blame each other.

When that moment arrives in Europe — and it will, because the mathematics allows no other outcome — we will remember that we had every opportunity to do things differently. We consistently chose otherwise.

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 plunder. Then constrain. Then judge. And then, when everything is over, complain that someone else is to blame.

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

PART I OF FOUR