0 · Pluck first, judge later

A wage is what someone earns with what they make. A profit is what remains after everyone has been paid. We have decided that this surplus must be skimmed off to finance the bottom and the middle. First we pluck those who feed us. Then we constrain them so they can no longer compete with China, America and India. Then we judge them when their factories close. The circle closes itself — and we, the majority, are the executors.

I · Diagnosis — we pluck those who feed us

Five per cent of the population carries fifty per cent of the wealth. In Germany, the DGB demands a wealth levy of ten per cent. France and Norway have introduced exit taxes. The House of Representatives voted on 12 February 2026, by 124 to 26, to pass a wealth tax on the super-rich. Brussels is working on a European minimum exit tax. At the same time, 16,500 millionaires have left the United Kingdom. The same pattern follows in Italy, Portugal, Spain. We are plucking the productive minority faster than it can leave.

II · Mechanics — the walls we have built

Box 3, wealth tax, exit taxes, gift regulations, succession rules. Each individually reasonable; together a trap from which a family business, an inventor, an entrepreneur finds it ever harder to escape. Italy opened a gap with the 24-bis flat tax (€200,000 per year, for life) and attracted 5,500 wealthy individuals in two years. Lugano and Ticino do the same. The walls we built to keep the productive inside turn out to be gates for those who want out — and prison walls for those who stay.

III · Outcome — South Africa as mirror

Between 2000 and 2020, 100,000 highly educated people left South Africa. The rand lost 75 per cent of its purchasing power. Eskom delivered 247 days of load shedding in a single year. Urban water became unreliable. And the plunderers — those who had demanded the policy of transfer — were left with a country that could no longer sustain them. The same mechanics are now at work in Europe. When the productive leave, it is not the productive who suffer. It is those who remain.

IV · The political landscape — no way out within the system

A European left flank that plunders with moral certainty. A centre-right that bends without knowing how to do otherwise. A populist right that points without building. A Brussels institution that produces documents but no products. Employers' organisations that protest technically but lose morally. The productive class has no political representation left in Europe. Statistically, politically, culturally, morally alone. The way out lies outside Europe. For those who stay, there is no way out.