Well....this came up last night via the public forum show on Germany public TV network....ZDF. Maybrit Illner was interviewing the EU President....Ursula von der Leyen.
So von der Leyen brought up this idea that the EU was discussing.
In simple terms, if you were a European (not just German) energy company, the EU would monitor your situation, and if they felt you were too profitable....they would somehow (avoiding the word tax) take excess profit, and 'give' it to people with low incomes.
I sat there watching this discussion....thinking I must have misunderstood things. Today, as the language was laid out.....no, that was precisely what she suggested.
What'll happen here?
I would suggest that companies realizing how much they were going to be screwed with....would start to lessen production of energy on their own, and lessen the service/product....accepting less profit....to make a point about who the 'boss' is.
If you go back to California around two decades ago (the Western Company scandal)....this is the game that utility companies played, and lessen production. It shocked a lot of people.
How you would take excess profit and not call it a tax? That would a curious thing to have laid out to the general public.
Then it makes you wonder....whatever this non-tax gimmick is....couldn't you do the same thing to McDonalds, or some German beer company, or Volkswagen?
Then you wonder....who will assess the profit level, and could you bribe them to look the other way?
Then you also start to wonder....couldn't some company crank up various fake costs into the product/service....that simply hid what the real cost was?
This might be an interesting era to watch, and see just how much of a mess that regulations and non-taxation-taxation can be manipulated.
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