Marlene Engelhorn says that when she inherited her grandmother’s multimillion-dollar fortune in 2022, she “wanted to be happy about it.”
“And I couldn’t be,” the Austrian heiress told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. “I was angry instead … because I knew it was really unfair, and there was no reason for me to get this that I could really justify.”
Engelhorn has long campaigned for greater taxes on the wealthy in Austria, including an inheritance tax. But since the government won’t redistribute her wealth for her, she says she’s asking the people do it.
Engelhorn is giving €25 million ($36.5 million Cdn) — which she says is the vast majority of her inheritance — to a committee of Austrian residents tasked with using it to fight wealth inequality.
“I am only wealthy because I was born in a rich family. And I think in a democratic society of the 21st century, birth should not be the one thing that determines whether or not you’re gonna get to lead a very good life,” Engelhorn said.
It’s money Engelhorn says she doesn’t deserve.
“Knowing that so many people really worked their frickin’ asses off and never will see a fraction of this sum … I knew that if all of my thoughts about social justice and distributional justice were worth anything, then I would have to put my thinking into action,” she said.
We will spare her when we eat the rich.
She’s invited to the feast, even. As a dinner guest, not a course, I mean.
Place of honour, and she also gets to choose whichever cut of billionaire meat she wants.
We found her. We found the good multimillionaire.
Well, not for long. Soon she’ll just be another good broke person.
Well, she says 25 million Euros is the “vast majority” of her inheritance. She might have 2-3 million left, leaving her technically still a multimillionaire.
Hopefully she can remain as principled as she is now and use it as a platform for change. Still though, better than pretty much any I’ve ever heard.
She is the one
There can only be one
Class traitors are necessary to bring about a state of communism.
This type of behaviour should be encouraged.
Class traitors are neccesary to keep capitalism working.
I like how you people that has access to internet and lives in countries that nourishes themself from the rest of the world think of yourself as part of the base of society. When the bells start ringing we are the second in line to be purged.
Good Girl Millionaire
She sounds like she has some good ethics. Good on her.
Not to flog a zombie’s salt on its tail, or two in the bush, but may I just say;
“This is the way”.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
And I think in a democratic society of the 21st century, birth should not be the one thing that determines whether or not you’re gonna get to lead a very good life," Engelhorn said.
Christoph Hofinger, Foresight’s managing director, says they’ve sent letters to 10,000 Austrian residents over the age of 16, randomly selected from the country’s population register, inviting them to join what they’re calling the Guter Rat, or Good Council.
“We expect a few hundred returns or, due to the wide coverage of Guter Rat, perhaps even more than a thousand,” Hofinger said in an email.
He says the Foresight Institute will whittle down the registrees to a group of 50 people who are representative of the country’s demographics, including gender, age and income.
Her family also owned the pharmaceutical and medical diagnostic equipment company Boehringer Mannheim, which they sold for $11 billion US in 1997, according to the New York Times.
Until now, she’s primarily spent her time doing advocacy work with groups like Millionaires for Humanity and Tax Me Now.
The original article contains 723 words, the summary contains 173 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Personally, I think it’s more effective to set up a business that competes on price.
Good point. Give a man a free meal, he eats for a day.
Seed fund an industrial unit churning out basic healthy meals and employ an UberEats-type workforce of homeless/disadvantaged people to distribute the meals, all under a non-profit banner, and hundreds of the poorest of society can eat for $2-5 a day.
