Heiress Marlene Engelhorn wants to give away millions and is applauded for it. That's naive. The mistake is in her perspective.

A little distant, the rich Photo: Pond5/imago

When Austrian heiress Marlene Engelhorn announced last week that she would redistribute much of her inheritance, there was great rejoicing in the naive left-liberal milieu. The descendant of BASF founder Friedrich Engelhorn wants to return 25 million euros to society through a committee called “Good advice for redistribution.”

Randomly selected committee members must discuss what happens to the money. According to Engelhorn, it should not be used for unconstitutional, anti-life, inhumane or for-profit purposes. Engelhorn stressed that she had no decision-making power over the distribution of her inheritance.

Engelhorn's announcement is causing a stir on social media. For political scientist and author Natascha Strobel, the campaign is a “ray of hope”founder of the “Inequality” platform, Martyna Linartas, feels “gratitude, hope, in some way also pride” whether it's the good news.

The left-wing media also joins the storm of enthusiasm. This is what the diary writes. North Dakota, one wishes for “such class traitors.” The Austrian default comments on her “famous appearance” and even draws parallels with Joan of Arc. Thus, to a French national heroine and warrior who was burned in the 15th century.

The following applies: money flows up

These reactions are an expression of the marginalization of leftist politics. On Monday, the humanitarian organization Oxfam published a study that explains these emotional outbursts. The wealth of the five richest men has more than doubled since 2020. The world's nearly 5 billion poorest people lost assets worth $20 billion over the same period. Engelhorn's initiative is applauded because it is very unlikely.

The development described by Oxfam, on the other hand, is the rule: money flows upwards, while the voluntary activism of the rich and super-rich must be looked at with a magnifying glass. Anyone who interprets Engelhorn's commitment to redistribution as the beginning of a turning point in which initiatives like taxmenow begin their demands for fairer taxation is mistaken.

The error already has its roots in Engelhorn's position: if the social left waits for the rich to formulate their own ideas about a just world, it is lost, because the rich formulate these ideas on their own terms.

Engelhorn described what the conditions are like. Her approach of addressing a cross-section of society for the redistribution council she herself initiated, rather than focusing from the start on the interests of the poor and excluded, smacks of liberal redistribution with a shower.

Fair distribution from the beginning.

A look at Taxmenow's demands shows: The redistribution ideas are well-intentioned, but they don't change much the main problem with left-liberal tax models: they demand higher taxes, after money was redistributed from the bottom up.

Furthermore, as Stephanie Keltorn, an economist and former advisor to US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, said in an interview with the Jacobean has said that “the problem is rather that the rich, in the first place, take more than their fair share.” If we really want to change these inequalities, progressive fiscal initiatives must be attacked. What workers earn should not go to the rich in such large amounts. But with such redistribution models one cannot expect support from the rich, because the rich do not eat themselves.