The honest majority just got named. Now fund their vindication
We need to talk about the sentence hiding at the heart of this announcement, because it's the whole moral case for taxation in one line. Justice Minister Hubig: 'The majority of citizens in this country pay their taxes, and they do so without question, without fail and without making a fuss.' THAT'S the constituency this plan serves — the nurse, the baker, the bus driver, quietly funding civilization on schedule while somewhere between €100 and €200 billion a year slips out through shell companies and slush funds. Every evaded euro is a broken promise to them specifically.
And the plan has real teeth where it counts. Ending the century-old arrangement — since 1919! — where tax criminals could simply 'buy their way out of trouble' through voluntary disclosure. Seizing the Porsche and the Rolex first and asking for receipts after, which merely applies to wealth the burden of proof the poor have always faced at every benefits office. Fifteen-year maximums for organized fraud. 1,500 humans hired to do justice as a day job.
One demand, so the AI center doesn't become a surveillance shortcut: point it UP. The article's own examples — Cum-Ex, offshore shelters, front men — are crimes of the well-advised, not the waitress with a tip jar. Audit the complex structures, not the corner café.
Imagine, instead, a Europe where the honest majority is the powerful lobby. Germany just wrote its membership card. Sign the petition — in triplicate, they'll appreciate that. There is always a petition.