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.
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.
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