Wealth isn’t a zero-sum game in which the rich get richer only if others become poorer, but political power is zero-sum
Friends, This week brings us to one of the core problems of widening inequality — the inevitability that concentrated income and wealth at the top comes with political power. Wealth isn’t a zero-sum game in which the rich get richer only if others become poorer, but political power
difference between “pre-distribution” and “redistribution” of income and wealth
We now turn to policies where widening inequality is directly implicated. The first and most obvious (and most politically contentious) involves taxing higher-income people and redistributing to lower-income people. My goal today is to get students to reexamine their assumptions, both about how the system of taxing and redistributing actually works (or doesn’t) and about the practical consequences.
Friends, Today I examine the morally and politically complex question of who deserves public assistance. Just click below, and you’re in the class. I reach back into history — to the 14th century, as well as to the last 40 years in America — to see how this question has been answered differently over time. And contrast the dominant view since the Clinton administration with a remarkable experiment America conducted between July and December 2021.
It’s impossible to reform our economic system without altering the allocation of political power that prevents such reform
What we must do
movement... to unite the poor, working and middle class, people of color and white people — everyone who has barely had a raise in 30 years and who now feels cynical, powerless, and disenfranchised
starting in July 2021, 36 million American families began receiving pandemic payments of up to $3,000 per child ($3,600 for each child under six).The result? Child poverty dropped by at least a third, and the typical family gained some breathing space.This hugely successful experiment ended abruptly in December 2021 when Senator Joe Manchin joined 50 Republican senators in rejecting President Biden’s Build Back Better Act, which would have continued it.They cited concerns over the experiment’s cost — an estimated $100 billion per year, or $1.6 trillion over 10 years. But that’s less than big corporations and the rich will have saved on taxes from the Trump Republican tax cut of 2018. Repeal it, and there would be enough money. The cost is also less than the increase in the wealth of America’s 745 billionaires during the pandemic. Why not a wealth tax?The experiment died because, put simply, the oligarchy didn’t want to pay for it
Capitalism is consistent with democracy when democracy is in the driver’s seat — reducing the inequalities, insecurities, joblessness, and poverty that accompany unbridled profit-seeking
OECD does collect country by country financial information. But it’s only for the very largest multinationals. Their tax truths are hidden, because it’s published in an aggregated and anonymous way, and details are only accessible to tax authorities who jump through many, many hoops. Read: most African nations do not have access.Australia shook the corporate world to its core by deciding to introduce public country by country reporting legislation: one in five companies around the globe would have had their tax truths exposed, enabling tax authorities to pore over those PDFs that had been denied to them. But the Tax Justice Network says, “the OECD may have become an outright proponent of opacity and blocker of progress, lobbying Australia to keep multinational corporations’ profit shifting behaviour out of the public eye.” The Financial Times has confirmed the OECD pressured Australia to water down rules.
You’d be forgiven if you clicked on the corporate governance structure of a multinational company and mistook the download plans for a world tour itinerary. You may find yourself starting in London on your way to Lilongwe, with layovers in Amsterdam, Road Town and Dubai, wondering how much of Virunga National Park would need saving […]
After two weeks of silence, the OECD has addressed1 its role in delaying breakthrough tax transparency legislation in Australia, which was confirmed this weekend in frontpage news by the Financial Times.2 Reports of the OECD heavily lobbying against the legislation were first brought to light by CICTAR and the Tax Justice Network.3 A statement was […]
Half a year later, EU member states are split in their response to the European Court of Justice’s decision to suspend the clause that guaranteed public access to beneficial ownership registers in the EU. Our new analysis shows that the split in responses mirror countries positions on our Financial Secrecy Index, which ranks countries on how complicit they are in helping individuals to hide their finances from the rule of law.
The holy grail for tax administrations is arguably achieving a positive
The minority of countries who voted against yesterday’s resolution for more inclusive decision-making at the UN represent 15 per cent of the global population. Those who voted for the resolution represent 80 per cent..."These numbers cut to the heart of what happened at the UN vote. The world united to fight global tax abuse together, and the small circle of countries fuelling that tax abuse tried and failed to stop them
The minority of countries who voted against plans adopted at the UN yesterday for historic global tax reforms are responsible for three-quarters of all countries’ losses to tax havens, the Tax Justice Network reports. These countries – consisting mostly of OECD member countries who almost exclusively decided global tax rules for the rest of the […]
New analysis identifies alternatives that raise greater revenues and retain sovereignty Tax specialists from the BEPS Monitoring Group, a network of leading experts from around the world who track and evaluate the process begun in 2013 by the OECD to reform global tax rules, have published a new report on the OECD’s long-delayed package of […]
Nine policies to reprogramme our tax systems to work for everyone, not just the superrich.
"Isn't tax avoidance legal?""Has the OECD really failed - it's agreed a global minimum tax rate?""Can the UN succeed where the OECD hasn't?"These are...
Full damage done by UK dependencies Jersey, Gibraltar and Guernsey now shown We are issuing a correction to our recent State of Tax Justice 2023 report in light of a coding bug spotted by our team that had resulted in some data on 10 smaller jurisdictions being left out of the report’s total tally of […]
Lower income countries continue to be hit harder by global #taxabuse. Their tax losses ($46 billion) are equivalent to more than half (56%) of their...
Sir, At the Tax Justice Network, we believe our tax and financial systems are our most powerful tools for creating a just society that gives equal weight to the needs of everyone. As we celebrate our twentieth anniversary this year, we note the change of era reflected by Your Majesty’s coronation. We hope this can […]
A financial activities tax (FAT) – a tax on the sum of bank profits and bankers’ remuneration packages with the proceeds going into general government revenues.
The Robin Hood tax is a package of financial transaction taxes (FTT) proposed by a campaigning group of civil society non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Campaigners have suggested the tax could be implemented globally, regionally, or unilaterally by individual nations. Conceptually similar to the Tobin tax (which was proposed for foreign...
A Tobin tax was originally defined as a tax on all spot conversions of one currency into another. It was suggested by James Tobin, an economist who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Tobin's tax was originally intended to penalize short-term financial round-trip excursions into another currency. By the late 1990s, the term Tobin...
A financial transaction tax (FTT) is a levy on a specific type of financial transaction for a particular purpose. The tax has been most commonly associated with the financial sector for transactions involving intangible property rather than real property. It is not usually considered to include consumption taxes paid by consumers.[1] A transaction...
台灣的品牌廠大部分失敗於和消費者的溝通上
Public trust in government remains low, as it has for much of the 21st century. Only two-in-ten Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what is right “just about always” (2%) or “most of the time” (19%).
A median of 62% of adults across the 14 countries surveyed this summer generally believe most people can be trusted.
Trust is essential for community, wellbeing, and effective cooperation. How does trust vary between different societies and locations and what matters for levels of trust?
Morris Pearl, Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and former Managing Director at BlackRock, said: “In recent decades, wealth inequality has skyrocketed around the world. The growing gap between rich and poor has destabilised the global economy, exacerbated the rise of extremist politics, and frayed the very fabric of our social order. As an ultra-wealthy person, representing an organisation of like-minded wealthy people, I am asking the G20 to tax us
In an open letter to the G20, close to 300 millionaires, economists, and political representatives from almost all G20 countries call for a new international agreement on wealth taxes to “stop extreme wealth from corroding our collective future”.
the vested interests in maintaining the current system, including billionaires, the fossil fuel sector, big pharma, defense, and industrial agriculture will continue to fight to prevent the transformative changes needed. To overcome our societal addiction to the current system will require a broad consensus and movement of movements around the shared goal of sustainable wellbeing for humans and the rest of nature
13 August 2023 -
G20 Leaders must tax extreme wealth
time lags involved in building dynastic fortunes ... Inequality of income must precede growing inequality of wealth, since wealth is simply the cumulative excess of income over consumption.So, given the current era of highly unequal incomes and social immobility, we can expect inheritance to play a much bigger role in explaining inequality for the generations now entering adulthood. That will include direct transfers of wealth, mainly via inheritances, as well as the effects of increasingly unequal access to education, early job opportunities and home ownership
Are we creating a society Jane Austen might recognise?
馬英九的競選政見本來只說要將遺產稅免稅額及扣除額，提高到2600萬元，反而是謝長廷承諾要將免稅額提高到3000萬元，並將遺產稅最高邊際稅率由50% 降低到10%。但7月23日，工商協進會與劉兆玄早餐，要求將遺產稅先調降至20%，將來完全廢除。劉兆玄表示贊同
過去十幾年中華民國政府所推政策中最爛最爛的是哪個政策？我可以毫不猶豫地告訴你：就是在2008年將原本50%最高邊際稅率的遺產稅率，一舉降為10%。這個政策背後有太多太多的可疑之處
1：資本集中的必然趨勢[啟動LINE推播]每日重大新聞通知法國皮凱提（ThomasPiketty）教授的新書CapitalintheTwentyFirstCentury（我暫譯為《廿一世紀資本論》）獲得《紐約時報》極佳書評，而諾貝爾經濟學獎得主克魯曼甚至誇讚，此書是今年甚或最近十
intergenerational transfers, such as inheritances and inter vivos gifts, play a significant role in underpinning wealth inequality. When inheritances and gifts exceed a certain threshold, the opportunities to accumulate more wealth are greatly expanded
Wealth inequality can limit people’s ability to accumulate human capital, carry out business projects, or cope with major economic crises. Focusing on France, Spain, the UK, and the US, this column shows that intergenerational transfers, such as inheritances and inter vivos gifts, play a significant role in underpinning wealth inequality. When inheritances and gifts exceed a certain threshold, the opportunities to accumulate more wealth are greatly expanded.
