tax the rich

Morning Star Editorial: ‘Fixing the foundations of the economy’ must address the structure of ownership and wealth

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Image of cash and pre-payment meter key
Image of cash and pre-payment meter key

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/fixing-foundations-economy-must-address-structure-ownership-and-wealth

AFTER months in which Labour argued that such is the dire state of the economy that Tory spending limits must be maintained, the Chancellor of the Exchequer now says that further cuts in public expenditure are needed.

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The question raised by any talk about varying the structure of taxation is where taxes fall. The richest 10 per cent of families hold 43 per cent of all wealth. The bottom 50 per cent — and be sure that this includes the greater proportion of people who see themselves as working class — possess less than 10 per cent of wealth.

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When the overwhelming majority of voters, including Tory voters, see public ownership of rail, mail, water and energy as desirable this is not simply a yearning for the more efficient delivery of these services and utilities than private ownership is able to provide. More, it is an expression of a clear understanding that revenues from these myriad transactions should not be privately appropriated but applied to the common good.

The present Labour administration has, with rare exceptions, ruled out the recovery into public ownership of privatised sectors and, less performatively than Gordon Brown in his day but no less systematically, has assured the corporate world that not only are the foundations of private ownership safe but that Labour, even more than its Tory predecessors, holds appeasing the bond markets a central part of its economic strategy. Hence the cuts announced today.

Reeves’s dilemma is highlighted by the necessity to find £1 billion to fund the juniors doctors’ pay increase; something similar for the teachers and a backlog of other public-sector pay claims.

Under this system spending is always about priorities. But there is money about. She is already committed by Starmer’s diktat to find £57.1bn in defence spending in 2024-25 which is a 4.5 per cent increase in real terms. No cuts there!

A bigger source of revenue would result from taxing wealth at the same level as income by raising the capital gains and dividend tax rates to the level at which workers pay on their wages.

An even bigger windfall would result from a socialist economy in which all rents, interest and profits arising from human economic activity were held in common rather than being privately acquired.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/fixing-foundations-economy-must-address-structure-ownership-and-wealth

Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: ‘Fixing the foundations of the economy’ must address the structure of ownership and wealth

‘Disgusting’: Global 1% Captured $42 Trillion in New Wealth Over Past Decade

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Demonstrators demand higher taxes on the rich in Paris, France on June 23, 2024.  (Photo: Laure Boyer/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)

“The richest 1% of humanity continues to fill their pockets while the rest are left to scrap for crumbs.”

The richest sliver of the global population hauled in more than $40 trillion in new wealth over the past decade as countries around the world cut taxes for those at the very top, supercharging inequality that poses a dire threat to democracy and the planet.

An Oxfam analysis released Thursday ahead of a meeting of G20 finance ministers estimated that over the past 10 years, the global 1% has accumulated $42 trillion in new wealth. That’s “nearly 34 times more than the entire bottom 50% of the world’s population,” the group observed.

“That is disgusting,” Michael Taylor, founder of the Australian Independent Media Network, wrote in response to the new figures.

The analysis comes amid a growing push by current and former world leaders for rich countries to enact a global tax on billionaire wealth that would begin to reverse the damage done by decades of regressive policy. Oxfam found in a separate analysis released earlier this year that economic and political elites’ global “war on fair taxation” has slashed taxes for the rich by 32% since 1980.

Oxfam said Thursday that global billionaires “have been paying a tax rate equivalent to less than 0.5% of their wealth.”

“Inequality has reached obscene levels, and until now governments have failed to protect people and planet from its catastrophic effects,” Max Lawson, Oxfam’s head of inequality policy, said in a statement Thursday. “The richest 1% of humanity continues to fill their pockets while the rest are left to scrap for crumbs.”

“Momentum to increase taxes on the super-rich is undeniable, and this week is the first real litmus test for G20 governments,” Lawson added. “Do they have the political will to strike a global standard that puts the needs of the many before the greed of an elite few?”

A recent report by renowned economist Gabriel Zucman of the University of California, Berkeley outlined how nations could go about implementing a 2% minimum tax on the wealth of global billionaires—a policy change that he shows would raise up to $250 billion in annual revenue that could be used to support a range of priorities, from climate investments to education and healthcare programs.

“Thanks to recent progress in international tax cooperation, a common taxation standard for billionaires has become technically possible,” said Zucman. “Implementing it is a question of political will.”

The economist’s report was commissioned by the government of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has championed a global billionaire tax in the face of resistance from powerful nations, including the United States—which has more billionaires than any other country. In 2018, U.S. billionaires paid a lower effective tax rate than working-class Americans.

But reporting indicates that the leaders of G20 nations—which are home to roughly 80% of the world’s billionaires—are likely to rebuff Lula’s push for billionaire wealth tax, opting instead to pursue what Bloombergdescribed as “research on taxation and inequality that could take years to deliver results.”

Reuters similarly reported Wednesday that G20 finance ministers meeting in Brazil “are preparing a joint statement for Thursday in support of progressive taxation that will stop short of endorsing the hosts’ proposal for a global ‘billionaire tax.'”

The global billionaire wealth surge comes in the context of growing misery for large swaths of the world’s population. A report released Wednesday by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that one out of 11 people around the world—or up to 757 million people—”may have faced hunger” last year.

“The world’s poorest people are paying the highest price of hunger,” Eric Munoz, Oxfam’s food policy expert, said in response to the FAO report. “We need deeper, structural policy and social change to address all of the drivers of hunger, including economic injustice, climate change, and conflict.”

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading‘Disgusting’: Global 1% Captured $42 Trillion in New Wealth Over Past Decade

George Monbiot: Labour can end austerity at a stroke – by taxing the rich and taxing them hard

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/14/labour-end-austerity-tax-rich-uk-economic-growth

 Illustration: Kingsley Nebechi/The Guardian

The focus on growth to ease the UK’s economic ills will not be nearly enough, but there is a way to raise the sums needed

Never let your opponents define the terms of a debate. All too often, Labour has allowed the Conservatives and the billionaire press to demonise the notion of “tax and spend”. It went to great lengths before the election to assure voters it had no such intention. Now it drives home the message: instead, our needs will be met by “growth, growth, growth”. But tax and spend is the foundation of a civilised society.

Few of the changes this country requires can be achieved while adhering to the “tough spending rules” the new government has imposed on itself. We urgently need massive public investment in the NHS, social care, schools, environmental protection, social housing, local authorities, water, railways, the justice system and virtually all functions of government. We need a genuine levelling up, across regions and across classes. The austerity inflicted on us by the Conservatives was unnecessary and self-defeating and Labour has no good reason to sustain it.

The new government insists it is ending austerity. It isn’t. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) pointed out in June, Labour’s plans mean that public services are “likely to be seriously squeezed, facing real-terms cuts”. Similarly, the Resolution Foundation has warned that, with current spending projections, the government will need to make £19bn of annual cuts by 2028-29. However you dress it up, this is austerity.

We are constantly told: “There’s no money.” But there is plenty of money. It’s just not in the hands of the government. The wealth of billionaires in the UK has risen by 1,000% since 1990. The richest 1% possess more wealth than the poorest 70%. Why do they have so much? Because the state does not; they have not been sufficiently taxed.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/14/labour-end-austerity-tax-rich-uk-economic-growth

Continue ReadingGeorge Monbiot: Labour can end austerity at a stroke – by taxing the rich and taxing them hard

Green Party manifesto pledges to nationalise water, railways and energy companies

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https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2024/06/12/election-2024-green-party-manifesto-pledges-to-nationalise-water-railways-and-energy-companies/

The Green Party has unveiled its election manifesto, sold as a plan to “mend broken Britain”.

Addressing the Greens’ launch event in Brighton and Hove, co-leader Carla Denyer said the manifesto contained measures to “offer real hope and real change”.

“Our manifesto is based on investing to mend broken Britain and offer real hope and real change”, she said, adding: “We can’t go on with an economy where  most people are working harder and yet getting poorer while inequality keeps growing.”

The Greens’ policies include introducing a new wealth tax of 1 per cent annually on assets above £10 million and 2 per cent on those above £2 billion, banning domestic flights for journeys which would take less than three hours by train, and moving to a four-day working week.

The party would also bring water companies, railways, and big five retail energy companies into public ownership; end immigration detention for all migrants unless they pose a danger to public safety; invest £50 billion in health and social care “to defend and restore the NHS”; scrap university tuition fees and increase the schools budget; and stop all new fossil fuel projects and cancel those recently licensed, like Rosebank in Scotland.

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https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2024/06/12/election-2024-green-party-manifesto-pledges-to-nationalise-water-railways-and-energy-companies/

Continue ReadingGreen Party manifesto pledges to nationalise water, railways and energy companies

Boost NHS salaries, guarantee access to NHS dentists, and give free personal care say Greens

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  • Green Party previews manifesto with extra spending on health and social care rising to over £50bn per year by 2030 
  • This sits alongside an additional £20bn capital investment to bring crumbling hospitals, primary care buildings and outdated equipment up to modern standards 
  • Greens will increase NHS frontline workers’ salaries including doctors, dentists and nurses 
  • “Cast-iron Green guarantee” promise that Green MPs will fight privatisation of the NHS 
Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.
Green Party Co-leader Adrian Ramsay. Wikipedia CC.

Green Party Co-Leader, Adrian Ramsay and the party’s Health and Social Care Spokesperson, Dr Pallavi Devulapalli, today announced a “game-changing” package for the NHS and social care totally £50 billion a year in investment by 2030 and an additional £20 billion in capital investment to improve crumbling buildings.

Ramsay said “Today’s announcement represents a game changing package that is more than any other political party is offering. It has been fully costed and could be fully delivered.”

Mr Ramsay, who described his personal experience in recent months supporting a family member both through hospitals and then into the care system, said that “many people” could see that the NHS was “stretched to breaking point” despite the “commitment of hard-working NHS staff”.

The Greens used the announcement to reveal a package of spending pledges alongside a “Green cast iron guarantee” that Green MPs would fight the privatisation of the NHS at every stage. The announcement included a commitment to :

  • Invest £20bn in a capital investment to bring our crumbling hospitals and old equipment up to standard.   
  • Invest £50 billion per year by 2030 into health and social care – more than any other major party – and would use the money to: 
  • Dramatically reduce waiting lists 
  • Offer everyone access to an NHS dentist 
  • Guarantee rapid access to a GP when there is urgent need and dramatically reduce waiting times for all
  • Ensure people needing mental health support can access relevant therapies within 28 days
  • Invest £5bn per year to boost NHS salaries and keep our wonderful nurses and doctors in the UK  
  • Invest £20 billion per year into adult social care to ensure dignity for those in need of care and take pressure off the NHS – including introducing free personal care.
  • Restore public health budgets with £1.5bn uplift in spending .

The large spending commitments they say is part of a fully costed manifesto due to be released on the 12th June in Brighton that includes commitments to “tax wealth fairly” by introducing a wealth tax of 1% on assets over £10 million and 2% over £1 billion.

Continue ReadingBoost NHS salaries, guarantee access to NHS dentists, and give free personal care say Greens