{"id":1532417,"date":"2024-03-04T06:58:33","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T06:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=314993"},"modified":"2024-03-04T06:58:33","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T06:58:33","slug":"can-brazil-convince-the-world-to-tax-billionaire-wealth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/03\/04\/can-brazil-convince-the-world-to-tax-billionaire-wealth\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Brazil Convince the World to Tax Billionaire Wealth?"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\"\"

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair<\/p><\/div>\n

Recent weeks have brought three more eye-popping glimpses of our world\u2019s unconscionable concentration of income and wealth . . .<\/p>\n

The fabled luxury automaker Lamborghini, for the first time ever, has sold<\/a> over 10,000 vehicles in a single year. Lamborghini\u2019s current 2024 Revuelto model starts<\/a> at $608,358 . . .<\/p>\n

Google co-founder Larry Page has just expanded his collection of private islands to five. His latest, a isle that sits between Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands, set<\/a>him back $32 million . . .<\/p>\n

The Austrian design firm Motion Code: Blue has released renderings of a new submersible superyacht that can stay underwater for up to four weeks at a time. The 541-foot-long Migaloo M5 also features<\/a> a built-in swimming pool, a helipad, and a $2-billion price-tag . . .<\/p>\n

Why are Austrian designers devoting their talents to fashioning $2-billion baubles for billionaires? Just one reason: Today\u2019s super rich are sitting on mountains of spendable billions.<\/p>\n

And what\u2019s raising those mountains of cash? Researchers at Oxfam have a compelling answer to offer in a just-released new analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe share of national income going to the top 1 percent of earners in G20 countries has increased by 45 percent over the last four decades,\u201d Oxfam notes. \u201cDuring the same period, the top tax rates on their incomes has fallen by roughly a third.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2022, Oxfam\u2019s researchers add, the top 1 percent of earners in G20 countries pocketed $18 trillion<\/em> in income.<\/p>\n

Oxfam released all these stats on the eve of this week\u2019s inaugural finance track meeting of G20 financial ministers and central bank chiefs. The \u201cG20\u201d actually includes 21 players, 19 of the world\u2019s most powerful nations, plus the European Union and this year, for the first time, the African Union.<\/p>\n

Brazil, the G20 chair for 2024, hosted this week\u2019s meeting in S\u00e3o Paulo \u2014 and Brazil\u2019s left-led government of Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva vigorously seized this hosting opportunity. His administration\u2019s ambitious goal? To shove the case for taxing the wealth of our world\u2019s wealthiest onto the world\u2019s political stage.<\/p>\n

No nation in the world, Brazilian finance minister Fernando Haddad told<\/a> the newspaper O Globo <\/em>earlier this week, may now have more credibility on taxing the rich than Brazil. Just last year, Lula da Silva signed into law landmark legislation that subjects the offshore investments of Brazil\u2019s rich to a 15 percent tax. And earlier this year, to prevent Brazil\u2019s rich from avoiding that new levy, the Brazilian government moved to limit<\/a> the cash the rich can stuff into their pension funds.<\/p>\n

The time has come, finance minister Haddad noted<\/a> in his welcoming address to this week\u2019s S\u00e3o Paulo gathering, for a \u201cnew globalization\u201d that addresses the twin threats of climate change and maldistributed wealth.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

\u201cWe have reached an unsustainable situation, Haddad went on to explain<\/a>, \u201cwhere the richest 1 percent own 43 percent of the world\u2019s financial assets and emit the same amount of carbon as the poorest two-thirds of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHyper-financialization,\u201d he added, has provided the world\u2019s richest \u201cwith increasingly elaborate forms of tax evasion.\u201d Nations have made some progress in battling that evasion over recent years, Haddad acknowledged, but \u201cwe must admit that we still need to make the world\u2019s billionaires pay their fair share in taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just what exactly does Brazil have in mind? Haddad has so far announced no specific details. But he has dropped some serious hints \u2014 by inviting<\/a> to the S\u00e3o Paulo summit one of the world\u2019s top advocates for taxing billionaire fortunes, the French economist Gabriel Zucman.<\/p>\n

Zucman and his team at the Paris-based EU Tax Observatory last year called<\/a> for an annual global minimum tax of 2 percent on the wealth of the world\u2019s wealthiest.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s audience of finance ministers and central bankers in S\u00e3o Paulo has given that proposal its most pivotal audience yet \u2014 and given Zucman some real hope that the world\u2019s super rich may actually end up facing a significant tax on their grand fortunes.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s driving that hope? Three years ago, negotiators from almost 140 nations actually agreed<\/a> to set a global 15-percent tax minimum on multinational corporate giants. Not all nations, to be sure, have ratified that global deal. Lawmakers in the United States, for instance, have not yet endorsed<\/a> the agreement, and the Biden administration has no immediate shot at winning Senate approval.<\/p>\n

But economists like Zucman are playing the long game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we have been able to achieve with multinational firms \u2014 putting a floor to their effective tax rates \u2014 we should do the same for super-rich people,\u201d he notes.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s hard to know,\u201d Zucman has just told<\/a> the Guardian<\/em>, if this is going to take \u201cone year, or five, or 10 or 20.\u201d<\/p>\n

The shorter, the better. The more we tolerate grand concentrations of private wealth, as Brazil\u2019s Haddad makes clear, the more intractable our environmental crisis becomes.<\/p>\n

We can no longer afford, sums up the Brazilian finance minister, to treat inequality as \u201ca mere corollary of economic policy.\u201d Inequality, as Haddad has told<\/a> his fellow finance chiefs, needs to become \u201ca fundamental concern of macroeconomic policies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The post Can Brazil Convince the World to Tax Billionaire Wealth?<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recent weeks have brought three more eye-popping glimpses of our world\u2019s unconscionable concentration of income and wealth . . . The fabled luxury automaker Lamborghini, for the first time ever, has sold over 10,000 vehicles in a single year. Lamborghini\u2019s current 2024 Revuelto model starts at $608,358 . . . Google co-founder Larry Page has More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Can Brazil Convince the World to Tax Billionaire Wealth?<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532417"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1532417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1532418,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1532417\/revisions\/1532418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1532417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1532417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1532417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}