The loudest calls for taxing the ultra-rich amid this year’s Davos summit aren’t coming from hooded anarchists or revolutionary socialists, but from the one-percenters themselves.
We’re not joking. While some of the richest individuals in history flock to the World Economic Forum summit, hundreds of their peers penned a letter calling on global leaders to address rising wealth inequality.
“The richest 1 percent now own more than 95 percent of the world’s population put together,” the letter declared. “Millionaires like us refuse to be silent. It is time to be counted. Tax us and make sure the next fifty years meet the promise of progress for everyone.”
The letter has some 400 signatories representing 24 countries so far, according to Fortune. They include Disney heirs Abby and Tim Disney, actors including Mark Ruffalo, and real estate moguls like Jeffrey Gural.
“Tax us. Tax the super rich,” the letter demands. “As millionaires who stand shoulder to shoulder with all people, we demand it. And as our elected representatives — whether it’s those of you at Davos, local councilors, city mayors, or regional leaders — it’s your duty to deliver it.”
Indeed, economic inequality isn’t simply a matter of frustration over income. As philosopher and ethics chair of institutions at Utrecht University Ingrid Robeyns explains in a column penned in the Guardian, “it is about who gets what share of what we produce together.”
“In recent decades the divide has widened, making capital owners even richer and workers even poorer,” Robeyns wrote.
That ever-widening gap between rich and poor has produced cascading crises: climate change accelerated by oil cartels, mass hunger despite an overabundance of food, preventable deaths while pharmaceutical giants hoard patents, deteriorating public schools stripped by private equity, and housing treated as a financial asset instead of shelter.
“As long as we dodge the question of whether neoliberal capitalism delivers what we want, and fail to take seriously the question of whether there are better systems, the world’s key problems cannot be properly understood, let alone solved,” Robeyns explains.
On a global scale, in other words, these millionaires and billionaires are essentially asking governments to solve a problem they’ve created. Their fortunes exist thanks to decades of wage suppression, privatization, and unequal exchange.
Waiting for the ultra-wealthy to voluntarily fund the common good isn’t a viable strategy. As history shows, lasting progress comes from organized power that gives working people real control over economic decisions. Still, it’s as good a place as any to start the conversation, and it’s nice to see a handful of the ultra-rich demand that they — and their less justice-conscious peers — be forced to pay their fair share.
More on the ultra rich: Tech Billionaires Are Starting Private Cities to Escape the United States