IMF Calls For Global Wealth Redistribution To Avert Societal Breakdown
The IMF says it's time for the world to pivot in the direction of more redistributive policies.
In a post dated Thursday, the Fund's David Amaglobeli, Vitor Gaspar and Paolo Mauro delivered what could fairly be characterized as a somewhat stark warning, although they presented it as an opportunity for governments to seize the moment.
The pandemic, they said, "is intensifying the vicious circle of inequality," which they called a "pre-existing condition." You could also call it a comorbidity.
Fortunes are made on the backs of the hard working poor. If they’re too poor to work at their highest potential, which is about where we’re headed, then the fortunes cannot be made.
A global tax on wealth to help out the poor and needy.
Sounds like the Zakat I pay annually.
Maybe these guys were onto something some more than 1400 years ago.
Niccolo Machiavelli in “The Discourses” – “few men ever welcome new laws setting up a new order in the state unless necessity makes it clear to them that there is need for such laws; and since such a necessity cannot arise without danger, the state may easily be ruined before the new order has been brought to completion. The republic of Florence bears this out…”
I’d add that bread and circuses from “benevolent” authoritarians or ruling classes will not cut it in the long run. The real question is about the health of democratic institutions around the world, and if and where they are actually capable of renewal.
“The IMF says it’s time for the world to pivot in the direction of more redistributive policies.”
To quote the closing line from the Chronicles of Riddick (movie): “… what would be the odds of that?” About the same as the world getting together to fix global warming. How could one live in Rio, Mexico City, Delhi, Mumbai, etc., and not see the abject poverty and wonder how long it will be before the majority finally decide enough is enough and go for their share? It will happen and it will be like a pandemic that never ends.
H
BTW, thanks for the IMF paper link.
If history is any guide, it doesn’t happen, certainly not very often. Most of humanity is inherently conservative and prone to “just world hypothesis” ie you get what you (more or less) deserve.
It means many poor feel their poverty is inherently fair. Unpleasant, for sure, but not necessarily something to address systematically.
Fascism or higher tax rates, it’ll be interesting to see what our ruling classes choose…