It's Time to Tax the Rich

Open Letter

It's Time To Tax The Rich

Dear Heads of State,

We write to you as people with one message - we need wealth taxes.

The beginning of 2022 has brought us to a critical juncture. It has been repeated over the last two years that Covid-19 is an inequality virus. During the pandemic, at the same time that billionaire wealth is spiralling out of control, billions face a daily struggle to survive. Multiple crises have converged from vaccine inequality to unemployment, from our rights to protest to our underfunded public services, from climate change to a debt crisis. 

We know that it is our actions that will create the just, equal and sustainable societies we envisage. We also know that it requires deep system change. Nowhere is this reality starker than how the wealth of the richest has spiralled during the pandemic, whilst the majority of us have struggled to survive.

The solutions are known to us and to you. Wealth taxes on the richest in all our societies would raise trillions of dollars. This is money that we need to redistribute, to build societies and economies that work for ordinary people and leave us with a livable planet.

We also need to tax wealth because of the extreme concentration of power that the hoarding of wealth drives. It is corrupting our democracies, people’s trust in politics and our social contract. We can’t live in societies where the richest make the rules.

Any talk of ‘recovery’ from Covid-19 must include taxing the rich. People across the world - every country in it - are demanding the rich pay their fair share. History paints a bleak picture of what the endgame of extremely unequal societies looks like. We do not accept that fate. For all our well-being - rich and poor alike - it’s time to confront inequality and choose to tax the rich.