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This is not rocket science and the global majority, the 99%, have the answers and are already putting them into practice.
This year’s G20 Leaders Summit is taking place in Johannesburg, a short distance from Constitution Hill, a former prison complex that once held Nelson Mandela and other South African democracy fighters. As the world’s most powerful leaders meet behind closed doors, this former apartheid prison turned museum will publicly write another page in the history of global economic emancipation.
Movements, workers, activists, thinkers, creatives, artists, and communities from across South Africa, Africa, Asia, and Latin America are gathering for a three-day People’s Summit for Economic Justice — a counter to the G20 — to build the power of the 99 percent. The Constitution Hill’s Old Fort, Women’s Jail, and former men’s prison cells are hosting radical conversations, art, music, and action for the Global Majority to tell their own story, share struggles and solutions, and show that another world isn’t just possible — it’s already being built by communities writing their own future.
The G20 member countries account for over 85 percent of the global GDP. Over this forum’s two and half decades of existence, the G20 has failed to use its combined economic weight to steer global financial, trade, development, and fiscal policies to address global economic and environmental challenges. Instead, it has served the interest of the 1 percent: elites, corporations, and billionaires.
As a result, a handful of billionaires and super rich people globally have amassed far more wealth than they need, abusing the power they possess. They are wrecking democracies across the world as they make rules in their favor at the expense of the 99 percent and the planet.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed an “Extraordinary Committee” of independent experts that published the first-ever G20 global inequality report earlier this month. The report shows that the richest 1 percent has captured 41 percent of all new wealth since 2000, while the bottom half of humanity received just 1 percent. The report notes that one in four people globally now face food insecurity even as the wealth of billionaires reaches levels equivalent to up to 16 percent of global GDP. Those words will not mean much to those on the frontlines of inequality without action, without redistribution.
The International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other bodies have also acknowledged that extreme inequalities are thwarting the pace and sustainability of economic growth, eroding social cohesion and trust, and undermining democratic institutions and political stability that is fueling conflict and social unrest. However, they are still part of the problem, not the solution.
Enraged young people from Morocco to Madagascar, Kathmandu to Lima continue to lead street protests worldwide demanding accountability and challenging economic systems because they are not working for them. They are frustrated by poor service delivery, abuse of power concentrated in the hands of a few, unfulfilled promises, economic systems that continue to squeeze the little they earn, unemployment, unjust debt and climate breakdown.
They are drawing a red line against the failed systems and saying loud and clear, “Enough is enough.”
This is a time bomb and a bigger explosion threatens the planet and everyone on it, regardless how fat their bank account is. But we have solutions. This is not rocket science and the global majority, the 99%, have the answers and are already putting them into practice.
Wealth taxes are a progressive solution to address extreme inequalities — far better than the consumption taxes that many governments in the Global South are imposing on their people to service unjust debt and compensate for unpaid taxes by the super-rich. Taxing the super-rich can generate significant recurring revenue and restore public trust. Tax revenues from the super-rich are enough to fund essential services, such as education, healthcare, and social safety nets, which are key drivers of long-term inequality reduction.
Participants in the People’s Summit are also demanding that rich polluters pay for just transitions to clean energy. They are calling for redistributing health care to guarantee reproductive justice and bodily autonomy. And they are demanding protection of civic space and cultural rights by defending the freedom to speak, organize, and create.
The 2025 G20 Leaders Summit taking place not far from the We the 99 Peoples Summit has an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past by listening to the global majority that are gathered at Constitution Hill. Global leaders, including the G20, must stop turning for solutions to the same elites who created and continue to fuel the inequality crisis. Instead, they need to listen to the voices of the 99% – the people who have endured inequality and survived against all odds.
The 99% hold the answers. And the answer is clear: replace the system built by the 1% with a system designed for and by the 99%.
World leaders heading to the G20 summit should use this rare multilateral space to advance a more equitable and sustainable global economy. Will they?
Multilateralism is in tatters. Instead of rules-based, consensus agreements, global economic relations have largely devolved into one-on-one arm-twisting and name-calling, alternating with fawning sycophancy and lavish personal gifts. In recent negotiations with Asian leaders, President Trump scored a gold golf ball, a gold crown, and a gold-flecked dessert.
In a world already divided by extreme inequalities, the collapse of multilateralism makes it even more likely that the most powerful players — the largest economies and the wealthiest corporations and individuals — will score the best deals. Small countries and ordinary people, from Iowa soybean farmers and Mexican factory workers to digital service consumers in Cambodia, are even more likely to get the shaft.
The G20 is a space that was intended to catalyze multilateral action. In fact, it touts itself as the “the premier forum for international economic cooperation,” and it is the one place where leaders of the world’s largest economies sit down together at least once a year for face-to-face dialogue.
South Africa will host this year’s G20 summit from November 22 to 23, and the United States will host the next one in December 2026. Do we have any reason to think this forum holds potential for not only restoring multilateralism but also advancing a more equitable global economy?
This is a question I’ve grappled with over the past several months as part of a team of analysts from the UK, Brazil, South Africa, and other countries. In our new joint report, The G20 at a Crossroads, we document a few examples of decisive actions this body has taken during its nearly two decades of existence.
In the midst of the financial crisis that erupted in 2008, for instance, labor unions and others successfully lobbied G20 leaders to adopt coordinated stimulus measures that helped avoid a depression-level global collapse.
In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the G20 approved of at least some debt relief for low-income countries and authorized $650 billion in financial aid in the form of “special drawing rights,” the largest-ever allocation of this IMF-created international reserve asset.
These actions were far from perfect. Governments prematurely aborted the stimulus programs they adopted after the 2008 crash in favor of austerity budgets that deepened and prolonged economic crises.
Pandemic support programs were woefully insufficient for the poorest countries and failed to prevent many of them from sinking even further into debt. Between 2019 and 2023, Sub-Saharan Africa’s total external debts increased from $747 billion to $864 billion while the number of global billionaires grew from 2,153 to 2,640. Overall, 3.4 billion of the world’s people live in countries that spent more money in the years 2021-2023 servicing their foreign debts than on public education or health.
What can we learn from these examples? G20 leaders obviously have the power to mobilize vast resources, but the few times they’ve used this power, the focus has largely been on containing market crises to protect the interests of the wealthiest creditors and investors rather than improving the lives of the most vulnerable.
And so while we need to push for renewed multilateralism, we cannot be satisfied with a return to old models. We need new approaches that go beyond crisis management to build a more resilient, sustainable, and just global economy for the long term.
To achieve this, the G20 must tackle what we describe in our report as the “lived crises of our time” — the daily realities of extreme droughts, food insecurity, unaffordable housing, precarious work, debt traps, and forced displacement.
Decades of neglecting these threats to global stability has undercut the welfare of people in both the Global North and South. High levels of poverty and unemployment in the developing world, for example, weaken the bargaining power of U.S. workers who are competing in a global labor pool.
Climate change, obviously, knows no boundaries. And skyrocketing inequality is fueling political polarization, authoritarianism, and xenophobia around the world, as elites deflect blame onto migrants and other convenient scapegoats instead of confronting structural failures.
Last year, the Brazilian presidency took important steps towards broadening the G20 agenda. Through diplomacy, sustained civil society engagement, and collaboration with innovative academics, they elevated critical proposals for clean energy financing, taxing extreme wealth, and valuing care work. And while they did not secure G20-wide cooperation on these fronts, their efforts gave a boost to campaigns in numerous countries for increasing taxes on billionaires and ensuring decent pay for caregivers and affordable care for those who need it.
“Wherever we live, we all want the same things — a secure place to live, a healthy environment, the ability to care for our loved ones, and the chance to plan for our future,” notes our lead report author, Fernanda Balata, of the New Economics Foundation.
With political will and a commitment to cooperation, G20 leaders have the power to deliver these basic elements of a dignified life to billions of people.
"Clear and proven steps can be taken to reduce it and build more equal societies and economies," wrote economists and other experts, "which are the fundamental foundation stone of a successful future for us all."
Emphasizing that economic inequality is "a policy choice," more than 500 economists and other experts on the global wealth gap are endorsing a call made earlier this month in the first-ever G20 report on inequality: The "inequality emergency" must be confronted by new international body inspired by the United Nations' panel on climate change.
The creation of an International Panel on Inequality (IPI) was a central recommendation of the landmark report set to be presented next week at the G20 Leaders Summit in Johannesburg, and renowned economists including 2024 Nobel economics laureate Daron Acemoglum, Thomas Piketty, Isabella Weber, Ha-Joon Chang, and Jason Hickel were among those who signed a letter Thursday urging the creation of the committee.
The inclusion of economists, climate scientists, epidemiologists, historians, and experts from a range of other disciplines "reflects a key fact," said the signatories. "High levels of economic inequality have a negative impact on every aspect of human life and progress, including our economies, our democracies, and the very survival of the planet."
"Just as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has played a vital role in providing neutral, science-based, and objective assessments of climate change, a new International Panel on Inequality would do the same for the inequality emergency," reads the letter, which was also signed by global economic leaders including former US Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and former World Bank top economists and leaders.
Since its inception nearly four decades ago, the IPCC has provided governments with the most up-to-date scientific information about planetary heating and its impacts. Its assessments have informed the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which subjected wealthy countries to emissions targets for the first time; and the 2015 Paris Agreement, which has required countries to develop and implement plans to draw down planet-heating emissions.
An IPI, said the experts on Thursday, "would provide policymakers the best, most objective assessments on the scale of inequality, its causes and consequences, and consider potential solutions."
"We believe this is in the interests of policymakers from across the political spectrum, who see the importance of this issue and the need to base responses to it on data and evidence and sound analysis," reads the letter. "We know that scholars and experts across the world would readily contribute their time voluntarily—as thousands do for the IPCC—in support of such a necessary and vital international initiative. We are ready to assist in this process."
The letter followed the release of the G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Inequality's landmark report, which was presented to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa earlier this month ahead of the G20 Leaders Summit.
The Extraordinary Committee, which is led by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and also includes inequality experts such as Winnie Byanyima of Uganda and Jayati Ghosh of India, warned that in the last quarter-century, the wealthiest 1% of people around the globe have captured more than 40% of all new wealth—$1.3 million on average—while the bottom 50% has seen its wealth grow by just 1%, or about $585, in constant US dollars.
One in four people around the globe—roughly 2.3 billion people—face moderate or severe food insecurity, meaning they regularly skip meals. The report found that the problem is getting significantly worse, with the number of food-insecure people rising by 335 million since 2019.
The report found that 80% of all countries—accounting for roughly 90% of the global population—have high levels of income inequality, making them seven times more likely than more equal countries to experience democratic decline.
“We are at a dangerous moment in human history," said Piketty, co-director of the World Inequality Lab and World Inequality Database. "Rampant inequality is dividing nations and communities, threatening our social fabric, human rights, and the very essence of democracy. A global effort to tackle inequality is needed—and rigorous analysis of its causes, drivers, and solutions is the first step."
"Governments need to live up to the G20 Summit’s promise of ‘solidarity, equality, sustainability’ and urgently establish an International Panel on Inequality," he added.
Countries with low levels of inequality included Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland—places that also consistently rank high on global reports on happiness and that were found to have low levels of "health, social, and environmental problems," according to the report.
The countries with low levels of inequality have "generous universal transfers and social insurance, supplemented by targeted assistance," the report says.
“High inequality is the result of decades of a failed economics that has primarily benefited the richest in our societies," said Chang, research professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at University of London. "Not only is there a lot of evidence showing that higher inequality produces more negative economic and social outcomes, there are quite a few examples of more egalitarian societies growing much faster than comparable but more unequal societies.”
The signatories of the letter emphasized that inequality "is not inevitable."
"Clear and proven steps can be taken to reduce it and build more equal societies and economies," they wrote, "which are the fundamental foundation stone of a successful future for us all."