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inequality
2% Wealth Tax on Just 3,000 Billionaires Could Raise $250 Billion a Year: Nobel Economists
"Not only is it necessary to impose a stronger burden of justice on billionaires, but more importantly, it is possible."
Jul 07, 2025
Seven Nobel laureates on Monday published an op-ed advocating for "a minimum tax for the ultrarich, expressed as a percentage of their wealth," in the French newspaper Le Monde.
"They have never been so wealthy and yet contribute very little to the public coffers: From Bernard Arnault to Elon Musk, billionaires have significantly lower tax rates than the average taxpayer," wrote Daron Acemoglu, George Akerlof, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Simon Johnson, Paul Krugman, and Joseph Stiglitz.
Citing pioneering research from the E.U. Tax Observatory, the renowned economists noted that "ultrawealthy individuals pay around 0% to 0.6% of their wealth in income tax. In a country like the United States, their effective tax rate is around 0.6%, while in a country like France, it is closer to 0.1%."
Although the "ultrawealthy can easily structure their wealth to avoid income tax, which is supposed to be the cornerstone of tax justice," the strategies for doing so differ by region, the experts detailed. Europeans often use family holding companies that are banned in the United States, "which explains why the wealthy are more heavily taxed there than in Europe—though some have still managed to find workarounds."
The good news is that "there is no inevitability here. Not only is it necessary to impose a stronger burden of justice on billionaires, but more importantly, it is possible," argued the economists, who say that taxing the overall wealth of the ultrarich, not just income, is the key.
The wealth tax approach, they wrote, "is effective because it targets all forms of tax optimization, whatever their nature. It is targeted, as it applies only to the wealthiest taxpayers, and only to those among them who engage in tax avoidance."
💡 "One of the most promising avenues is to introduce a minimum tax for the ultra-rich, expressed as a percentage of their wealth."Seven Nobel laureates in economics advocate for the Zucman tax in their latest op-ed.Read the full @lemonde.fr article 👇www.lemonde.fr/idees/articl...
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— EU Tax Observatory (@taxobservatory.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 8:05 AM
The anticipated impact would be significant. As the op-ed highlights: "Globally, a 2% minimum tax on billionaire wealth would generate about $250 billion in tax revenue—from just 3,000 individuals. In Europe, around $50 billion could be raised. And by extending this minimum rate to individuals with wealth over $100 million, these sums would increase significantly."
That's according to a June 2024 report that French economist and E.U. Tax Observatory director Gabriel Zucman prepared for the Group of 20's Brazilian presidency—which was followed by G20 leaders' November commitment to taxing the rich and last month's related proposal from the governments of Brazil, South Africa, and Spain.
"The international movement is underway," the economists declared Monday, also pointing to recent developments on the "Zucman tax" in France. The French National Assembly voted in favor of a 2% minimum tax on wealth exceeding €100 million, or $117 million, in February—but the Senate rejected the measure last month.
The economists urged the European country to keep working at it, writing that "at a time of ballooning public deficits and exploding extreme wealth, the French government must seize the initiative approved by the National Assembly. There is no reason to wait for an international agreement to be finalized—on the contrary, France should lead by example, as it has done in the past," when it was the first country to introduce a value-added tax (VAT).
"As for the risk of tax exile, the bill passed by the National Assembly provides that taxpayers would remain subject to the minimum tax for five years after leaving the country," they wrote. "The government could go further and propose extending this period to 10 years, which would likely reduce the risk of expatriation even more."
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'Indefensible': Trump Budget Law Subsidizes Private Jet Owners While Taking Healthcare From Millions
A provision of the budget law that President Donald Trump signed last week will leave taxpayers to "pick up the tab for the private jet industry and billionaire high flyers."
Jul 07, 2025
The Republican budget measure that U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law late last week contains a provision that analysts say will allow private jet owners to write off the full cost of their aircraft in the first year of purchase, a boon to the ultra-rich that comes as millions of people are set to lose healthcare under the same legislation.
FlyUSA, a private aviation provider, gushed in a blog post that with final passage of the unpopular budget reconciliation package, "business jet ownership has never looked more fiscally attractive or more fun to explain to your accountant."
The law, crafted by congressional Republicans and approved with only GOP support, permanently restores a major corporate tax break known as 100% bonus depreciation, which allows businesses to deduct the costs of certain assets in the first year of purchase rather than writing them off over time.
Forbes noted that the bonus depreciation policy "applies to a slew of qualified, physical business expenses which depreciate over time, such as machinery and company cars, but the policy is often associated with big-ticket luxury items, such as private aircraft, and its institution last decade led to a boom in jet sales."
"Trump and congressional Republicans have certainly delivered for the billionaire class."
Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies, called bonus depreciation "a massive tax break for billionaires and centi-millionaires that use the most polluting form of transportation on the planet."
"A corporation purchasing a $50 million private jet could potentially deduct the entire $50 million from their taxes in the year of the purchase, rather than spreading the deduction over many years," Collins wrote. "This amounts to a massive taxpayer subsidy, as ordinary taxpayers pick up the tab for the private jet industry and billionaire high flyers."
"Subsidizing more private jets on a warming planet is reckless and indefensible," he added.
The National Business Aviation Association, a lobbying group for the private aviation industry, celebrated passage of the Republican legislation, specifically welcoming the bonus depreciation policy as "effective for incentivizing aircraft purchase." (The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy argues that "depreciation tax breaks have never been shown to encourage more capital investment.")
Meanwhile, communities across the United States are bracing for the law's deep cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance, which are expected to impose damaging strains on state budgets and strip food benefits and health coverage from millions of low-income Americans.
"Trump and congressional Republicans have certainly delivered for the billionaire class," said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. "This is certainly one of the cruelest bills in American history, backtracking on the country's painfully slow history of expanding healthcare coverage and, equally remarkably, taking food away from the hungry."
"That's a lot of needless suffering just to make the richest Americans richer," he added.
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Global Financial Reform: Breaking Free from the Money Scam
Markets distorted by concentrated wealth do not serve the common good. They serve the already rich.
Jul 05, 2025
The $34 trillion U.S. federal debt cannot be eliminated so long as private bankers control money production and profit from interest on money they create from nothing. This column puts this issue in a global perspective.
Most of the U.S. federal debt arises when the U.S. government borrows from private bankers by selling them Treasury bonds and other financial instruments. A banker opens an account in the government’s name and enters the amount of the bond. With a few keystrokes, the banker creates expendable currency for the government’s use. The government is expected to repay the bank for the principal when due, plus interest.
When the bond principal is repaid, that money disappears, but no money has been created to pay the interest. Thus, the accumulating interest creates a perpetually growing government debt spiral.
Private bankers collect interest in perpetuity on money that could just as easily have been created by national governments interest-free with no need for repayment.
The Privatized Financial Commons
In modern society, nearly everyone depends on money to meet their basic needs through transactions in the productive economy. In this sense, the money supply that serves the productive economy functions as a global commons—a shared resource essential to life in the modern world. Like any commons, it should be subject to democratic governance and managed for the common good.
This is more than economic injustice. It is a recipe for global breakdown.
The world’s productive economy relies on a limited pool of liquid money—what economists call the M2 money supply. This includes physical currency, checking accounts, savings deposits, and other readily spendable bank holdings. As of 2025, global M2 is estimated at approximately $93 trillion. It represents the total stock of money available at any moment for real economy activity—paying wages, buying groceries, building homes, funding schools and hospitals, and much more.
Over 90% of the global M2 is created not by governments, but by private banks issuing loans. Most of the money the world’s people depend on for their living is interest-bearing debt owed to private banks that created it from nothing.
Beyond this limited pool of money circulating in the productive economy lies a vastly larger financial universe—over $500 trillion in non-cash financial assets: stocks, bonds, derivatives, and cryptocurrencies. These cannot be used directly to buy goods and services. To be used in the productive economy, they must be sold and thus converted into spendable money—into M2 cash.
Most of these assets are fictitious, created not to support productive activity, but rather to extract speculative profit from the productive economy. This vast pool of fictitious assets actively directs attention of investors away from supporting the work of the real economy.
Fictitious Wealth, Real Harm
The non-cash financial assets—especially derivatives, leveraged buyouts, and cryptocurrencies—serve only the already wealthy seeking to extract unearned wealth from the productive economy without doing or producing anything in return that might benefit society.
This parasitic financial system generates massive profits for the few while inflicting widespread harm on the many. Its consequences include:
- Eroding democracy, as financial elites gain disproportionate influence over governments and public institutions.
- Driving inequality, enriching those who already own assets while leaving the rest to borrow at usurious interest rates just to survive.
- Starving the real economy—where people grow food, care for children and elders, build infrastructure, and heal the sick—of stable, affordable financing.
- Fueling financial instability, as speculative bubbles repeatedly inflate and burst.
- Accelerating ecological collapse by prioritizing short-term gain over planetary survival.
Governments that could issue their own currency—interest-free and debt-free—instead borrow from private banks, thus redirecting public funds to pay interest on private loans. The result is a transfer of power and wealth from the many to the few, underwritten by public debt and justified by economic myths.
A System Justified by Myth
The defenders of the current financial system insist it promotes efficiency and innovation by letting “free markets” allocate capital. But markets distorted by concentrated wealth do not serve the common good. They serve the already rich.
Private banks lend primarily to those who already have substantial assets—speculators, real estate developers, and large corporations. They dismiss community-serving or ecologically restorative projects as “too risky” or “insufficiently profitable.”
A just and sustainable future begins with liberating ourselves from the tyranny of private money creation.
The result? A system in which the wealthy borrow cheaply to amass more wealth, while the poor pay high interest—if they can borrow at all. Local communities and vital ecosystems are left underfunded and vulnerable.
This is more than economic injustice. It is a recipe for global breakdown:
- Billionaires launch themselves into space while the poor go hungry.
- A debt-driven growth imperative accelerates extraction from Earth just to service unpayable loans.
- Financial imperialism traps nations in dependency and fuels geopolitical conflict.
- Governments that borrow their own currency become debt slaves—not sovereign democracies.
Begin with Public Education and Democratic Dialogue
Transforming this deeply entrenched system cannot be left to backroom negotiations, technical fixes, or elite commissions. Real change must begin with a broad, inclusive public conversation grounded in honest education and democratic engagement.
Most people have no idea where money comes from nor how the financial system works. This ignorance is not accidental. Mainstream economics education often obscures or distorts the process through abstract models and technical jargon that serve the interests of financial elites.
Reform begins with demystification. Citizens must understand how money is currently created and who benefits. They must also understand how we can change the way money is created so it serves public—not private—purpose. This awakening will require the leadership of independent media, educators, grassroots movements, public servants, and faith leaders committed to truth and justice. It must reach across generations, communities, and ideologies to ignite the public imagination.
A new conversation about money is foundational. Without it, movements for economic justice, environmental regeneration, or democratic renewal will remain trapped within the constraints of a system rigged against them.
Then, Reclaim the Public Power to Create and Govern Money
Once the broad public understands how money is created—and who benefits—we must take the next step: reclaim the power to create and govern money as a public function, accountable to democratic institutions.
This means:
- Transferring the power to create money from private banks to public institutions designed to serve the common good.
- Establishing an independent, transparent, democratically accountable body to regulate money creation—ensuring enough is created to meet real needs, but not so much as to fuel inflation.
- Creating public banks, credit unions, and community-rooted financial institutions that circulate money locally to support the meeting of real needs, while resisting speculative extraction.
- Curtail financial speculation by strictly regulating—or abolishing—predatory financial instruments like derivatives, leveraged buyouts, and crypto schemes.
- Using public money creation to fund health care, education, affordable housing, infrastructure, and ecological regeneration—rather than speculative profits.
In a healthy economy, money serves life. It facilitates the exchange of real goods and services. It connects people in mutual caring relationships. In such an economy, billionaires would not exist, because the mechanisms that currently create extreme wealth would be replaced with mechanisms that secure the well-being of all.
We should expect fierce resistance from those who profit from the current system. But there will be no refuge on a dying Earth—and there is no planet B. In the end, all but the most self-delusional will come to understand that their own survival depends on a living planet and a just society.
We should expect fierce resistance from those who profit from the current system. But there will be no refuge on a dying Earth—and there is no planet B.
From Illusion to Liberation
To reclaim our future, we must reassert the public’s right to create and govern money as a democratic instrument of shared well-being—not private wealth accumulation.
We will not end war while private financiers profit from war. We will not end poverty while public wealth is siphoned into private interest payments. We will not stop environmental collapse while debt-fueled growth drives relentless extraction. And we will not build an Ecological Civilization until we dismantle the financial system that feeds on life rather than serving it.
A just and sustainable future begins with liberating ourselves from the tyranny of private money creation. To build a just and sustainable future, we must make financial education and reform a priority of every social movement advocating for peace, justice, and a healthy living Earth.
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