Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silvahe asked this Friday at the G7 summit the imposition of a global tax on the super-rich, to help combat inequalities. The Brazilian president, who is participating in the summit as a guest, stressed that the concentration of wealth in a few hands represents “a risk for democracy.”
“It’s time for the super-rich to pay their fair share of taxes. This excessive concentration of power and income represents a risk for democracy“said Lula, according to a statement released by the Brazilian Presidency.
Eradicate hunger and poverty
This proposal to impose a global tax on billionaires has been presented by Brazil within the framework of the G20, a forum chaired this year by the South American country. The objective of this proposal, Lula explained, is mobilize resources to “scale up effective policies” to eradicate hunger and poverty that are being implemented in developing countries.
In this sense, he asked for the support of all those present at the G7 summit to the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, which Brazil will formulate at the G20 summit, which will be held in Rio de Janeiro next November. This global alliance “will be key to ending this scourge that still haunts humanity,” stressed the Brazilian president.
Brazil presented the proposal to tax large fortunes during G20 ministerial meetings at the beginning of the year, and for the moment It has received support from some European countries, such as France.
Wealth concentration
This Thursday the Brazilian president reiterated the proposal in Geneva, Switzerland, during a meeting of the International Labor Organization (ILO). “About 3,000 people concentrate almost 15 trillion (millions of millions) of dollars, more than the gross product (GDP) of Japan, Germany, India and the United Kingdom combined, and more than what many countries would need to develop,” the president stated at that meeting.
He added that the “super rich” or great fortunes have “income concentrations so absurd that they have their own space programs,” in an allusion to magnates such as Elon Muskowner of the space agency SpaceX, or Jeff Bezoswhose company Blue Origen also ventures into outer space.
Under a shower of applause, the former steel union leader joked that “perhaps they will find a better planet than Earth, although the workers here are the ones who have allowed them to have their riches. We do not need to look for those magical exits, because It is the Earth that needs our care, not Mars”.
In Brazil
In December of last year Lula promulgated the law that for the first time taxes the investments of the so-called super-rich in personalized funds and offshore companies. The new tax contributed to the fact that the following month, in January of this year, Brazil achieved a tax collection of 280,636 million reais (56,800 million dollars), a historical record for the country, with an increase of 7% compared to the same month. from the previous year. About $830 million of the total collected came from the new tax.
