Economic Inequality
Two months after releasing a pathbreaking report on income and wealth inequality in India, the Paris-based World Inequality Lab has published a follow-up note making the case for a “comprehensive wealth tax package on the ultra rich”. The March report had said that “the ‘billionaire raj’ (a term used to define the post-2010s rapid rise of billionaires in the country, at odds with lives of millions, popularised by James Crabtree’s book of the same name) is now more unequal than the British colonial raj”.
Highlighting the extent of income inequality, the new report states:
“According to our latest estimates, it takes just 2.9 lakhs per year to make it to the top 10% of income earners and 20.7 lakhs to make it to the top 1%. By contrast, the median adult earns only around 1 lakh, while the poorest of the poor have virtually no incomes. The bottom half of the distribution (50% of the population) earns only 15% of the total national income (see Table 1). To get a sense of just how skewed the income distribution is, one would have to be very close to the 90th percentile to earn the average income.
In this situation of extreme inequality, the authors of the note – economists Nitin Kumar Bharti, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty and Anmol Somanchi – argue that a progressive wealth tax and an inheritance tax “would be an important step towards a more equitable growth path for India”.
The caste-economic inequality link
The authors have highlighted how the caste system plays a large role in how inequality functions in India. “Let’s be clear: Indian billionaires are largely an upper caste club. A progressive wealth tax package of the kind we propose is most likely to benefit lower castes and the middle classes at the detriment of only a tiny number of ultra-wealthy upper caste families. In that respect, besides addressing extreme wealth inequality, such taxes could also play a small role in weakening the rigid link between social and economic inequalities in India,” Somanchi has said.
24/05/2024
Releasing the India supplement of its annual inequality report on the first day of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, rights group Oxfam International said that taxing India's 10-richest at 5 per cent can fetch entire money to bring children back to school. https://www.rediff.com/news/report/indias-richest-1-own-over-40-of-total-wealth-oxfam/20230116.htm
The report titled 'Survival of the Richest' further said that if India's billionaires are taxed once at 2 per cent on their entire wealth, it would support the requirement of Rs 40,423 crore for the nutrition of malnourished in the country for the next three years.
By Barun Jha
16/01/2023
"Survival of THE Richest How we must tax the super-rich now to fight inequality " Executive Summary by OXFAM
We are living through an unprecedented moment of multiple crises. Tens of millions more people are facing hunger. Hundreds of millions more face impossible rises in the cost of basic goods or heating their homes. Poverty has increased for the first time in 25 years. At the same time, these multiple crises all have winners. The very richest have become dramatically richer and corporate profits have hit record highs, driving an explosion of inequality. This report focuses on how taxing the rich is vital to addressing this unprecedented polycrisis and skyrocketing inequality. The report explores how, in recent history, taxation of the richest was far higher; how talk of taxing the rich and making billionaires pay their fair share is hugely popular; and how taxing the rich claws back elite power and reduces not just economic inequality, but racial, gender and colonial inequalities, too. The report lays out how much tax the richest should pay, and the practical, tried and tested ways in which governments can raise such taxation. It shows us how taxing the rich can set us clearly on a path to a more equal, sustainable world free from poverty
© Oxfam International January 2023 Lead authors: Martin-Brehm Christensen, Christian Hallum, Alex Maitland, Quentin Parrinello, and Chiara Putaturo. Contributing authors: Dana Abed, Carlos Brown, Anthony Kamande, Max Lawson and Susana Ruiz
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Inequality | Fight Inequality Anthem by Indian Ocean OxfamIndia Jan 28, 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt94ej-fJ64
Communities, NGOs, frontline workers and activists are coming together across the world to #FightInequality and ask for a pro-people recovery package from COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s our tribute to people who are demanding will an end to corporate greed and unfair concentration of power in the hands of a few.
Sung by Rahul Ram and Indian Ocean, #FightInequality anthem is your song to raise voice against inequality.