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Street scene in St. Moritz: The richest became even richer during the pandemic
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Oli Scarff/Getty Images
Several international organizations and millionaires have proposed a wealth tax to fight the pandemic.
“As billions of people struggle to survive during this pandemic, billionaire wealth is spiraling out of control.
That can't be fair,” said Fight Inequality Alliance coordinator Jenny Ricks.
Together with the emergency aid organization Oxfam, the US Institute for Policy Studies and Patriotic Millionaires, an association of wealthy US citizens, their organization presented a new analysis entitled "Taxing Extreme Wealth".
Together they call for a global wealth tax.
At the same time, the Patriotic Millionaires, together with the Millionaires for Humanity and the Tax Me Now initiative, wrote an open letter to the participants of the World Economic Forum.
"Tax us, the rich, now"
The appeal, signed by a total of more than a hundred millionaires, reads: "Tax us, the rich, now." The world has experienced great suffering in the past two years, while the richest have gotten richer and very few of them would have paid appropriate taxes.
The signatories include American film producer and heiress Abigail Disney, Danish-Iranian entrepreneur Djaffar Shalchi, American entrepreneur and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, and Austrian student and BASF heiress Marlene Engelhorn.
In the letter, they stated that the current tax system was "not fair."
Every country in the world must demand “that the rich pay their fair share”.
The wealth tax should be 2 percent annually for wealth over $5 million, 3 percent for wealth over $50 million, and 5 percent for wealth over $1 billion, according to the Fight Inequality Alliance.
According to the activists, more than $2.5 trillion could be collected annually.
This could lift 2.3 billion people out of poverty and finance corona vaccines for the entire world population.
Oxfam previously released a new report that the wealth of the world's ten richest men has more than doubled since the pandemic began.
The summit of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, will again take place online this year due to the corona pandemic.
Apr/AFP