GoKawiilResearchers have a responsibility to search for consensus on this crucial issue, both for future generations and the future of our planet.
The authors of the Global Justice Report are calling for a UN-run central bank to replace the International Monetary Fund.Credit: Samuel Corum/Bloomberg/Getty
Ambitious. Utopian. Wacky. These are among the responses to the publication last month of the Global Justice Report by economist Lucas Chancel at the Paris-based World Inequality Lab and his 44 co-authors. The report, which is based on modelling studies, proposes ideas for how to create greater global equality and economic prosperity while remaining within planetary boundaries (see go.nature.com/4whtuzw).
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Such a task is urgent. Since 2020, poverty reduction around the world has either slowed down or is in reverse, whereas wealth inequality is expanding. At the same time, most planetary boundaries, such as climate regulation, species abundance and the availability of fresh water, have overshot what researchers say are ‘safe and just’ limits1,2.
But finding a way for people in all countries to access the most basic needs — quality education, meaningful work and affordable health care — has so far eluded all those who have tried, as the latest United Nations Sustainable Development Goals report attests (see go.nature.com/4pjrwtk). The challenge of achieving these within the bounds of Earth-system processes makes the task yet more difficult.
The science of inequality
Unsurprisingly, then, the Global Justice Report has a radical prescription: a planetary scale redistribution of wealth and income by increasing taxation on a global level, mainly affecting those with fortunes of hundreds of millions of dollars. The taxes would be collected by a new body, called the Global Justice Fund, which would redistribute the money to invest in climate, education, health and other causes through country dividends allocated on an equal per-capita basis. Investment returns from a further body, the World Sovereign Fund, would pay for the dividends. The authors also propose a new international reserve currency and a UN-run central bank to replace the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC.
If the recommendations were followed, the report estimates that, by 2100, per-capita income for all people across the world could be €5,000 (US$5,700) a month, with fewer hours being worked than today and with global warming held at 1.8 °C above pre-industrial levels. The authors say all of this can be achieved if there’s political will, but they rightly anticipate opposition, in particular from some of the wealthiest companies and countries. Indeed, their models suggest that their prescription could still achieve close to its desired result if the United States did not participate.
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