In an open letter to G20 leaders as they prepared to convene in New Delhi, India for their annual summit, U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) joined economist Jayati Ghosh, Patriotic Millionaires chair Morris Pearl, philanthropist Abigail Disney, and more than 300 others in declaring that “we cannot allow extreme wealth to continue corroding our collective future.”

“Decades of falling taxes on the richest, based on the false promise that the wealth at the top would somehow benefit us all, has contributed to the rise in extreme inequality,” the Tuesday letter states. “Our political choices allow ultra-wealthy individuals to continue to use tax shelters and enjoy preferential treatment to the extent that, in most countries in the world, they pay lower tax rates than ordinary people.”

“At the same time, the world has seldom had more need for the richest to pay,” the letter continues, noting that global extreme poverty rose in 2020 for the first time in more than two decades as Covid-19 threw the world into economic chaos.

I explained back then how tax policy was supercharging the accumulation of obscene fortunes in America. Policy makers, I noted, had lifted the lid on wealth accumulation by decreasing taxes on inheritances and income from capital. That policy failure would go on to become substantially worse in 2017 with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Others would see this same ominous trend. In an interview with CNBC, several experts recognized the distinct possibility the world would have its first trillionaire by 2039, the year CNBC would turn 50.

Read the article by ‘Veteran tax attorney Bob Lord, an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow, is currently serving as a senior advisor on tax policy for Patriotic Millionaires.‘

An annual wealth tax on the world’s richest could raise 1.7 trillion US$

Read the report