“We support the taxation of the super-rich. A group of alone 3,000 individuals concentrates the wealth of the planet. If we put a 2 percent taxit would help eliminate the hunger in the world. Three thousand billionaires own almost 15 trillion dollars“. The Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silvain an interview with Republicannounces that during the G7 in Puglia to which he was invited by Italy will relaunch the key proposal advanced by your country, which aims to make it a new pillar of international tax cooperation. In addition to France, which had already opened up to the idea during the G20 Economy in Sao Paulo, Germany, Spain and South Africa have also already expressed their support. In July the economist Gabriel Zucmanon behalf of Lula, will present a detailed plan to the most industrialized countries on how to implement it.
“I will discuss some of our priorities for the Brazilian presidency of the G20 such as inequality, climate change and global governance reform,” explains Lula ahead of the summit in Borgo Egnazia. “We will launch a task force against hunger and poverty open to all countries, including those not members of the G20. We have also launched a task force to mobilize against the climate change to incentivize the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Brazil has reduced the deforestation and called on richer countries to maintain the support promised by COP-15 in Denmark of 100 billion dollars for environmental conservation”.
“The South of the world it is no longer what it was 20 years ago, when I was president for the first time”, replies the president when asked about the results he “realistically” expects to obtain thanks to the presidency of the G20. “Then we wanted to expand South-South cooperation, now we have new ones trade routes and investments. The G20 is very representative, it includes theAfrican Unionthe G7 countries, which by the way are no longer the seven largest economies in the world, and Brics. If the G20 had been strengthened, these blocs would not need to exist. We want reform aging global institutions, such as those of Bretton Woods, stuck in the 1940s”.
The concrete proposals concern precisely the taxation of the super rich with which to finance the response to global emergencies such as inequality, hunger and poverty and “measures to deal with the debt of developing economies”. “We must convert the unpayable debt into assets And infrastructure projects, especially those of energy transitions in Africa, Asia and Latin America”, is Lula’s idea. Broadening our gaze to the role of the left, the president hopes that the democratic and left-wing parties will give answers “in a language and a way that can speak to people through the current means of communication”, “protecting workers in the new job market defined by digitalization and artificial intelligence and by staying close to people in their neighborhoods, workplaces and social media.”
