The battle to end poverty - A war we could easily win if we wished to
Dutch historian Rutger Bregman delivered a broadside to the world’s uber-rich and the economic system that dominates our lives at Davos last week.
He attacked billionaires’ philanthropy in lieu of taxes with irrefutable logic:
“I hear people talking the language of participation, justice, equality, and transparency but almost no one raises the real issue of tax avoidance and of the rich just not paying their fair share,” he told his audience which, presumably, was made up of some of the 1,500 private jet owners who flew to the resort for the Electric Picnic of capitalism.
Bregman became an online sensation.
However, capitalism seems to have withstood his criticism — so far.
Yesterday, much closer to home, certainly without 1,500 private jets at hand, Social Justice Ireland published its annual review and called on the Government to end poverty within five years. “This is not only a measurable policy goal but an achievable one in a country that has such vast wealth,” said Fr Seán Healy, of SJI.
Bregman and Healy, albeit on very different platforms addressed the same, eternal issue — how the great riches of our world might be better shared so the almost inescapable poverty unnecessarily limiting millions of lives might be brought to an end. It was Bregman’s first visit to Davos, so his reaction was unfiltered.
He had not been assuaged on the festival’s ensnaring smooch-and-caress cocktail circuit. Yesterday’s report was not Healy’s first to make more or less the same arguments. Despite his commitment over many years to ending poverty in this country of “vast wealth” little enough has changed. Hardly his fault.
If Bregman’s optimism is matched by Healy’s persistence, one of the challenges facing anyone who wants real social justice is epitomised by one man who attended Davos, though there were many like him there.
Just after Bregman spoke, Michael Dell, the computer tycoon who employs around 2,500 people in Ireland, laughed when asked if, as the world’s 39th richest man, he should pay more tax.
Pointing to his philanthropy he also took the opportunity to scoff at a suggestion from New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that the highest earners pay a marginal rate of 70%.
“Name a country where that’s worked. Ever,” he countered. The answer? America.
There the highest tax rate averaged about 70% from the 1930s to the 1970s, “and those were actually pretty good years for growth”, offered a Davos economist. Now the top rate stands at 37%.
Here's Michael Dell and the global economic elite at Davos laughing at @AOC's proposed marginal tax increases on millionaires and billionaires. pic.twitter.com/oRTQDQuxPR
— Waleed Shahid 🪬 (@_waleedshahid) January 24, 2019
There are many strands to the tax-to-end-poverty argument, and one is all too relevant to Ireland. Despite how we look away, accusations that this country is a tax haven aren’t going away.
EU efforts to harmonise taxes may succeed and have a disproportionate impact on our economy — bye, bye Mr Dell? — but maybe a less obvious one on ending poverty.
Davos will roll around again next year and SJI will publish another review, but little will have changed.
Which suggests, sadly, that most of us are more than happy with the way things are. Which is a tragedy, as confronting soul-destroying poverty is easier than its eternal presence suggests.
