More than 200 millionaires — many of them American — have presented a manifesto to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to “tax the ultra-rich” — including themselves.
The call, issued in an open letter Wednesday entitled “The Cost of Extreme Wealth,” comes just as the U.S. hit its $34.1 trillion debt limit.
The non-partisan U.S. Congressional Budget Office has linked the massive tax cuts granted during the Trump administration — mostly benefiting the wealthy and corporations — to a $1 trillion deficit in 2020 alone. Yet Republicans are now talking about shaving Social Security and Medicare to save money, not raising taxes on the rich.
“Tax the ultra rich and do it now,” ordered the letter to the Davos forum by the American and British Patriotic Millionaires organizations, TaxMeNow and Millionaires for Humanity.
Wealthy heir Abigail Disney blasted Davos in a statement as a “farce” for failing to address the issue.
“Extreme wealth is eating our world alive. It is undermining our democracies, destabilizing our economies, and destroying our climate,” she added. “But for all their talk about solving the world’s problems, the attendees of Davos refuse to discuss the only thing that can make a real impact — taxing the rich.”
Taxing the wealthy is “simple, common-sense economics,” said the letter. “It is an investment in our common good and a better future that we all deserve, and as millionaires we want to make that investment.”
The “history of the last five decades is a story of wealth flowing nowhere but upwards,” the letter noted. “In the last few years, this trend has greatly accelerated. In the first two years of the pandemic, the richest 10 men in the world doubled their wealth while 99% of people saw their incomes fall.”
Oxfam reported Monday that the world’s richest 1% accrued nearly two-thirds of all new global wealth created since 2020. An Oxfam representative derided the Davos gathering in an interview with Voice of America as a “festival of wealth.”
The current “lack of action” by those at Davos is “gravely concerning,” said the letter.
“A meeting of the ‘global elite’ in Davos to discuss ‘Cooperation in a Fragmented World’ is pointless if you aren’t challenging the root cause of division,” it added.
There was no immediate response from the economic forum.