EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH AND POWER
Reform financial systems to meet the needs of the majority
Gambling on financial markets should not determine the fate of the planet. A reformed society should own and democratically control the financial system, where financial markets are replaced by progressively planned public investment in creating green and sustainable industrial and agricultural sectors to meet the needs of the majority. Money that is currently under the control of central banks which respond to private interests is socialized to be responsive to social demands.
Proposals for structural change (
set of policies, practices and investments)
Promote community, ethical and cooperative owned banks whose objective is to serve the community, including specific goals such as a just climate transition or supporting care vs shareholders
Extend loans based on meeting peoples’ needs as opposed to their repayment capacity.
Eliminate illicit financial flows and prohibit the transfer of funds to tax havens.
End tax holidays and other forms of subsidies for big business concerns.
Legally support networks of production and exchange based on mutual credit or other forms of community owned currency and exchange systems that do not depend on debt generation.
Create an international platform among the States of the Global South that binds each of them to undertake capital controls; such controls include transaction taxes, minimum stay requirements, and caps on the amount of currency that can move across borders. Note - capital controls and democratic control over the Central Bank will prevent capital flight and should give governments sovereignty over their currency and their economy.
De - dollarization via alternative payment systems beginning with non-dollar-based regional facilities supported by new global financial institutions.
Slow finance through introducing legal limits on financial transactions, re-establishing a sense of proportion between the financial sphere and the real economy as well as changing the cultural logic that frames investments.
Reclaiming money as a public utility, a transition to a sovereign money system and exploration of a wider use of alternative currencies. Eliminate fractional reserve banking, and end the power of banks to create money. Instead the creation and destruction of money should be organised democratically according to social and ecological criteria.
Enhance Fair income and allowances
Fair income and allowances will help to overcome inequalities in all classes of society. In particular, the informal economy and unpaid workers should be considered and recognised. The UBI proposal unites the RIGHT (freedom to do what you like to do including starting your own business, becoming an entrepreneur) and the LEFT (redistribution of wealth and the end of poverty and inequality).
Introduce a progressive tax system that makes polluters pay
Progressive tax redistributes the wealth which is unfairly concentrated in powerful corporations, nations and elites and provides a strong incentive for any products, services or activities that reduce our impact on the environment and promote the wellbeing of all people.
See this video on how we reimagine the tax system with our allies.
Proposals for structural change (
set of policies, practices and investments)
Wealth Tax that shifts the burden of taxes from labour and wages to accumulation of wealth. E.g Wealth tax for 1% richest or limits on corporate CEO pay, such as a maximum income ceiling, to complement the minimum income/need guarantees, or a maximum pay in relation to the minimum pay in any organization.
Advocate for progressive taxation and redistribution of income.
Create regressive inheritance tax to prevent generational wealth inequity.
Tax large corporate profits and stop exemptions for their financial and technology translations.
Taxes on speculative share returns and financial transactions should be introduced, ideally on a global level. Harmful finance products and operations should be forbidden, combined with strict controls and restrictions for the finance industry. The ‘Google tax’ should be implemented.
Apply the “polluter pays principle” i.e regressive tax on hazardous emissions from the use of fossil fuels and other damaging agro and industrial production (to prevent vulnerable groups bearing the burden of pollution) and on producers of disposable and non-repairable or reusable products.
Pay taxes where income is generated and close loopholes that facilitate tax avoidance and evasion - ban tax havens.
Punitively tax corporations with highly unequal pay ratios.
Create tax incentives for activities that slow the flow and close the loop such as repairing, reusing, or exchanging and for local and sustainable production.
Subsidies, access to credit and loans and/or tax deductions for eco-friendly manufactured goods and essential needs.
Decentralise and democratize the means of production and ownership
Regulation gives local communities, including producers and consumers (or prosumers), control over the means of production, distribution, exchange, and markets. Localization provides for all basic needs through the local and regional economy; larger trade and exchange, as necessary, is built on and safeguards this local self-reliance; nature, natural resources, and other important elements that feed into the economy are governed as the commons; private property is minimized or disappears.
Proposals for structural change (
set of policies, practices and investments)
Support and promote business models and technologies that distribute ways of exchange, profit and value creation i.e cooperatives, platform cooperativism and limiting the power and/or size of companies.
Policies and practices that promote access vs ownership and where use, access, control, and distribution of the means of production is equally distributed.
Enhance public ownership by transferring majority shares of stocks to workers and employees who will thereafter gain control and management.
Promote public and community ownership and control of the essential sectors to cover essential needs - eg. some variation of municipally owned public energy utilities or cooperatives. Redistribute the property of big landlords.
Organise the stewardship of nature subject to a number of eco-limits e.g. revolving around central emissions limits or resource caps. It is imperative and extremely urgent that humanity agrees not only on a global carbon budget but on the way to distribute it among people, societies and generations, under climate justice criteria.