Tag Archives: Non classé

Last weekend, the G7 ministers announced their intention to apply a minimum tax rate of 15% on the offshore profits of multinationals. Let us be clear: if we leave it at that, it is nothing more and nothing less than the formalisation of a real licence to defraud for the most powerful players. For small and medium-sized enterprises as well as for the working and middle classes, it is impossible to create a subsidiary to relocate its profits or income to a tax haven. For all these...

The Covid crisis is forcing us to rethink the tools of redistribution and solidarity. Proposals are springing up everywhere: basic income, job guarantee, inheritance for all. Let’s say it straight away: these proposals are complementary and not substitutable. In the long run, they must all be implemented, in stages and in this order. Let’s start with basic income. Such a system is dramatically lacking today, especially in the South, where the incomes of the working poor have collapsed and...

The Covid-19 crisis, the most serious global health crisis in a century, forces us to fundamentally rethink the notion of international solidarity. Beyond the right to produce vaccines and medical equipment, it is the whole question of the right of poor countries to develop and to receive part of the tax revenues of the world’s multinationals and billionaires that must be asked. We need to move beyond the neo-colonial notion of international aid, paid at the whim of rich countries and...

As the trial of George Floyd’s killer opens in the United States, identity conflicts are festering in Europe and France. Instead of fighting discrimination, the government has embarked on a  course of pursuing the far right and hunting down  social scientists. This is all the more regrettable because there is an urgent need to set up a genuine French and European model to combat discrimination. A model which would embrace the reality of racism and ensure the means to measure and correct...

As the pandemic crisis fuels the demand for social justice more than ever, a new investigation by a consortium of international media (including Le Monde) has just revealed the financial turpitudes of Luxembourg, a tax haven nestled in the heart of Europe. There is an urgent need to get out of these contradictions and to launch a profound transformation of the economic system in the direction of justice and redistribution. Let’s start with the most immediate. The first priority should be...

After the invasion of Capitol Hill, the bewildered world wonders how the country that has long presented itself as the self-proclaimed leader of the « free » world could have fallen so low. To understand what has happened, it is urgent to leave the myths and idolatry on one side and to go back to history. In reality, the Republic  of the United States has, since its beginnings, been run through by weaknesses, violence and considerable inequalities. The Confederate flag, the emblem of the...

At a time when religious disputes seem to be flaming up again in France, it is worthwhile considering a question that is not so much material as central: how to finance religions, while ensuring the neutrality of public power with regard to different beliefs? In France, we like to give lessons in secularism to the whole world.  It is not here that a president would take an oath on the Bible!  The problem is that this great national narrative is sometimes accompanied by monumental...

Thanks to the combined efforts of 150 researchers from all continents, the World Inequality Database (WID.world) has just put new data online on the distribution of income in the different countries of the world. What does it tell us about the state of global inequality? The main innovation is that the data collected make it possible to cover almost all countries. Thanks to research carried out in Latin America, Africa and Asia, 173 countries representing 97% of the world’s population are...

How are States going to deal with the accumulation of public debt generated by the Covid crisis? For many, the answer is clear: central banks will take on their balance sheets a growing share of the debts, and everything will be settled. In reality, things are more complex. Money is part of the solution but will not be enough. Sooner or later, the wealthiest will have to be called upon. Let’s recap. In 2020, money creation has taken on unprecedented proportions. The Federal Reserve’s...

In France, as in Germany and most other countries, the left is heavily divided on the European question, and more generally on the strategy to adopt in the face of globalisation and the transnational regulation of capitalism. While national deadlines are fast approaching (2021 in Germany, 2022 in France), many voices are calling for these political forces to unite. In Germany, however, the three main parties (Die Linke, the SPD and the Grünen) are likely to find it difficult to reach...