Robin Hood in Reverse

THE RICHEST EIGHT people in the world, according to an Oxfam report this January, own more wealth between them than the poorest 50 percent of humanity—3.6 billion people.

Let’s make that clear: Eight people own more wealth than 3.6 billion people. That is simply grotesque. And it is the type of fact that needs to break through the complacency and routine of our daily lives, and the latest outrages of the U.S. president, and spur us to demand effective collective action to change course.

Many people don’t spend much time thinking about the difference between income inequality and wealth inequality, but it’s important to understand that wealth inequality is both harder to fix and harder to justify, and it has enormous consequences that resonate over multiple generations. The reality that the Oxfam report makes plain is that even while global extreme poverty has seen dramatic reductions over the last couple of decades, global wealth continues to be concentrated at the very top, into fewer and fewer hands.

The recovery of global financial markets since the crash of 2008 has been very good for the already wealthy, but for those who didn’t have many assets to begin with, the recovery of the stock market has benefited them far less. To put it bluntly, the class of the people who had the most to do with causing the crisis ended up benefiting the most from it.

In the United States, the legacy of systemic racism has both led to and helped exacerbate a shameful level of wealth inequality. As the Pew Research Center documented in 2014, the median white household in the U.S. is 13 times wealthier than the median black household and 10 times wealthier than the median Latino household. The most obvious consequence of this massive gap is that it is often passed down from one generation to the next. When we talk about white privilege, this element of tangible inherited wealth and the huge racial wealth gap is often overlooked.

WHEN PEOPLE bring up the problems of global wealth inequality, it seems immediately to set off alarm bells among some conservatives, who say that by denouncing wealth inequality we are advocating for “socialism” or “redistribution of wealth.” It is true that putting an entire economy in the hands of government has produced bad results and sometimes totalitarianism.

But the fact that we live in a global economy where eight people can have the combined wealth of 3.6 billion people is, to me, conclusive proof that redistribution of some of that wealth from the top to the bottom is sorely needed. And we need to acknowledge all the ways that redistribution of wealth from the bottom and the middle of the economy to the top happens every day due to how financial, taxation, and political systems are run. So instead of redistribution to the top, it’s time we creatively consider redistribution from the top.

This should not be a controversial notion. In fact, many countries, including the United States, already try to do this. One way is through progressive taxation, which is why people with higher annual incomes pay higher rates of federal income tax. More important, it’s the thinking that informs taxes such as the estate tax and the capital gains tax, which collect some of the wealth from those who have the most to spare and use it to fund programs that benefit society’s least wealthy.

To the credit of the world’s wealthiest couple, Bill and Melinda Gates have invested significant portions of their wealth into their charitable foundation and have encouraged their peers to do the same. The Gates family and other very wealthy people such as Warren Buffet also favor progressive taxation and retaining the estate tax, and Buffet has famously criticized the injustice of his secretary paying a higher effective income tax rate than he does. These models of progressive government taxation of wealth and voluntary philanthropy are not mutually exclusive, and both should be intensified to counter worsening global wealth inequality.

Unfortunately, Congress seems committed to passing large tax cuts that will again disproportionately benefit the wealthy, allowing them to shield even more of their wealth. One of the greatest political hypocrisies of the modern political era will be to watch President Donald Trump, the self-heralded champion of the common person, become the great implementer of these massive tax cuts for wealthy people like him.

As Gandhi once said, “The world has enough for everyone’s needs, but not everyone’s greed.” What would loving your neighbor as yourself, following the words of Jesus, mean for tax policy? I doubt if the White House and the Congress will be asking that question.