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Sue Gardner / Wikimedia
Thomas Piketty, professor at the Paris School of Economics.
The French economist Thomas Piketty considers that the “bazooka” of the European Union (EU) “is not enough” to recover from the pandemic crisis, especially to reduce economic inequalities. In this sense, it defends higher taxes for the rich and a minimum income of 120 thousand euros for the young.
Ideas left by the economist in an interview with Rádio Renascença (RR) as part of the launch of his latest book in Portugal, entitled “Capital and ideology”.
Then best seller “Capital in the XXI century”, the new work, which has 1200 pages, “is a critical book“Towards China,” but also with Donald Trump, the US, the European Union, “he reports in RR.
What if 750,000 million euros of European bazooka, of which 15.3 billion will arrive in Portugal, to respond to the pandemic crisis, Piketty believes that the next few months will prove to be “insufficient” funds.
“It would be better recovery plan with fewer countriesPerhaps Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium ”, points out the economist who argues that it is necessary to change the“ rules of the game ”of the EU in terms of how to make big decisions.
“Sometimes a smaller number of countries is better, but they are willing to decide by majority, in a new form of European Assembly, based on members of national parliaments, ”he says.
“Instead of a sequence of vetoes from each country, it is preferable to have a Common European Assembly, representative of these national parliaments, where we would present the decision to majority ruleInstead of unanimity, he adds, considering that in this way there would have been “a majority to decide on a Recovery Plan even greater than the one presented.”
“If in three months we realize that this is not enough, it will be very difficult to guarantee unanimity as we had in July. And even this unanimity will not be enough, because the Recovery Plan is not yet underway, ”adds Piketty.
The economist also says that “The EU is already divided”. “We were 28 years old, now we are 27. What are we waiting for? Are we going to wait until we are 26, 25, 10 years old before we change the rules of the game? “, Question.
For the French “it is very important to change the rules of the game, if we want to protect the European model of social protection and advance in the reduction of inequality ”.
80% tax for billionaires
Now, the best way to end inequality is through taxes, defends Piketty, underlining that “ progressive taxation of very high wages, applied for example in the United States at the time of Roosevelt, was a great success ”. “There was an income tax, above 80% or even 90%, one of the best billionaires and it worked very well ”, he highlights.
To avoid tax evasion and “for this to work, you need credible penalties, on those who try to evade taxes “, he assumes, emphasizing that” when it was applied in the USA, with Roosevelt, it was with heavy penalties for those who disobeyed the law.
“The economy is made up of entrepreneurs, salaried employees, hardworking workers, who must obtain an annual income that gives them a good life, but it doesn’t have to be billionsPiketty says to justify his idea of higher taxes for big fortunes.
“Normally, in a country like Portugal, 50% of the base population receives 5% of the total wealth. Already the richest 10% of the country receives about 60% of the wealth produced “, points out the economist, noting that” half of the Portuguese children at the end of the table will not receive any income. “
Therefore, Piketty proposes that “all at 25 years old, which today receives zero, receives a Minimum income of 120 thousand euros“. “Whoever today receives an inheritance of one million, after the progressive tax would still receive 600 thousand euros, which is much more than 120 thousand”, he highlights.
Radical measures aimed at “A goal of equality” and that they look at “15% at the base of the population [que] they don’t get today. “
“There is a lot of talk about equal opportunities as an ideal, but when it comes time to put it into practice, people are much more conservative,” he acknowledges.
Piketty concludes that “still no country has invented the perfect systemAnd, therefore, he says that it is necessary “to learn lessons from different national experiences, to try to build a better and different economic system in the future.”
