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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Robeyns, Ingrid, author.

Title: Limitarianism : the case against extreme wealth / Ingrid Robeyns.

Description: First edition. | [New York] : Astra House, [2024] | Summary: “An original, bold, and convincing argument for a cap on wealth by the philosopher who coined the term ‘limitarianism’ that invites us to a radical reimagining of our world”—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023034715 | ISBN 9781662601842 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781662601859 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Income distribution. | Limitarianism (Philosophy) | Wealth–Moral and ethical aspects. | Rich people.

Classification: LCC HC79.I5 .R63 2024 | DDC 339.2—dc23/eng/20230908

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023034715

First edition

To all activists who are fighting against injustice

Introduction

In 2022, Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla and SpaceX, was ranked first in the billionaires list published by Forbes.¹ At that point, his estimated assets were worth $219 billion. That sounds like a lot of money. But how much is it, really? In truth, most of us aren’t really able to grasp how much money that is, simply because it’s so far outside the parameters of wealth as we know it. We have no frame of reference. Someone could add or subtract a zero and we wouldn’t really understand the difference. Perhaps even the super-rich no longer have a proper grasp of what those numbers actually stand for, except as a means of comparing themselves with others.

So let’s try to reformulate $219 billion into something that we can understand. Suppose you work fifty hours a week, between the ages of twenty and sixty-five—week in, week out; year in, year out. How much would your hourly wage need to be so that, by the end, you’d have amassed $219 billion? The answer is $1,871,794 per hour. Almost two million dollars per hour. Every working hour for forty-five years.

Forbes would be quick to point out that the wealth of billionaires can shrink significantly in a very short time. After Elon Musk bought Twitter for a whopping $44 billion in October 2022, Tesla shares lost more than a third of their value, and Musk’s estimated fortune contracted by nearly 20 percent, dropping to $180 billion. The following spring, the Frenchman Bernard Arnault (owner of luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Tiffany) took first place on the Forbes list, his wealth having grown by $53 billion in 2022, leaving him with a total fortune of $211 billion.

Bernard Arnault, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and the other billionaires that top the global rich list might be seen as exceptional. In some sense they are. Yet dizzying sums of money don’t just belong to those at the very top: in 2022 there were 2,668 billionaires on the Forbes list, and together they held $12,700,000,000,000. Do you, like me, see all those zeros dancing before your eyes? That’s because we don’t know how to take in that number. Spelled out, it reads: twelve thousand seven hundred billion dollars. That means that, on average, the value of their assets is $4.75 billion. If we ask the same question again—what’s the equivalent lifetime hourly wage—we get $40,598 per hour, the equivalent to what many American families earn in a year.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. A billion is one thousand million—but there are many more multimillionaires than billionaires. If you had fifty million dollars, pounds or euros, you might not be able to buy Twitter or fly to space, but you’d still have enough to never ever have to worry about financial security again—and then some.

For a long time, I felt that there was something wrong with an individual amassing so much money, but I couldn’t properly articulate why. I was dissatisfied with the broad-brush explanation that “capitalism” was to blame for growing inequality, as if capitalism could operate like a machine with a will of its own, without people controlling it. I became intrigued by the protests of the Occupy movement in 2011 following the 2008 financial crisis: I couldn’t help but feel that the activists had noticed much earlier than most academics that something was deeply wrong with the concentration of wealth in the hands of so few. Although the Occupy movement faded, it sowed a new and growing awareness of wealth disparities. “We are the 99 percent,” they declared—making the general public aware that the remaining 1 percent might be causing problems for us all.²

So in 2012 I decided to deploy my training in philosophy and economics to answer the question: can a person be too rich? This meant figuring out what “too rich” meant, and also looking for reasons why having too much money might be a bad thing—if they were at all plausible, of course. After all, it was possible that none of the arguments against wealth accumulation would be any good. I knew that I could be mistaken—that there might be nothing wrong with having many millions or even billions in the bank. I just wanted to find out.

Some of my colleagues—professors in philosophy, economics, and related disciplines—were initially amused that I wanted to delve into all this. Some argued that poverty was what mattered, not inequality. A few felt that focusing on the rich was an indication of envy on my part. This was a chastening reaction—forming a belief merely based on envy is obviously a very bad thing to do—and one I would increasingly hear as my research developed, whether from politicians or people commenting on social media.

I wasn’t alone, however. Across various disciplines, not just my own, scholars were starting to see that something was happening at the upper levels of society, and that we ought to pay attention. Philosophers were beginning to develop new arguments identifying the problems with inequality. Sociologists had started to study the effects of extreme wealth on the lives of the super-rich and their children, and to consider how such wealthy people could justify having so much in an increasingly unequal world. Economists had begun piecing together the data necessary to ascertain how the distribution of income and wealth had changed over time. Their studies showed that while wealth and income inequalities had decreased in industrialized countries during the first half of the twentieth century, this general tendency came to an end in the 1980s. In some countries, wealth and income inequalities had actually started increasing again, including, notably, the US and the UK. Political economists, meanwhile, had been finding explanations for rising inequality as they looked at how the economic system had changed thanks to deliberate adjustments to the rules that govern markets. From different fields of research, different pieces of the puzzle were coming together.³

As I continued on this journey, it became abundantly clear that the problems created by extreme wealth weren’t just practical and political; they were profoundly moral, too. Assessing the legitimacy of inequality, and of extreme wealth in particular, meant confronting a number of fundamental philosophical questions. How do we understand ourselves as human beings? How do we conceptualize our relation to others in society? What are our responsibilities toward vulnerable people and toward the provision of public goods? And what should we make of the justifications given by the extremely wealthy as to why they have so much money and so much power?

I started to think through the ethics of extreme wealth concentration in a systematic way, and published some of my findings. This didn’t go unnoticed in academia, and led other scholars to conduct further research into these questions. After a decade of analyzing and debating extreme wealth, I became convinced that we must create a world in which no one is super-rich—that there must be a cap on the amount of wealth any one person can have. I call this limitarianism.⁴

As a concept, limitarianism is simple. But what does it mean in practice? Are we talking about limiting wealth through political coercion, or through institutional reform, or is this just a matter of encouraging more charitable giving? Am I suggesting that the governments should swoop in and confiscate billionaires’ fortunes? Or are we looking at gradually increasing progressive tax rates, and clamping down on the enormous tax fraud that is rampant today? Would limitarianism require us to overhaul our economic and political rules so that we make societies limitarian from the outset, before people start to work, sell, save, invest, and buy stuff, ensuring, in other words, that no one can become super-rich in the first place?

This book will endeavor to answer all these questions. But I should say up front that limitarianism doesn’t come with a silver bullet or a single policy that would solve everything. It can best be understood as a regulative ideal—an outcome to strive for, but which is unlikely to be definitively achieved, given the way in which the world is currently organized. This is the case for most of our societal ideals, including the elimination of poverty (there will always be some people who cannot be reached by poverty-reducing strategies) and ending discrimination (since realizing this ideal would require morally flawless action on the part of all persons and institutions). Obviously, acknowledging that eliminating poverty and ending discrimination are regulative ideals doesn’t make them any less important. The same holds true for limiting individual wealth.

This isn’t to say that societal ideals can never be fully realized—the eradication of lethal diseases spread by viruses is a case in point. International health institutions have long tried to eliminate these diseases, and their track record shows how difficult this is. However, they did succeed in the case of smallpox—a disease caused by the variola virus, which killed about three out of every ten people who caught it. After years of intensive vaccination campaigning in the 1960s and 1970s, smallpox was declared fully eradicated by the World Health Organization in 1980. Such successes are rare, though, and in truth the eradication of smallpox is the exception to the rule that most ideals cannot be definitively achieved. That doesn’t mean we should give up on trying to achieve them, though. Our aspiration should be to move closer to realizing our ideals, drawing on the full range of measures available to us.

In practical terms, limitarianism calls for three kinds of action. First, there is structural action. Our societies’ key social and economic institutions should give people genuinely equal opportunities, through affordable childcare, free high-quality education, and a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy. We should also strive to design our economies in such a way that we end up with an equitable distribution of wealth, and a decent standard of living for all. In other words, we need policies such as a guaranteed minimum wage that allows people to live in dignity, affordable, universal healthcare, and protection of the housing markets against the distortive effects of speculators and commercial predators. This kind of structural action limits inequality by strengthening the economic position of the poor and the middle classes: it means a larger piece of the pie goes to the poor, and less goes to those who are currently taking the most.

The more structural steps we take to reduce inequality, the less need there will be for the second strategy: fiscal action. Structural measures such as those mentioned above will not, on their own, be enough to prevent large inequalities from emerging, nor to allow all people to lead dignified lives. The fiscal system, meaning the tax and benefits system, remains indispensable. If taxation were our only tool for achieving a limitarian society, the tax rate would need to be set at 100 percent for wealth and income beyond a certain point (spoiler alert: it is not the only tool). Still, as I will argue, there is nonetheless a very strong case for imposing a cap on extreme wealth.

But even with serious structural change and a meaningful tax on extreme wealth, limitarianism will not be possible without the commitment of each of us. And so the third kind of action limitarianism calls for is ethical action: we all need to embrace a limitarian ethos. It may not be possible in the short run to implement the structural and fiscal measures that limitarianism requires, given political inertia and the fact that wealthy elites disproportionally influence our politics. Dominant ideological norms and interests suggest that there will be significant political resistance to limitarianism. And there will always be outliers: even in a world with effective social structures and fiscal rules in place, a person still might find themselves excessively rich due to some major stroke of good luck. In all these circumstances, limitarianism gives the super-rich reasons to donate their excess wealth in ways that reduce suffering and address collective problems. If a moneyed person agrees with the arguments against extreme wealth concentration, then they shouldn’t wait to act until society at large embraces limitarianism. As we will see, there is so much that they could do in the meantime to move us away from current levels of inequality and injustice, and in the direction of a fairer world—a world in which no one can become, or remain, excessively rich.⁵

Over the years, I’ve encountered a large number of people who don’t think limitarianism is all that radical a proposal. They’ve been thinking along these lines for a very long time and are happy to learn that what they believe now has a name; that the time has finally come for a wider conversation about the dangers and risks of extreme wealth concentration, and the opportunities that a wealth cap offers us all. Such reactions have come from a very diverse set of people. Once, when presenting my research on limitarianism in New York, a man in the audience who introduced himself as working for Goldman Sachs told me that he agreed with what I was proposing. On another occasion, at a talk to local residents in a Protestant church in the Netherlands, I noticed a priest sitting at the back nodding in agreement as I unpacked my arguments. Afterward he came up to me to tell me how much we needed this kind of debate. And I have received countless emails and letters from individuals who have read my articles in newspapers or magazines, and just wanted to let me know that they strongly agreed.

There are, as I will show, many moral, political and practical reasons to support the intuitions that these people have—reasons that support the case against extreme wealth; or, to put it another way, the case for limitarianism. I am hopeful that, if we can have an honest discussion about inequality and genuinely listen to the arguments for limitarianism, most people will be convinced.

We should first agree, though, on what constitutes a sound debate. In the early months of 2023, there was a heated argument in the Dutch and Belgian media about limitarianism. What happened was entirely predictable: people who wanted to shut down the debate began to attack implausible straw man versions of the proposal. In particular, several critics assumed limitarianism would necessarily imply progressive taxation on income (rather than on wealth), with a highest tax rate of 100 percent. This would mean that after someone’s salary reached a certain point, all of the additional money they earned would be taxed away. They failed to understand that there are other ways to achieve a limitarian society, but that hardly seemed to matter to them. Some even went so far as to claim that limitarianism didn’t consider what would happen to all the extra money gained through taxation. It was just about making sure the rich were punished for being rich.

This is a dishonest way to try to stifle a debate on some very urgent and largely overlooked questions. Can a person be too rich? Does extreme wealth have negative consequences? And if the answer is yes, a person can be too rich, and yes, the consequences are dire, then what should be done? We can surely do better than resorting to caricature and ridicule.

Occasionally, someone will agree that inequality is a bad thing while also saying that putting a limit on how much we can have is too drastic a measure. Such a claim is puzzling. How could that be the case? We’re talking here about two sides of the same coin: limiting inequality from the top down, and eliminating the harms and waste caused by excessive wealth concentration. If you want no one to remain in poverty and think that too much inequality is a bad thing, then it follows that there must be a limit to how much a person can have. After all, seen in terms of numbers, inequality is the distance between the bottom and the top. If inequality is ever to be curbed, then there must be an upper boundary, and that upper boundary gives us our wealth limit. Of course, there will be disagreement about where to draw this line. And there will be disagreement over whether and how it should be enforced. Yet anyone who thinks that inequality is unjust and undesirable must endorse the imposition of some form of upper limit to wealth.

So where should the limit lie? Ultimately, this is for each country’s citizens to decide in a well-regulated political process. In a healthy public domain, the arguments for limitarianism would be carefully debated, and that debate would feed into political deliberation on how much is too much. But if this were all I had to say on the matter, you might understandably be disappointed, and it wouldn’t really help move the debate forward; it makes a huge difference, after all, whether you argue for a wealth cap at $5,000 or at $50 billion. So I’ll come out and say where I think the limit should be, though I would stress that I’m sharing my views simply as a springboard for further discussion.

I propose not one but two upper limits. The top limit is political: it is the limit that our societal structures and fiscal system should enforce. The second, lower limit is personal—this is where ethics come into play.

At what level should the higher, political limit be set? Some people say that every billionaire represents a policy failure, and so they would put the threshold at a billion. There’s a joke circulating on social media that anyone who becomes a billionaire should be given a trophy congratulating them for having “won capitalism.” They should have a dog park named after them, and any additional wealth should be confiscated.

The joke is funny—but a billion is way too much. To calculate the political limit, we must start by thinking about the context in which it will be implemented (we’ll cover this in more detail in the next chapter). In a country with a socio-economic profile similar to the Netherlands, where I live, we should aim to create a society in which no one has more than €10 million. There shouldn’t be any decamillionaires. This figure, whether in euros or dollars or pounds, roughly holds for most developed economies, though it is important to note that, more than the specific amount, the method for calculating it is what matters. As we’ll see, this method should allow anyone living in a different socio-economic system to make their own estimate of where the upper limit should be pitched.

When it comes to calculating the lower, ethical limit, there are—in most circumstances—very good reasons to set the limit at much less than the political threshold of ten million. I contend that, for people who live in a society with a solid collective pension system, the ethical limit will be around one million pounds, dollars or euros per person. The ethical limit likewise depends on context and, as I will argue, in some circumstances this limit will be lower, in others higher. Here, too, what is essential is not the precise number, but the way we arrive at it. No doubt there will be disagreement on the level of both thresholds—and some will argue that the ethical threshold should be much lower than what I have proposed here.

Let’s pause for a moment to consider a handful of objections that some readers will doubtless have raised by now. The first is: doesn’t limitarianism mean equal outcomes for everyone, regardless of what they do? The answer is simply: no. Limitarianism does not advocate strict equality. There are reasons, based on principle as much as pragmatism, why some degree of inequality is justified. Some people work much harder than others, take more risks or assume more responsibility. Some do dangerous or extremely stressful work, or work that takes a toll on their health. Some work hours that jeopardize a normal family life. Some need to be constantly on standby. Others, meanwhile, lead sober lifestyles that generate savings over time. There are still more reasons why some level of inequality can be justified, which we’ll touch on later. But nothing can justify limitless inequality. And this is the most important point with regard to limitarianism.

The second objection is that limiting how much wealth a person can accrue would require us to give up private property or the market mechanism, and force us into a USSR-style communism. I find this objection astonishing in what it reveals about the quality of our public debate. Such an objection is nonsense, and it’s probably just another attempt to silence meaningful criticism of the status quo. But since I’ve heard it so often, I want to say up front: I am not advocating USSR-style communism, nor any other type of regime that requires the abolition of markets or private property. Markets are a very powerful tool for securing material welfare; private property is a cornerstone of our security, autonomy, and prosperity; both are essential for a functioning society, in conjunction with public goods and collective resources accessible to all. We would be shooting ourselves in the foot if we were to get rid of them. The real question, which we must seek to answer, is rather which constraints on the market and on private property we need if we are to achieve limitarianism.

The third objection is one we encountered earlier: that discussions which question the legitimacy of extreme wealth are driven by envy. This is one of the most common criticisms—faced not just by advocates of limitarianism but anyone who wants to make taxation more progressive. When Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren proposed taxes on wealth during the 2020 Democratic Party primaries for the US presidential elections, they were accused of jealousy. When German politicians discussed a proposal to introduce a wealth tax in 2019, their critics framed it as eine Neiddebatte (an envy discourse). When the British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg suggested in 2012 that there should be a one-time tax on the wealth of super-rich Britons to combat the economic recession and avoid social unrest, he was criticized for engaging in a politics of envy. Dutch conservative and right-wing politicians have even coined a new word—they speak of jaloesiebelasting (envy tax) every time someone proposes introducing a tax that will disproportionally affect the very rich. In all these countries, we see variations on the same theme: if you’re focused on the rich, you must be jealous.⁶

The general sentiment, even among some moderate progressives, is that begrudging the super-rich their wealth is bad. Given all their hard work, effort, and talent, they deserve it. Criticizing them is in bad taste, embarrassing, even: it suggests that you don’t have the talent, or the character to work hard. It’s not only conservatives and right-wing citizens who frame critiques of excess wealth this way. Barack Obama captured the sentiment well, when he responded to a journalist’s question about bonuses: “And I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people’s success or wealth. That’s part of the free-market system.”⁷

Since this allegation is so pervasive, let me take it seriously and show why it is flawed. The most straightforward way to refute it is by pointing to the number of very rich people who advocate political measures to reduce inequality from the top down. Many multimillionaires and billionaires have warned that inequalities are becoming too great and that governments must increase taxes on the richest. In January 2023, about two hundred multimillionaires signed a letter addressed to the attendees of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos to argue for higher taxation on the rich. Bill Gates has called for the same on multiple occasions. Seventeen super-rich people, including George Soros, called upon the 2020 US presidential candidates to introduce a wealth tax. Surely it’s a contradiction to say that someone who advocates greater taxation on their own class, and is often actively engaged in giving away their money, is jealous of the wealth that they and their peers enjoy. That would make no sense. How could you be jealous of yourself?⁸

Beyond this, we might also point out that anyone who objects to limitarianism on this basis is cutting off their nose to spite their face. Reducing inequality would also reduce the grounds for envy between people, and thus ultimately reduce envy itself, as the Danish political theorists David Axelsen and Lasse Nielsen have argued. Axelsen and Nielsen suggest that people who raise the “envy objection” tend to think that state policies should not encourage the less fortunate to want what others have. Instead, less fortunate individuals should focus on their own projects, and try to improve their own lives. Axelsen and Nielsen point out that people wouldn’t be so distracted by what others have if inequality was limited by a cap on how much one can accumulate and spend. There would be less competition for status goods, and hence less conspicuous consumption to inspire jealousy in the first place. A limitarian society would be better for everyone, including for the very rich, because it eliminates the unending rat race provoked by status goods. If you’re against envy, then you have very good reason to favor limits on the excessive consumption that comes with excess wealth.⁹

There is one final response to the envy objection. Even if a random individual advocating a wealth cap were to experience some feelings of jealousy, it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is whether that person has sound arguments for limiting inequality. As long as they do, we can say that their jealous feelings are regrettable and sad, but that the limitarian proposal stands. We should focus on the arguments themselves, and not on the attitude ascribed to those advancing them. In the end, the envy objection is best understood as another distraction strategy to prevent us from talking about the harms associated with excessive wealth, and the case for limitarianism. So let’s keep our eye on the ball.¹⁰

One heartening discovery of the past few years is that there are super-rich people who have already implemented limitarianism in their own lives. One British decamillionaire I interviewed had decided that he and his spouse should not keep more than £2 million for themselves and their children; they are planning to give all the rest away by 2030. They have enough money to buy several homes, but have chosen to live in a standard family home and not spend their money on extravagancies. His reason for giving it all away was precisely that they didn’t need more in order to be fulfilled: with £2 million, a British family of four has ample resources for living a good life, and the rest of the money can be very well used to improve the lives of the less fortunate.

It’s not just anonymous millionaires who think that there should be a limit to how much a person should have, though; there are some well-documented examples of limitarian behavior on a much grander scale. Charles “Chuck” Feeney, a former billionaire, gave away virtually all of his wealth after finding himself in midlife with a large fortune, but also a deep aversion to the conspicuous consumption that he saw around him. He decided that the best response would be to give the money away before he died. And that’s exactly what he did: he gave away about $8 billion, the vast bulk of his fortune, and closed his philanthropic foundation in 2020. At the age of ninety-one, he is reported to live with his wife in a rented two-bedroom apartment, having kept about $2 million. His five children do not expect to inherit a large fortune. They have said that they are grateful that they have been able to live normal lives.¹¹

More recently, Yvon Chouinard, the founder of the outdoor-apparel maker Patagonia, decided to transfer ownership of his company to a non-profit organization, so that its profits could be used to fund action on climate change, as well as the protection of undeveloped land worldwide. The company is valued at about $3 billion, generating profits of about $100 million a year. In contrast to Feeney, Chouinard’s decision had less to do with his own lifestyle, although given that reportedly he doesn’t own a mobile phone, let alone a computer, it’s unlikely that he’s living extravagantly. Rather, his decision to give it all away is based on his view that the raison d’être of the company is to have a positive impact on the planet. Chouinard may have an unorthodox business vision—putting people and planet before profits—but he has shown how even successful multinational companies can embrace a limitarian worldview.¹²

In the end, almost all the super-rich people I interviewed agreed that inequality was a serious political issue and that governments were letting the very wealthy off the hook. I sought out these men and women because I wanted to get a better sense of how they regarded their own fortunes and how they had experienced the dynamics of wealth. It was illuminating to hear them talk about the dilemmas they faced around giving their wealth away. It’s hardly surprising that many wealth holders will try to come up with ways of justifying their having accrued so much money—after all, they are human beings just like everyone else, and we all try to defend the choices we make, with many of us unable or unwilling to confront our own privileges. Nevertheless, all of the very wealthy people I spoke to had a keen sense of the problems generated by current levels of inequality. They were not, for the most part, theorists or academics or writers, yet many of them echoed the limitarian views and arguments that you will encounter in this book. It was reassuring to discover that so much of this thinking was shared by people who belong to the group that stand to lose the most money from a shift to limitarianism.

Of course, it goes without saying that examples such as these are rare. There are far more examples of multimillionaires and billionaires who hold on to their money and give away a few crumbs, at best. Or, even worse, who give away their money in a manner that makes them even richer, by creating charitable foundations that serve their own business interests and enable tax deductions. It is unfortunate that those decamillionaires who feel entitled to their wealth are not at all keen to talk about it. Based on my experience in the media—and in researching this book—it is hard to find anyone who is willing to go on record to defend this position, whether on stage or on air. The conservative super-rich are particularly averse to debating the moral limits of wealth inequality in public. In January 2022, the television channel CBS interviewed me about limitarianism, and then spoke with the Disney heiress and film producer Abigail Disney about her political activism to combat increasing inequality. From what I understood, CBS tried for months to find a very rich person who would go on air to defend the principle of financial accumulation by the super-wealthy. They were unable to find anyone. Eventually they were able to bring in Vivek Ramaswamy, a first-generation American entrepreneur and investor, who would later become a presidential candidate for the Republican Party. He shared a not very relevant story about the importance of equal opportunities. Of course, we’re all for equal opportunities! It’s laudable to talk about trying to do good for the less fortunate—but the rich have learned to do so in a way that evades any questions about unequal outcomes. Because such questions sooner or later end up in an analysis of the societal structures, political choices, and power differences that have led to those inequalities. And the richest have nothing to win here. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of them try to avoid the topic.¹³

We should continue trying to establish a dialogue with the super-rich, though, even if some of them are so full of themselves that it is difficult not to feel put off. It is, understandably, a common trap for progressives to vilify the extremely wealthy. But I think that, while this is justified in some individual cases, it is too easy a response. Extreme wealth concentration is, first and foremost, a structural problem. We should therefore focus above all else on the structural changes that are needed. We shouldn’t become fixated on rich individuals per se, unless they are actively hampering the structural changes that are needed.

We should also remember that the super-rich are a very broad church. Some of the wealth holders I spoke to are politically organizing to protest extreme wealth, and arguing for a redistribution of money and power from the rich to the poor and the middle class. Some are even arguing for an overhaul of the type of economy we have. It doesn’t do justice to this group to lump them all together, not to mention that doing so would be strategically very unwise for anyone who wants to enact real change.

Besides, on an even deeper level it is crucial that we keep lines of communication open with people with whom we deeply disagree, as long as all participants are willing to listen and avoid falling back on lies, deception, or insults (though, admittedly, this requires our media to make such debates possible, and thus to be free from corporate abuse of power, which is a problem we will return to). If we condemn the extremely rich rather than focusing on the wider problem of extreme wealth concentration, it will make that conversation much more difficult. Exchanging ideas, and being willing to have one’s point of view challenged or potentially changed, is what defines us as reflective beings. It is the beating heart of a democratic society. As Anand Giridharadas argues in his book The Persuaders, if we want to live in a better world, we must be willing to try to persuade others, and be open to being persuaded by them. That means that, when challenged, we should not just shout about our political opinions but rather think about why we hold them. We have to present our reasoning respectfully to those around us, since in the end we all have to live alongside our fellow human beings in each nation, and on this one planet.¹⁴

Over ten years ago, I started on a journey to answer the question of whether there is something wrong with extreme wealth. Along the way, I worked through a range of arguments, moral, political, and practical, drawing on the wealth of information amassed by empirical research and investigative journalism. In the end, I have written this book, which has evolved into a public act of persuasion. I hope to convince readers that we would all be better off in a world in which there weren’t any super-rich people; a world in which the “merely” rich would, after having paid their taxes, be willing to share more of what they have with those who are less fortunate. That world wouldn’t just make almost all of us better off—it would also be a world with much less injustice of all kinds.

Many progressives will find in these pages arguments that support what they already believe. Most conservatives, neoliberals, and right-wing libertarians occupy a position in the debate that is much further removed from mine. Still, I hope that they, too, will be willing to engage. After all, this concerns their future as well: they, like the rest of us, have much to lose if we carry on with business as usual.

1 How Much Is Too Much?

When my eldest child was about twelve years old, we were cycling from our home in Utrecht to a nearby village. Utrecht is a beautiful old city in the middle of the Netherlands, with many medieval buildings. It buzzes with life. As with all cities, it has its challenges, but thanks to many years of progressive policymaking at the municipal level, the quality of life for its residents is high. And, as elsewhere in the Netherlands, the biking infrastructure is excellent, and almost everyone cycles, young and old, rich and poor alike.

It was a gorgeous day, and we were chatting as we went. When we reached the outskirts of the city, we passed a bench on which a man was sleeping. He was unmistakably in a bad way: his clothes were frayed and badly stained, his shoes worn out, and his face and hands covered in sores. After we had passed him, my son interrupted me to ask: “Mom, did you see that?” “Yes,” I said, “that’s a homeless person.” My son was silent for a second or two, and then he said: “I’m ashamed that as a society we treat people this way.”

The sight of a homeless person sleeping on a bench or on a piece of cardboard on the pavement is ubiquitous, albeit much more prevalent in some places than in others. The worst instances of poverty are usually visible to all: whether it’s homelessness or other kinds of material deprivation—think of children who always wear the same clothes to school and rely on the free lunch they receive there. But vast wealth is often invisible, by contrast. In fact, in many countries the rich and super-rich prefer to stay out of sight. They build their mansions behind high fences or in gated communities, dotted with cameras to keep snoopers at bay. They dress up in expensive clothes and jewelry when going to events with other super-rich people, but on the rare occasions that they find themselves in public places among the rest of us, they often try to blend in. In public, inequality presents itself as poverty more often than as extreme wealth.

It may sound obvious, but there are two sides to inequality. It can increase because the poor become poorer. Or it can increase because the rich become even richer—leaving the middle classes and the poor even further behind. If inequality increases because the poor become poorer or the middle classes get squeezed, it is more visible, and it is experienced firsthand by large numbers of people. We notice when there are more homeless people or beggars on the street. Food banks won’t hesitate to tell reporters when the lines start to grow—when there are longer lines of families desperate for support since their income is no longer enough to meet their essential needs. If, on the other hand, the very rich become richer, there is nothing much to see in public, and the daily experience of most of us does not change. Or at least, not immediately. We can only find out what’s happened by consulting the annual rich lists, or if the media choose to report on updated wealth distribution statistics. That is, if they choose to report on these issues at all.

Perhaps this explains why, in the last two decades of the twentieth century, very few people noticed that inequality had begun to increase. In many countries there wasn’t a notable rise in poverty for quite a while, and in some developing countries, especially China, the middle class was growing. Most economists focused on the latter, celebrating the welcome effects that the expansion of international trade had had on lowering levels of extreme poverty in the Global South. The 2008 financial crisis did cause a visible increase in the number of people who plummeted into destitution. But the word “crisis” misled the public, suggesting this was a temporary glitch in a system that in essence was creating higher welfare for all on an equitable basis.

All of this changed in 2013 with the publication of Le Capital au XXle siècle, or Capital in the Twenty-First Century, by the French economist Thomas Piketty. The book landed like a bombshell. Piketty and his international collaborators had been collecting new data, much of it from previously unstudied sources such as historical tax records. This confirmed the widely held view that inequality had decreased in many rich countries during the period immediately after the Second World War. The war itself had been a brutal equalizer, since many of the large fortunes of the time had been destroyed; afterward, there was a united effort to rebuild a society in which everyone could flourish. Yet Piketty’s analysis also showed that there was a clear turning point toward the end of the 1970s, and that since then, inequalities—in income, and even more so in wealth—had been steadily increasing. Piketty exploded the myth that the high levels of inequality experienced during feudal times would never return: if we didn’t intervene politically, he warned, we’d be on our way to a new quasi-feudal era in which the few would have almost everything, while the many would have almost nothing at all.¹

Unfortunately, he has been proved right. Given the political choices we’ve made, extreme wealth gets a free pass. And it’s snowballing, making inequality increasingly difficult to address. In the decade since Piketty’s book was published, the rich have just kept getting richer: every year, the Oxfam report on inequality delivers shocking statistics about global wealth distribution. Take this one: between 2020 and 2022, the top 1 percent gained twice as much in income and wealth as the remaining 99 percent of people in the world.²

In order to have a shot at finding a solution to this problem, we need to come to grips with the nature and scope of extreme wealth. When my son sees a person on the street, we can talk about why this happens, and what should be done about it; but we hardly ever—if at all—ask ourselves what, if any, relation there is between the super-rich person living in the mansion behind the gates and the homeless person surviving on the street, or the middle-class parent struggling to pay the rent.³

By looking at statistics and other data, we can pinpoint how much the best-off individuals in society typically earn and have; how their fortunes grew over time, and how they earned them in the first place; and, most importantly, how the 1 percent has increased its riches as a whole. But before we delve into the numbers, we should find out who these people actually are. Who are we talking about? What kind of lives do they lead? Clearly, the super-rich all have a lot of money. We will return to the question of what “a lot of money” is, but for now, let’s use as a working definition of “super-rich” someone who has at least $5 million in assets, or an income that would, over time, allow them to gather such a fortune. Many earn substantial amounts—the CEOs of large companies often earn $10 million per year or more. Others might have more modest incomes, but have considerable assets—such as land, or property, or inherited money in the bank. Sizable capital of this kind means that they can let their wealth reproduce itself, as the returns on investments and loans for such assets are much greater than what they would be on the savings of a middle-class family. An ordinary person with modest savings in the bank typically receives less than 1 percent interest, but for individuals with large sums and who can invest over the long term, the returns are generally 5 percent or higher.

Yet if you look at their lives, how they accumulated their fortunes, what they do with their wealth, and their views about the legitimacy of that wealth, the super-rich are very diverse. That doesn’t change the fact that wealth concentration poses risks to society: in all cases, there are weighty objections to the size of their fortunes. But the diversity of the super-rich is nevertheless important. When we turn to the arguments for (or against) limitarianism, we will see that an awareness of the many sources of wealth enjoyed by the super-rich helps us identify which of the arguments for limitarianism applies to each of them (multiple arguments will apply, but not all arguments will apply to all of them, or not to the same degree). In addition, if we want to have a political conversation about extreme wealth, then we must make sure that we don’t fixate on just one specific subgroup of super-rich people, and generalize our claims. Doing so tends to mean that the super-rich get glorified or vilified in one fell swoop.

Of course, they do all have one thing in common: what unites them is having lots of money and, as we will see later, living in a system that protects that wealth and enables it to accumulate further. But if we want to find explanations for growing inequality and to understand the consequences of extreme wealth, then we will need a more complete picture. So: who are they?

Let’s start with the feel-good success stories. These are the rare multimillionaires who became super-rich against the odds and are ostensibly living proof that anybody can “make it.” Take J. K. Rowling, who wrote her first Harry Potter book while she was a single mother living on social security benefits. The success of her novels and the subsequent film franchise made her the best-selling living author in Britain today, leading her to accumulate a fortune that is estimated to be around £1 billion. Or think of Oprah Winfrey, who grew up in abject poverty and was repeatedly sexually abused as a child. Despite those extremely harsh early years, she built a skyrocketing career in television. It made her one of the most influential media personalities in America—and turned her into a billionaire. But we must not get carried away by J. K. Rowling and Oprah Winfrey’s rags-to-riches tales: yes, some individuals can become affluent against the odds, but that does not mean everyone who grows up in poverty or destitution can succeed. Quite the reverse. It is extremely rare that a hardworking, aspiring, poor or lower-middle-class person becomes a billionaire. Most can only dream of the exceptional transformations individuals like J. K. Rowling and Oprah Winfrey have undergone. Despite these few exceptions that we gladly put in the limelight, the overwhelming majority of the poor and lower-middle classes will remain poor or middle-class, despite their best efforts.

More common are the “self-made” super-rich businesspeople who grew up in (upper-) middle-class families. They generally start off without inherited wealth, and work for a while in modestly paid jobs. At some point, they set up businesses in favorable markets. When they sell these companies and retire—usually in their late forties or fifties—they find themselves with an awful lot of money in their bank accounts. Some of these firms can become really, really big over time, but there are many self-made decamillionaires who are not doing absurd things like buying Twitter or developing space-tourism programs; businessmen and women who still have their feet firmly on the ground. This was true of several of the decamillionaires that I interviewed. They spent the first decades of their lives leading ordinary, middle-class existences, and perhaps that partly explains why they do not feel comfortable having so much money. Some are actively seeking to give it away in a thoughtful manner. Others feel a deeper sense of unease with their wealth, and have joined political organizations that argue for higher taxes on the very wealthy, such as the Patriotic Millionaires in the USA and the UK; taxmenow, which operates in German-speaking Europe; and Millionaires for Humanity, which operates globally.⁴

Some of these enterprising multimillionaires and billionaires may appear to be completely self-made—as though, like Oprah, they’ve really come from nothing. Often, this turns out not to be true, however. They will usually have had parents who actively stimulated and invested in their talents; teachers who went the extra mile. Or wealthy family members who paid for their university tuition so that they weren’t burdened with having to pay back huge loans when entering the labor market. Or they may have been the beneficiaries of policies that gave them a head start, or that keep supporting them even when they are already comfortably off.

Then we have a more ambiguous group of super-rich people who did not set up a business themselves, but have worked their way up the corporate ladder. They exemplify and embody success in the game of capitalism. These are the people who drive the institutions that are shifting major resources around the globe, producing the goods and services that respond to consumer demand, and who create financial wealth (though whether they create welfare for consumers, or well-being for anyone, is another matter; not all goods that are sold and bought increase our well-being). Take Ben van Beurden, the CEO of Shell between 2014 and 2022. Among his key achievements as its CEO over that period, Shell’s corporate website proclaims, he oversaw a significant improvement in the company’s financial performance, including a 65 percent increase in adjusted earnings and a doubling in shareholder distributions. He is clearly very skilled in conducting business in today’s globalized capitalist world. In March 2019, there was some debate in the Netherlands about his earnings over the preceding year, which increased from €8.9 million in 2017 to €20.1 million in 2018—which amounts to €55,000 a day. Most years, his total earnings at Shell were more in the range of €5 million to €8 million.⁵ By Dutch standards, this is a very large income. Still, if Van Beurden were to look elsewhere, especially to his peers in the UK and US, he might well consider this a modest salary. After all, in 2018 the average earnings of a CEO of one of the 350 largest American companies was $14 million, or $17.2 million, taking stock options into account.⁶ There will always be someone who earns more.

Of course, there is also a sizable group that did nothing to make their money: the heirs to a fortune. For starters, the royals. Most members of royal families were born into great wealth and are enjoying substantial annual incomes. Prince William, who became Prince of Wales upon the death of Queen Elizabeth II, is now the owner of a duchy worth about £1 billion, with an annual revenue that surpassed £20 million in recent years.⁷ Monarchs are not alone when it comes to enjoying the privilege of a vast inheritance, however. More than half of current wealth derives from an inheritance (or a series of inheritances, as the dynastic super-rich prefer to see it). The beneficiaries of such inheritances might also have jobs, or they might not work at all. Some use their inheritances as seed money to start their own companies. Their wealth is then a combination of inherited wealth complemented with additional wealth generated from business activities, but it is important to note that their businesses were, at the very least, supported by the capital they started out with. Inheritors of large fortunes can choose any kind of job they like, of course, but interestingly there are class-specific expectations of what they ought and, especially, ought not to do. One of my interlocutors, who had interviewed many rich people in the financial world, mentioned that, in elite circles in Europe, young women are encouraged to study art history so they can take care of the family’s art collections while their husbands work in finance.

This isn’t to say there aren’t those who, like Chuck Collins, inherited a fortune and decided not to keep it. Growing up in suburban Detroit during the 1960s and 1970s, Collins saw firsthand the vast gap in opportunities that wealth inequality causes. He did not think it was fair that he was born with a trust fund, while people living in mobile homes had to worry about being evicted. He was also repelled by the arguments made by the older members of his network of wealth holders, who sternly warned young millionaires not to slaughter the goose that laid the golden eggs. In other words, don’t touch the capital that has been passed on to you by your parents and grandparents—let it grow and live off the rent. In 1985, at the age of twenty-six, Collins gave away his inheritance ($500,000 at the time, which a journalist estimated would have been over $7 million in 2016). Since then, he has been involved in various organizations that conduct research and raise awareness about inequality, and that develop policy proposals to do something about it. He has also published multiple books on this topic, including one co-written with Bill Gates Sr. in which they argued against the repeal of the estate tax, the US equivalent of inheritance tax.⁸

Collins is not the only heir who felt that they should not keep the money that they’d been given. In Europe, one of the loudest voices criticizing the legitimacy of large inheritances is the Austrian-German Marlene Engelhorn. In 2022, she drew global attention because she declared her discomfort with the double-digit millions she would inherit from her grandmother. After all, she had done nothing to deserve this money. She has told journalists that she will give at least 90 percent of it away, though, ideally, she would want to be taxed, alongside all other very rich people, since she believes it is not up to her to decide what it should be spent on.⁹

Engelhorn’s view is widely shared by the members of Resource Generation, an American organization that has limitarian principles enshrined in its mission (though without labeling them as “limitarian”). Resource Generation started about twenty-five years ago as an informal network of wealthy younger people who attended philanthropic conferences and felt a disconnect with the older generation. They were looking for a community of like-minded individuals. But following a series of political events that underscored the systemic injustice inherent in American society, this network developed into a formal organization. The first major turning point was the financial crisis back in 2008, which saw many ordinary people’s lives ruined by the unfettered profit-seeking and increasingly risky choices of financial institutions. Shortly thereafter came the Occupy movement in 2011. Members of the Resource Generation community joined the protest in solidarity, carrying signs proclaiming “I am the 1 percent, tax me.” Resource Generation became a dues-paying organization for the top 10 percent of wealthy Americans aged between eighteen and thirty-five, and it currently has more than 1,100 members across the US. It encourages its members to adhere to an average standard of living—a lifestyle that, ideally, everyone would adopt—and work toward giving all their excess wealth away. Members are urged to do so in ways that support social-justice movements and progress toward a society in which there isn’t a privileged class of people who have too much.¹⁰

Last but not least, we must include in this parade of very rich people those whose wealth is associated with crime, oppression, or exploitation. Think, for example, of the Russian super-rich, those oligarchs who became extraordinarily wealthy when they seized formerly state-owned companies after the USSR imploded. These are the people who have massive yachts and mansions in London or Berlin, and second citizenship in Malta or other European countries. Vladimir Putin should probably be included on this list. In the first half of 2022, the general view was that Elon Musk was the richest person on the planet, with his net wealth standing at an estimated $260 billion. Yet in March 2022, when asked in an interview how it felt to be the richest person on earth, Musk replied that he thought Vladimir Putin was significantly richer than him. Access to details of Putin’s actual wealth is to a very large extent firmly barred to anyone wishing to investigate, whether scholars, journalists, or, indeed, Russian citizens. Some insiders have estimated that his wealth could be more than $200 billion, though there is no evidence to back up this figure. Still, from what we know about how he operates, and given all the accounts of how he extracts money from Russian oligarchs, that figure is not implausible. Whatever the size, it’s likely that his wealth is intimately linked to illegitimate financial transactions.¹¹

These people all come from profoundly different backgrounds, and they all have different levels of wealth. What unites them is that they all belong to the 1 percent: they are all extremely wealthy. We’re not just talking about the rich here—these are the super-rich. And whether they are heirs, captains of industry, or kleptocratic state leaders, they all have much, much more than they need, as well as much, much more than they deserve. This group is pulling away from the rest of us.

It doesn’t get talked about much, but there is a line between “rich” and “super-rich”—as academic studies have begun to show. Two teams of academics have done research on the question about whether it is possible to distinguish the rich from the super-rich. In Britain, a team of scholars led by the sociologist Abigail Davis recently conducted a qualitative study using focus groups as its methodology. In this study, six groups, each consisting of ten people, deliberated over the question of how to distinguish between different levels of living standards in London. It is one of the most unequal cities in the world, its population comprising both those living below the poverty line and those living in great affluence. Interestingly, there was a large consensus among the participants as to how we should distinguish between the different categories of living standards.¹²

At the bottom end of the scale are people who live below the poverty line (called the “Minimum Income Standard” in Britain), and those living just at that level. This is followed by three groups, which roughly correspond to the lower-middle class, the middle class and the rich, and then, right at the top, the separate category of the super-rich. In the lower-middle class, people have slightly greater peace of mind than those living on or below the poverty line. They might have some modest savings, and enjoy a few inexpensive hobbies. Those in the middle class enjoy greater levels of security and prospects: they might own a house (albeit with a mortgage), and be able to afford formal childcare, as well as an occasional holiday abroad. The rich can afford to buy a house without a mortgage and possibly own an additional house abroad. They also enjoy more personal private services (such as a nanny, gardener, or a financial adviser) as well as owning multiple cars and some significant investments. The super-rich—high-profile businesspeople, celebrities and entrepreneurs— own multiple houses, employ a range of support staff, and might perhaps purchase a private jet or a yacht if they want one.

Many (but not all) of these London-based participants in the study felt that those they had labeled “super-rich” had much more than they needed to lead very good lives. Some considered that this was also true of the merely “rich.” These participants did not all think, however, that having more than you needed to live well meant that you should not be allowed to keep the excess money. On this point, the participants’ judgment depended a lot on how the wealthy and super-rich had accumulated their fortunes, and whether they were making the world better for others. Participants found it much less problematic that J. K. Rowling was a billionaire than someone who was “born with a silver spoon in their mouth.”

The second study was conducted by a team that I brought together at Utrecht University in 2018. We conducted a poll in which respondents were asked to label the standard of living that corresponded with particular situations that we described, such as the kind of home a family of four had, whether they had a second house, how many cars and what type of cars, the frequency of their holidays, and their total savings and investments. Our study showed that almost all respondents (96.5 percent) had no problem in drawing a line between “rich” and “super-rich.” Where exactly they drew that line did differ, however. About half of respondents held the view that a lifestyle that included a fancy villa, a modest second home, two luxury cars, three holidays a year and €200,000 in savings, was enough to lead a very good life with some luxuries. Any more than that, and you’d be crossing the “riches line,” moving into a situation in which you were “super-rich,” with more than you needed for a high standard of living. Once that family’s material standard of living was increased to include two luxury cars, five holidays a year and €1 million in savings or assets, two-thirds of respondents agreed that the family was super-rich. If their savings and assets increased to €10 million, then 94 percent of the respondents considered them super-rich. Our research team then estimated the total monetary value of each of these lifestyles and corresponding assets. These findings led us to conclude that 83 percent of respondents would say that having total wealth above €2.65 million meant a family of four was super-rich, rising to 89 percent of respondents if that family had more than €4.15 million.¹³

Based on this study, we were able to conclude that the overwhelming majority of residents in the Netherlands believe that you do not need more than €1 million per person (or €4 million for a family of four) to lead a very good life indeed. This provides us with one possible way of establishing what the ethical limitarian threshold should be—not the threshold that politics should impose, but the one that any altruistic person should use as a guide for themselves. And the English decamillionaires whom I interviewed who had decided to give most of their money away essentially came to the same conclusion: in addition to their house, they kept between £2 million and £4 million for themselves and their families (which had two or three kids).

The question of where to draw the line—of how much a person really needs to lead a very good life—is also increasingly being asked outside academia. The Patriotic Millionaires, for instance, lobby for higher taxes on the rich, a livable wage, and equal political representation. To be a member, you need to be “rich” (or, what on my account, would be “super-rich”); so where do they draw the line? In the US, the Patriotic Millionaires define rich as having an income of $1 million or higher and/or assets of $5 million; their sister organization in the UK has adopted the same criteria. Their proposals for raising taxes are aimed at this group of people. But as Erica Payne, president and founder of the US Patriotic Millionaires, stresses, that doesn’t mean that in the US people on a lower income (say, someone with an income of $250,000) should not also pay higher taxes. Focusing on the super-rich does not mean that the tax contributions by those who have a smaller income or assets, but still have much more than they need to lead a good life, should not be increased.¹⁴

We’ve seen several cut-off points between the rich and the super-rich being suggested here, such as €1 million per person in the Netherlands, or $5 million per person in America. I know all too well what such numbers do: everyone gets fixated on a particular figure, but hardly anyone pauses and asks what it represents. This was precisely what happened when news of the limitarian project reached Dutch media: newspaper columns and TV talk shows mulled over the question of whether the figure that was debated in the press—€2.2 million—was too low. Yes, some might find this a low number. Is a family of four that has assets worth €2.2 million too rich? Someone in New York, Tokyo, or Paris reading this might well think it unreasonably low, since in those cities it’s very likely that lots of families have assets—particularly property—worth €2.2 million, but still cannot lead the life of luxury that the super-rich do.¹⁵

This is where context matters. In the Netherlands, where the study was conducted, citizens and permanent residents receive a state-funded basic pension, which is roughly at the level of the poverty line. In addition, all employees, whether they work part or full time, accrue a pension via their employer. For this reason, we excluded pension savings from this study. Beyond this, even in the most expensive cities in the Netherlands, real estate prices are not at the level of London or New York. So rather than focusing on a specific figure, it is much more important to observe that ordinary people have no trouble distinguishing between a group of rich people and a group of super-rich people. Similar studies to those we’ve looked at here could be conducted elsewhere. The goal of these conversations should be to establish a local consensus of what “having a standard of living that allows one to flourish” means in a given context.

So where does this leave us? As a general idea, the “riches line” demarcates the level of personal wealth which, once reached, allows us to fully flourish. Beyond this point, further increases in wealth will not have a significant impact on a person’s quality of life. Where, in monetary terms, the riches line gets drawn depends on the policies and public provisions in the place where we live. For example, the question of whether high-quality education is a public good that everyone has access to, or whether it is considered to be more of a private investment available to the privileged few, makes a huge difference to how much money you need in order to move from being “rich” to “super-rich.” In Europe, one year’s tuition fees for undergraduate studies tends to be in the range of €150 to €3,000 a year. In England it’s £9,250. In the US, we’re looking at a range of $50,000 to $65,000—and some private institutions are even more costly. If we think that being able to go to university should not be a privilege reserved for the super-rich alone, then the riches line in the US will necessarily be much higher than in England, and even more so than in continental Europe.

This has important implications: if a society has adequately provided the goods and services that everyone needs, then families will require much less money to cover their healthcare, housing, and education. Similarly, if a society provides the proper financial security that people seek, including insurance for old age, unemployment, sickness, or disability, then families will not need to stow away huge amounts for when they retire, or in case they find themselves unemployed, unwell, or parents to a child with an impairment or a chronic disease. In a society in which those basic public goods are provided, and those risks are covered, citizens don’t need to amass so much private wealth in order to protect themselves against bad luck. The riches line in these societies—that is, in societies with a properly functioning welfare state and social-security system—will be much lower. There is simply no need to hoard money when the social safety net is working properly.¹⁶

From what we’ve seen, it is largely uncontroversial to assert that a “riches line” exists—there is such a thing as “more than enough”—though where precisely it gets drawn depends on context. Having established this, what the limitarian project wants all of us to do next is to ask: can we, at some point, have so much money that it would be immoral to keep it? It holds that the answer to this question is: yes. At some point we can have too much.

Limitarianism, then, makes a distinction between three thresholds: the riches line, the ethical limit, and the political limit. Having three distinct thresholds slightly complicates the story I want to tell, but these distinctions are essential.

The riches line is the level at which additional money cannot increase your standard of living, at least not in any significant way. The studies in London and Utrecht we saw earlier are primarily investigations into the riches line, and they show that people can readily identify it. It is, essentially, descriptive, and doesn’t imply moral judgment: it is based on the relationship that we can all observe between money and lifestyle.

The ethical limit is the maximum level of money one can own on moral grounds. Above this ethical limit, we can’t in good conscience justify keeping the excess money. For some people, the riches line is the same as the ethical limitarian threshold. They think that they should not hold on to money that cannot really be used to improve their own welfare, but they also think that they do not have any moral obligation to give away anything they have below this level. Taking our cue from the Dutch study of the riches line, we could then put the ethical limit at €1 million per person. Others, by contrast, will feel that €1 million is too high, and that, given all the misery and injustice in the world, the ethical limitarian threshold that we impose on ourselves should be lower than the riches line. After all, we can live very good lives well below the riches line, as many people do.

The political limit is the ultimate limit on a person’s wealth that the state should use as a goal when setting up its social and fiscal systems. Wealth above this level is, I hold, immoral. Via policies and institutional design, governments should try to make sure that no one accumulates more money than this. This does not necessarily translate into a 100 percent tax rate upon income above the political limit. Ideally, a package of different measures should together dilute extreme wealth concentration. But this number shouldn’t be taken as fanciful—it should be as hard a limit as possible.¹⁷

As with the riches line, both the political limit and the ethical limit depend on context—locally and globally. In an ideal world, perhaps we could all have half a dozen holidays abroad every year, everyone could choose from multiple attractive jobs or perhaps choose not to work for money at all, and all of us would be very rich. But that is a fantasy. It is not our world. Our world is one where ecological resources have been dramatically depleted. It is one with vast inequalities that are widening at an alarming rate. It is one in which, every day, people are going to bed hungry and worrying about problems that they can’t solve, because their causes are structural.

In this deeply unjust world, I am advocating a political limit of, roughly, ten million per person (and because I say “roughly,” it doesn’t matter whether this is in euros, dollars, or pounds; we should focus on the general principle and remember that we are discussing the order of magnitude, not the precise figure). Why ten million? The full answer will become clear over the next eight chapters. But the short answer is this: it strikes a balance between what different moral and political considerations tell us is the maximum level. There is the upper limit above which a fortune starts to become utterly wasteful, since it could be better used to rectify climate-related injustice and to meet urgent human needs. There is the upper limit that political equality demands. The upper limit that reflects what we know about the incentives that inspire very productive people to keep contributing to the economy. The upper limit that would protect the well-being of the super-rich themselves—to help them overcome their damaging addiction to capital accumulation, and give their children a chance of growing up without the harms caused by their parents’ excessive fortunes. If we work out an average figure based on the upper thresholds suggested by these considerations, we arrive at an upper limit of ten million.

Yet at the same time, let us not forget that limitarianism is not about a number; it is about all the reasons why a world without extreme wealth concentration would be better for us all.

2 It’s Keeping the Poor in Poverty While Inequality Grows

In January 2023, when the global elite were gathering for their annual meeting in Davos, Oxfam released its annual report on poverty and wealth. The report documented the rising wealth of the world’s richest individuals against a backdrop of multiple crises: hunger, the soaring prices of basic goods and, for the first time in twenty-five years, a rise in global poverty. Oxfam showed that, while the gains for the bottom 90 percent in the world were negative or meager, we were witnessing sky-high wealth increases for the 1 percent, and in particular for billionaires. For every $100 of wealth created between 2012 and 2021, $54.40 went to the top 1 percent, and $0.70 went to the bottom 50 percent. Between October 2020 and 2022, for every dollar the bottom 90 percent gained, billionaires received $1.7 million. Billionaires, they showed, hold more wealth than 50 percent of the world combined.¹

When we step away from individual cases and instead look at overall trends in rates of poverty and inequality, our intensifying wealth problem becomes unavoidably clear. Oxfam’s report is full of telling statistics and figures. In academia, economists have spent decades pulling together the data that we need to understand where we are today. There is no other way to discuss inequality and affluence: to understand it, we must conduct a proper, numbers-led analysis of our situation. What do we see when we look closely at the changes in poverty rates and inequality?²

Let’s start by looking at the global situation. We might hope that the recent increase in global poverty is a temporary state of affairs. After all, economists and statisticians consider the reduction of the number of people living in extreme poverty around the world as one of the most important positive developments in recent times. It is true that many indicators of people’s quality of life have improved a great deal over the last few decades. The economist Max Roser set up the research center Our World in Data to analyze these changes, and its results are freely available to the public. Several widely circulated graphs produced by Our World in Data document the immense progress humanity has made in combating such issues as child mortality, extreme poverty, illiteracy, and lack of access to healthcare and education. According to these graphs, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty fell from almost 90 percent in 1820 to less than 10 percent in 2015—a phenomenal drop! Their data also shows that, since 1800, child and maternal mortality rates have decreased enormously, and average life expectancy and literacy levels have soared.³

We know that major recessions, financial crises, and other unexpected disasters generally make global poverty worse. That is precisely what happened with the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020–22. The number of people living in extreme poverty rose by an estimated 11 percent—or 70 million people—in 2020. The World Bank expects that with appropriate government intervention the reduction of extreme poverty could resume, but it has spoken of a “stalled recovery” due to weak global growth prospects and higher food and energy prices. Still, we do not know what the future will look like. The post-Covid spike in poverty could be just a blip. So far, the long-term tendency does appear to be one of declining poverty rates.⁴

For optimists, these figures are to be celebrated. These optimists include not only economists, but also many wealthy philanthropists who believe in the power of entrepreneurship to tackle major social ills. Quite aptly, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation newsletter is called The Optimist, with the subtitle “Relentless pursuit of an equitable world.” A year before the start of the pandemic, Bill Gates tweeted one of the Our World in Data graphs showing the dramatic decline in poverty, adding: “This is one of my favorite infographics. A lot of people underestimate just how much life has improved over the last two centuries.”⁵

But there is another way to look at those numbers.

As Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist, has argued, the dominant narrative—that in the past everyone was very poor, and we have greatly reduced extreme poverty on a global scale—is misleading at best. There is a counternarrative that urgently needs to be heard—a debate we need to have. We need to recognize that the picture the Our World in Data graphs give us, and which is being shared so enthusiastically, is part of a wider effort to legitimize global capitalism, presenting it as the most effective way to reduce poverty. So what are the problems here?⁶

The first problem is that there is simply not enough information to come to the same conclusion as Our World in Data. With no meaningful data from before 1981 on global poverty, any claim is based on models and estimates, in particular on what one might guess people’s incomes would have been. But those estimates are extremely rough. And, as the economist Robert Allen has pointed out, if we use better data—data on how much people spend rather than how much they earn—the “social progress” narrative breaks down. In India, for example, extreme poverty rates were probably lower in pre-colonial times; they appear to have doubled during British colonial rule. Allen suggests that if we want to estimate the number of people living in extreme poverty in the past, we should analyze the available data on what people could eat, and how much they spent on clothing, fuel, rent, and other necessities. Through the lens of such consumption data, there appears to have been much less poverty in the past—which puts the “enormous progress” narrative under pressure. So, the data you use matters a lot, and the most widely circulated data may not be the most appropriate.

The second problem is that the poverty line used by Our World in Data is extremely low: $1.90 a day in 2011, in so-called “purchasing-power parity,” which is an economic technique used to compare monetary value between countries. If an economist talks about “$1.90 expressed in purchasing-power parity,” they are not referring to what a person could buy with $1.90 in New Delhi or Antananarivo, but rather what basket of goods a person could buy with around two dollars in the US in 2011. We should let that sink in. This is not poverty, but extreme poverty. Which also means that, if we use that as our main indicator of social progress, we are putting the bar very low indeed.

Many economists insist that the poverty line should be based on what one could buy with between $7.40 to $15 a day in the US in 2011. Robert Allen points out that the prevailing threshold of $1.90 a day makes for a standard of living lower than that of enslaved people in the US in the nineteenth century. Surely this absurdly low measure of extreme poverty cannot be the basis of our understanding of social and economic progress? If we instead set a poverty line of $10 a day, then we find that about two-thirds of the world are still living in poverty, rather than just 10 percent. And remember: we’re talking here about what a person could buy with a ten-dollar bill in the US in 2011.⁷

The optimists’ win-win narrative—that standards of living are improving for everyone, since increasing wealth has created a bigger pie for all of us to share—works hard to try to make us view these developments in a positive light; to believe that the global economic development we have seen over the last two centuries has brought benefits for both rich and poor. We should acknowledge that this is, broadly speaking, true. But many take this to imply that the rich and the poor have benefited equally from globalization and the spread of capitalism. Drawing this conclusion is problematic for a number of reasons.

The first is that the question we should really be asking is: how were the gains from globalization distributed? It’s not enough to ask whether we’re in a win-win situation. We need, rather, to know whether it is a fair win-win situation, or indeed, if it’s the best of all possible win-win situations. Another issue is that most of the decline in poverty has come from China, which is not capitalist in the usual sense of the word, since during the period in which the number of Chinese people living in poverty fell, the state was very strongly involved in managing the economy. Beyond this, as Nobel Prize–winning economist Amartya Sen has been stressing for decades, when we measure poverty, we should focus on what people can do and what kind of life they can live, rather than on how much money they have. We should not look at money, but at indicators of human development, such as longevity, child-mortality rates, literacy, gender equality, and so forth. In his joint work with the Belgian-Indian economist Jean Drèze, Sen has shown that the human-centered economic and social policies of (often, local) governments are what lift people out of poverty. For example, the Indian state of Kerala scores much better on those indicators of human development—and Kerala has implemented policies that many would classify as “socialist” for decades. As the development economist Ha-Joon Chang puts it, one of the myths about capitalism is that free-market policies make poor countries rich. And a final reason to debunk the win-win narrative is that historical research has shown that, as Piketty summarized, “slavery and colonialism played a central role in the Western world’s acquisition of wealth.” Many of global capitalism’s defenders totally ignore the exploitation of the Global South that took place in centuries past, but whose effects can still be felt today.⁸

Even if we look only at the last few decades and focus purely on financial indicators, the win-win narrative still shows cracks. It does not account for the fact that the rich have taken the lion’s share from the expansion of the global economy, leaving only scraps for the poor and middle classes. That disparity is readily visible when we look at the statistics. In 2016, the economists Christoph Lakner and Branko Milanovic published a paper in the World Bank Economic Review which contained another graph that sparked a lot of interest. Nicknamed “the elephant graph” for its shape, this “growth incidence curve” shows the percentage by which incomes increased for different groups of the world population between 1988 and 2008. It reveals that, overall, the poorest 70 percent saw the greatest increases in income (with the exception of the poorest 5 percent of the world population, who saw an increase which was smaller than the global average). People on a median income experienced the greatest increases of all, about 75 percent on average. The top 20 percent had very limited increases, with the exception of the top 1 percent, which saw its income rise by about 65 percent.⁹

The optimists have used this graph to support their claim that everyone wins thanks to capitalism, especially the middle classes. But here, too, we are drawing the wrong conclusions. In 2019, Jason Hickel and Huzaifa Zoomkawala updated the graph for the thirty-six-year period between 1980 and 2016. Their calculations produced a very similar elephant-shaped graph, with the biggest gains for the bottom half of the global income distribution. But as Hickel and Zoomkawala point out, these are gains in percentages relative to one’s starting position, and if you start with almost nothing, it is easy to make a huge leap forward in percentage terms. If you have $1 a day to live on, an improvement to $2 a day is a 100 percent increase, but you are still very poor. If you have $1,000 a day to live on, moving to $1,001 a day is a mere 0.1 percent increase. As the authors show, if we calculate not what the increase in income for each group is in terms of where they started, but rather how the total increase in world production has been divided between the different groups, the situation looks staggeringly different. Then, we see that the absolute change in income for the 90 percent non-rich in the world is modest—the very poorest saw their income grow by a mere $193. The vast majority of global economic growth has been claimed by the super-rich, with the 1 percent seeing their annual income boosted, on average, by $124,897, while the next 9 percent have enjoyed an average increase of $4,785.¹⁰

So while it is true, strictly speaking, that at the macro level all income groups have gained something from our increasingly globalized economy since the 1980s—and that is the point that defenders of global capitalism will stress—it’s not much of a victory for the poor. It’s also important to note that there was nothing “natural” or inevitable about this outcome: it is the result of specific choices made by powerful people. Alternative, much more equitable scenarios were within reach. This has been confirmed by a 2021 study by Jason Hickel, Dylan Sullivan, and Huzaifa Zoomkawala, in which they quantified the drain of wealth from the Global South through “unequal exchange” since the 1960s. Unequal exchange occurs when the prices for work and resources differ systematically between countries or continents. Wages paid to workers in the Global South are on average one-fifth of the level in the Global North. It therefore constitutes “a hidden transfer of value from South to North.”¹¹

The authors argue that countries in the Global North have put in place a range of measures that have kept wages and the prices for natural resources in the Global South artificially low. They have closed borders for labor migration and often also for agricultural goods, whereas capital was allowed to flow freely. They have implemented policies that rolled back labor rights and suppressed the potential power of labor unions. And, as Noam Chomsky has shown, they have used geopolitical tactics, from the assassination of leaders in the Global South who tried to improve wages and set fair prices for resources to the staging of entire coups.¹² At the same time, corporations in the Global North have become so large that they can set prices for certain goods worldwide—and they have set them very high. These unequal terms of global trade exchange have led to a loss for the Global South of $62 trillion in the period 1960–2017. That is equivalent to 97 percent of the Global South’s GDP, or a loss of around $9,951 per person. In the same period, the economies of the Global North gained $68 trillion, or on average $65,517 per person.¹³

Here, too, a defender of today’s economy might respond by saying that, in the end, everyone has gained something from increased global trade. Sure, but that’s beside the point if we want to know whether, overall, the outcome has been positive. We should be comparing our situation with an alternative world of fairer trade—a world where countries could run their economies according to their preferred model. And if we ask those questions, we see that the loss for the Global South is huge. The exorbitant profits that have lined the pockets of the billionaires on the Forbes list could also have gone to pay workers in the Global South properly for their sweat and toil. The economic power enjoyed by corporations and governments of the Global North could have remained in the hands of the governments of the Global South. Unfortunately, these facts do not register as relevant among most economists.

The upshot is captured in a striking set of figures from the 2022 Global Wealth Report released by Credit Suisse, in which the average wealth per adult is given for different continents or regions, based on figures for 2021. In that year, average wealth per adult was about $560,000 in North America, $180,000 in Europe, $77,000 in China, $65,000 in Asia-Pacific, $28,000 in Latin America, $16,000 in India, and $8,000 in Africa. However, given the great inequalities between countries, these numbers tell us little about what most households have, especially in North America, where the concentration of wealth is particularly pronounced. These numbers only tell us how vast the inequalities between countries are. From both a moral and a political standpoint, it is essential to recognize that those numbers could have been much less unequal, if the gains from trade had been divided fairly—if those who held the most wealth and power had not used globalization to grow their own fortunes. And grow they did.¹⁴

What about the distribution of the richest people worldwide? Let’s look at their fortunes in US dollars. In 2021, there were 62.5 million US-dollar millionaires. The USA is home to by far the largest share of US-dollar millionaires (39.2 percent), followed by China (9.9 percent) and Japan (5.4 percent). The UK, France, Germany, Canada, and Australia follow (all between 3 percent and 5 percent). About 264,200 of those millionaires have more than $50 million—what the financial world calls “ultra-high-net-worth individuals”—and this group grew by 50 percent in the two years preceding the 2022 Global Wealth Report. When it comes to these ultra-rich individuals, the concentration in the USA is even greater (53 percent or 141,140 people), followed by China (32,710 people) and, at some distance, Germany (9,720 people). Next are Canada, India, Japan, France, Australia, the UK, and Italy, where the numbers range roughly from 10,000 to 4,000. The other countries in the top twenty are South Korea, Russia, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Sweden, Taiwan, Spain, Brazil, Singapore, and the Netherlands. This list gives us a pretty good sense where in the world we can find the largest groups of people to whom the political limit (of ten million dollars, euros, or pounds) would most urgently apply.¹⁵

While there are millionaires on all continents, then, the global spread of the super-rich is wildly unequal. Extreme wealth concentration is a particular issue in the USA, which has about 4.25 percent of the world population, but 53 percent of the number of people with wealth of over $50 million. Looking at the bigger picture, we can clearly see that extreme wealth is concentrated in the Global North (USA, Germany, France, UK, etc.), as well as a limited number of Asian countries (China being foremost among them).

These numbers are revealing in other ways, too. In absolute terms, there is a sizable group of super-rich people. Over 62 million of them. While they may be only a fraction of the world population, this group is more than big enough to acquire considerable power should they wish to. And, as recent data has shown, the number of super-rich people is rising fast. If extreme wealth concentration is a problem, then it is also a growing one.

Clearly, inequality and poverty represent a problem on a global scale. Even so, public discussions about them—and the measures we should take to tackle them—tend to focus on developments within individual countries, since levels of inequality also differ from country to country. As we turn to look at these inequalities in more detail, we must be careful to distinguish between income and wealth. An heir to a fortune, an entrepreneur, or an investor, may have a very modest income, but hundreds of millions in stocks and shares. By contrast, the lower-middle class includes people who may have a decent income, but do not own a house or have many savings, and hence their wealth is trivial.

Income and wealth are experienced differently. The poor generally only have money in the form of income, while the rich have both income and wealth. Yet income alone does not allow you to plan for the future; it leads to a short-term mindset (what will happen if you run out of cash to feed your family before you receive your next paycheck?). Wealth, on the other hand, facilitates long-term thinking, helping its owner to plan for and reduce risks in the future.¹⁶ From country to country, we see that the biggest inequality is in wealth, rather than in income. And from the avalanche of data on wealth distribution, there are three main conclusions we can draw—what scientists call “stylized facts,” which hold true in general, though not necessarily in every particular case.

The first is that wealth inequalities within countries are huge. In affluent societies, the bottom half of the population receives mere crumbs: a small percentage of all the wealth gets divvied up among half of the people. If the distribution of wealth were perfectly equal, this group would hold on to 50 percent of total wealth. In contrast, their wealth ranges between 2 percent and 10 percent. The next 40 percent of the population—those who are moderately or fairly well-off—have a share that is roughly in proportion to their group. The biggest slice goes to the top 10 percent, who tend to hold 50–70 percent of all wealth. In this wealthy group, the top 1 percent stand out, as they tend to have 20–30 percent of all wealth on their own. But even within the 1 percent there is a huge difference in wealth between the 0.1 percent (one in every thousand people) and the next 0.9 percent (nine in every thousand people). In many countries, the 0.1 percent have taken the largest gains from globalization.

Let’s take the distribution of wealth in the USA. In 2022, the bottom half of the American population had a 2.8 percent share of national wealth. Their economic vulnerability is high: one in three families would not be able to cover an unexpected expense of $400. One in four adults has skipped some form of dental care because they can’t afford it. Depending on the poverty measure used, 8–12 percent of Americans live in poverty. With a population of about 335 million people, we can estimate that there are between 27 million and 40 million Americans officially living in poverty. The next 40 percent had a 28.4 percent share, and the top 10 percent richest households held 68.9 percent of all wealth. Within those households, there is further massive inequality, with the top 1 percent on their own holding 32 percent of total wealth in the USA.¹⁷

In most other affluent societies, wealth inequality is less stark, but the same pattern emerges everywhere: a bottom half that has very little, a middle percentile that has “a fair share,” and then the top 10 percent, which owns 50–70 percent of all wealth, with almost half of that again going to the top 1 percent. The most unequal country in the world is Russia, where the 1 percent richest citizens own 58.6 percent of all wealth.¹⁸

The second important point is that, within many countries, wealth inequality is not only huge but also increasing. In recent decades, the bottom 90 percent have lost out while the top 10 percent have gained in wealth. As Piketty has shown, the general trend for Europe and North America is that the bottom 50 percent had virtually no wealth until the Second World War, after which they accumulated up to 10 percent until the 1980s, but have since then seen their wealth decline again. Meanwhile, wealth at the top has soared. This is even the case in France, which is generally thought of as one of the more egalitarian countries: the top 1 percent had a 55 percent share of all wealth until the Second World War. This dropped to less than 20 percent at the beginning of the 1980s, only to rise again to about 25 percent in 2020. In the US, which has one of the largest wealth inequalities, nine out of ten inhabitants have seen their share of wealth contract since 1990. Only the top 10 percent have increased their share of wealth, from almost 60 percent in 1990 to almost 69 percent now.¹⁹

I suspect that the enormous impact of these changes cannot be conveyed by merely looking at the percentages. So let’s look at them in absolute, monetary terms. In the thirty years between 1990 and 2020, total wealth in the USA grew from $23.58 trillion to $135.76 trillion—a phenomenal increase of $112.18 trillion. If those gains had been distributed equally, the bottom 50 percent of the population would have seen their wealth increase from $1.72 trillion to $57.81 trillion—but instead they currently hold $4.41 trillion. The top 10 percent, however, saw their wealth increase from $12.86 trillion in 1990 to $92.62 trillion in 2020. Of the $112 trillion wealth increase over the last thirty years, more than two-thirds—$80 trillion—went to the American super-rich.

Moreover, these figures look at dollar values without accounting for inflation, and use a definition of wealth that includes consumer durables, such as cars and fridges. Adjusting for inflation and taking consumer durables out of the equation would show us a wealth increase for the top 1 percent from $8.4 trillion in 1989 to $29.5 trillion in 2018, yet a net loss of $900 billion for the bottom 50 percent.²⁰

Whatever way we look at it, whether in percentages or in absolute monetary terms, the already very unequal American wealth distribution has become even more unequal. In other affluent countries, wealth inequality is less pronounced, but it is nonetheless on the rise.²¹

The third key point is that this vast and growing wealth inequality has a gender and race dimension: if you are a man, and if you are white, you are more likely to be found on the wealthy side of the distribution, while women and people of color tend to fall below it. The racial aspect to economic inequality is perhaps most pronounced in countries with a history of slavery or other forms of racial domination. In the US, Latino and Hispanic people make up a fifth of the population but have less than 3 percent of all wealth. African-Americans make up almost 14 percent of the population and have less than 5 percent of all wealth. White people, unsurprisingly, benefit most from the current division of wealth. Moreover, the tax system makes this racial inequality worse, since the tax deductions on wealth are much less relevant for Black and Hispanic families, as, for example, in the case of the favorable tax treatment of capital gains, or in subsidies for home-owners.²²

Looking to the future, the picture is bleak. In most countries, both wealth and income inequalities have been rising and are expected to rise even further, unless citizens and their governments decide to make radically different choices to those of the last forty years. Whether or not this will be possible is a hotly debated topic among academics, many of whom highlight that inequality has grown unacceptably large, and that the power of the 1 percent has become so great and their influence so outsized that they can no longer be held to account by governments. We are already witnessing tensions between those who feel that the unjust economic settlement should be urgently addressed and those who want to keep things as they are.

What all these statistics point to, in the end, is an increasing conflict of interest among different socio-economic groups. We can’t see these conflicts of interest merely by focusing on successful individuals, or by obsessing over the latest big story about some tech billionaire. The statistics reveal what we should really be talking about, something that remains largely absent from public debate: the relationship between money and power, and between different socio-economic groups, and the forces that are driving the ongoing shift in the distribution of wealth. In other words, we need to talk about class. There are different ways to use the terminology of class, but we can borrow from quantitative studies of inequality, which, for rich nations, often divide the population into four groups. There is the working or disadvantaged class (the poorest 50 percent); the middle class (the next 40 percent); the rich (the top 10 percent); and the super-rich or dominant class (the richest 1 percent). Beyond this there is that pocket of ultra-rich people, the top 0.1 percent. Within the working class, we could further distinguish the group of the poor or impoverished (who make up 5–17 percent of the population in rich countries). These categories are also used for emerging economies, but the relative size of the different groups will vary. Developing countries have much higher poverty rates (from an average of about 30 percent in Latin America and East Asia to more than 80 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa), and a much smaller middle class and class of the rich and super-rich.²³

We can’t begin to consider the case against extreme wealth without talking about class. But this is difficult, since in many societies it is taboo. Here’s a joke that can be adapted to pretty much anywhere:

Person 1: Do you know how America’s class system works?

Person 2: America has a class system?

Person 1: Yes, that’s how it works.

Most of us don’t notice the workings of class in our societies and in our lives. That’s not surprising. Such was the success of the civil rights and emancipation movements of the late 1960s and 1970s, many were led to believe that everyone had gained equal opportunities. And if we all have equal opportunities, then surely class no longer matters—right?

Alongside this, the steady decline of unions almost everywhere, and indeed union-busting in some places, has weakened an important institution that raises awareness about class differences. More insidious still is the fact that societies have increasingly developed in such a way that people from different social classes do not really mingle anymore. Housing, education, and healthcare are all broadly segregated along class lines, and in Europe, widespread secularization has meant that one place where people from all social classes met—the church—is now a place most people no longer visit. The abolishment of universal draft (although in most countries this was only for men) has likewise taken away one of the last institutions which brought together people from across the class divide. Many people have no proper understanding of the lives and constraints of those in classes other than their own.

Perhaps as a result of this we tend to underestimate how large inequalities are. Those who are poor tend to overestimate their position; those who are rich tend to downplay how much more they have.

Across society at large, there is a widespread lack of opportunity for discussing economic differences in terms of class. Yes, it’s a taboo, but I suspect it goes deeper—it’s not just that we have learned not to talk about class; rather, we seem to have forgotten to think in terms of class. We like to envision our success in life as being the result of our individual choices, and tend to overlook external factors such as the development of new technologies, or conflicts of interest and power differences between different groups, or relationships between the people who own the companies we work for and those who run the country.

Not to mention the fact that the terminology of class clashes with one of the most sacred political principles in many societies—namely, that all people are equal. No country has made this more explicit than France, with its national motto—Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité (Liberty, Equality, Fraternity)—which originated in the French Revolution. Ending the feudal social and political structures that had dominated since the Middle Ages, the French, soon followed by other Europeans, decreed that all citizens had to be equal in their political rights (although this meant, in practice, all French men). This idea of equality lies at the heart of democracies around the world: every vote counts equally, and our legal systems protect our equal standing before the law. But this widespread constitutional and formal notion that we are all equal has made some of us believe that we are in fact equal. Unfortunately, the data says something different. We may have constitutions that declare our equality, but the reality is that we have vastly unequal opportunities and outcomes in life. And as we will see, this is not just down to an unequal distribution of talents, nor the different choices we each make, but because our social contract—the moral and political principles according to which we organize our societies—does not really put equality and social justice first. We live by the principles of economic efficiency, and of “to each according to what they can extract from others.”²⁴

Of course, there are groups active in society today who do not need to be convinced that they aren’t treated as equals. Activists in the feminist movement, the anti-racist movement, the disability movement, the LGBTQ+ movement, and, in some countries, the movements of Dalits or indigenous groups, have been fighting to be treated as equals for centuries. But in the case of class, some like to believe that this is at least one form of inequality that we have overcome.

There is one group in particular that has a very strong interest in promoting the belief that class doesn’t exist—the very rich and the super-rich. Because if you can make the vast majority of the population believe that class no longer plays a significant role in their social and political lives, then there is no need for class struggle, redistribution of wealth, and a fundamental revision of the social contract.

This helps explain why the rich and super-rich who want to end current levels of inequality—like Abigail Disney and the members of Resource Generation—have had to “come out” as class traitors. As Yahya Alazrak, Resource Generation’s executive director, explained to me,

Society is built around maintaining the class system that we have. In exchange for material prosperity there is a certain amount of loyalty and allegiance that is asked of us. What we are asking our members to do is to choose to be in solidarity with poor and working-class people, which is an act of traitorship to wealthy classes.

When I asked Alazrak whether talking about class in America is difficult, they confirmed without hesitation: “It’s a taboo! That’s a big part of why we exist—to change that taboo. One of our strategic goals is to change the culture to talk more openly about class. And about money, period.”²⁵

So how did we end up here? One remarkable thing the data reveals is that, in Europe and North America, inequality was significantly lower in the post-war period—between 1945 and, roughly, 1975. How did we manage to reverse that trend?

Mainstream economists would typically point to factors that are a part of economic development: technological advances, the spread of globalization. These changes reduced the demand for manual labor in high-income countries, since the work could be done more cheaply in low-wage countries, or by computer-controlled automated machines. This drop in the demand for manual labor depressed those workers’ wages and increased the wage gap with university-educated workers. This would then explain growing economic inequality. But as Rob Reich, a professor of economics who served as labor minister under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, points out, this is only part of the story—and he regrets that he himself believed this explanation for a long time.²⁶

What this version of the story misses is the takeover, from the 1970s onward, of our economic and political systems by a fundamentalist market ideology that posits selfishness as the driving force in economic behavior; an ideology that has been able to move key actors to make changes that have hugely benefited the dominant class. Conceived as a deliberate attempt by certain right-wing ideologues to dominate governance and policy-making, this ideological revolution began gradually and was ultimately successful. It was most visible in the US under President Ronald Reagan and the UK under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. When Reagan came to power, he introduced the largest tax cuts in American history. The highest rate of income tax had dropped from 70 percent to 28 percent by the time he left office. Reagan and Thatcher both had strong anti-union policies, and had no qualms about firing workers on strike. In 1981, Reagan fired 11,000 striking air traffic controllers and barred them from ever working again for the federal government. Similarly, Margaret Thatcher reacted much more aggressively than her predecessor when miners went on strike in Britain in 1984, eventually breaking the strike and weakening the unions; overall, the number of British workers covered by collective agreements dropped from 82 percent when Thatcher first came into power to a mere 26 percent in 2018.²⁷ While other European countries did not witness the same tax cuts or the same attacks on strikers, the economic ideology that is generally associated with Reagan and Thatcher eventually took hold there and in most places around the world.²⁸

Prior to this, in the decades that followed the Second World War, there had been widespread support for the view that most social progress could be made with a “mixed economy”—an economic system that combines capitalist markets with government regulation. Guided by the thinking of the influential English economist John Maynard Keynes, governments aimed to lift people out of poverty, reduce inequality, and enhance social mobility through substantial investment in public goods that would benefit all, such as healthcare and education. Taxation was much higher, and much more progressive, but people in Europe and North America saw this as a means of creating a society that was civilized, safe, and fair. And far-reaching government intervention, including protection of some industrial sectors, was considered a proven recipe for developing the economy.

The story that most economics professors will tell is that, in the early 1970s, Keynesian economics lost ground when the world’s developed economies experienced stagflation—a combination of high unemployment, slow economic growth (stagnation), and rising prices (inflation). Since Keynesianism was judged not to have adequate answers for addressing this problem, the ground was fertile for the sowing of new economic ideas, in particular a governance paradigm that had been quietly germinating for a long time: neoliberalism.²⁹

As historians have shown, advocates of neoliberalism started to influence politics in a significant way from the 1970s onward, but they had been developing their ideas in transnational networks since the 1930s. Neoliberalism, like any political and economic ideology, consists of an ideal, a set of underlying moral assumptions, and a set of practical policy measures. It starts from the belief that, outside their families, humans are motivated by selfishness, and that we would all be better off if we arranged our societies accordingly. It asks us to believe that human beings are not intrinsically motivated to work hard, and so we should be extensively monitored and held accountable, even if that leads to huge bureaucracy. It asks us to believe that, in order to arrange an economy efficiently, we need to put people in competition with each other. The market readily creates competition between people seeking profits, but, neoliberalism tells us, public goods such as education or healthcare should also be based on models of competition—because the private sector can deliver services and solve problems much more effectively than the government. And it asks us to believe that, within this system, individuals should be held fully responsible for their failures and given sole credit for their success.³⁰

The neoliberal era has had a staggering effect upon our societies and on the distribution of wealth within them. Perhaps most visibly, neoliberal politicians have privatized many of the public services that were previously provided by the state, such as electricity, healthcare, and public transport. In many European countries, services that were once (partly) funded by the state but delivered by other parties, such as care and education, have become subject to severe modes of compliance and accountability. This is the logical consequence of the neoliberal view that public servants are not intrinsically motivated, because they are not in competition, not seeking profit.

But the changes go deeper than this. Neoliberalism has provided the perfect environment for the super-rich to advance their own interests. As Noam Chomsky has rightly stressed, the real-life version of neoliberalism that we have witnessed, especially in the US, can often be better described as neoliberalism for the poor and working classes, while large corporations and the rich receive generous state subsidies. Neoliberals have lobbied for the deregulation of markets, tax cuts for entrepreneurs and the wealthy, and aggressive geo-politics—all of which benefit those who have the most, while harming the most vulnerable.

The essential point is this: on both a domestic and a global scale, the neoliberal mechanisms that have made extreme wealth concentration possible have also made poverty an enduring trap. This is why inequality keeps growing, and in some countries is effectively spiralling out of control.³¹

There will be two major objections to this conclusion. The first is that our focus should be on poverty, not inequality—or wealth. Take this statement by Willem Buiter, an influential economist who held professorships at various Ivy League universities before becoming Global Chief Economist with Citibank: “Poverty bothers me. Inequality does not. I just don’t care.”³² Buiter is not the only economist who thinks that questions about equity and distribution are annoying distractions. Even outside the economics profession, it is the stance typically taken by many wealthy philanthropists as well as entrepreneurs and politicians who proclaim that they are striving for a better world. Let’s try to eliminate poverty, is their rallying cry. That’s what really matters. Inequality is simply not on their agenda.

Why do we care about poverty? The answer to this question depends on how we understand the concept. If we understand poverty as a state of suffering induced by a person’s material living conditions, then poverty matters intrinsically. It is a state of ill-being that is to be avoided. If we understand poverty simply as the state of having not enough money (or consumer goods, in subsistence economies), poverty matters instrumentally, since the lack of money leads to hunger, stress, social exclusion, and other negative consequences. If poverty matters instrumentally and not intrinsically, that doesn’t make it morally irrelevant—there are plenty of examples of hugely important phenomena that matter instrumentally, such as having too high a concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, or Covid vaccines not being available in all countries.

We can also understand poverty using a so-called “relative poverty” measure, whereby it is related to what others have in society. This is a widespread measure used in affluent societies, defined by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as living on less than half of the median disposable income in a country. The underlying idea here is that what poverty means relates to what “an average person” living in the same society can do. This notion of relative poverty builds a dimension of inequality into the concept of poverty. If the kind of poverty we care about is a relative notion of poverty, then it follows logically that we also care about at least some aspects of inequality (though admittedly we’d only care, in this case, about the income distribution from the poorest up until those on a median income, and hence what happens to the wealthy and very richest doesn’t come into the equation).³³

Inequality, by contrast, is only ever instrumentally important. In other words, inequality is bad because it has bad consequences. It produces differences in social status and thereby creates stigma and undermines social cohesion. It leads to the abuse of power and domination of the political process by the elite, which then results in unfair policies that help the rich more than the poor. It undermines equality of opportunity. It generates stress and has negative effects on people’s mental health. Anyone who says that inequality doesn’t matter is thus making a grave mistake. They might want to make the point that inequality matters instrumentally rather than intrinsically, but it does not follow that it is not important.³⁴

The question is whether it’s possible to address poverty without tackling inequality. Perhaps this is the case in some utopian country where inequality is very limited and policies are not biased in favor of the better-off. But in most places, tackling poverty will mean tackling inequality. In Poverty, by America, sociologist Matthew Desmond shows how, in the US, poverty is consolidated by government policies that give various subsidies and tax breaks to the rich and super-rich, while policies aimed at the poor are much less generous. Subsidizing mortgages or savings accounts for college, offering tax breaks to those who give large donations to colleges—all these policies are irrelevant for the overwhelming majority of the poor, but hugely beneficial to those who are better off. And there are further policy choices that governments make which worsen inequality while making it harder to alleviate poverty, such as not taxing increases in a person’s wealth assets (their “capital gains”); or lowering the top rate on income tax; or tolerating massive tax evasion. All these decisions deprive governments of money that they could spend on policies to help the poor, such as universal healthcare, better public education, or improved social housing. As Desmond rightly points out, “help from the government is a zero-sum affair”—money given via subsidies to the rich, or no longer collected from them via tax breaks, cannot be given to those who are worse off. Obviously, the degree to which the government is “giving to the rich rather than to the poor” will differ between countries, and the US is a particularly troubling case. But even in more egalitarian countries, governments repeatedly make policy choices that help the rich much more than the poor.³⁵

We can thus safely set aside the objection that poverty matters but inequality does not. Given that refuting this objection is so easy, you might wonder why those who raise it do so. My hunch is that some people who hold this view are unable to see its flaws because of their (possibly subconscious) ideological commitment to neoliberal values. Others might just have a more pragmatic approach, believing that inequality is a divisive issue, unlike the more urgent task of lifting the poor out of poverty. Of course, they are right about the urgency of tackling poverty, but the point still stands: this can’t be done without also addressing inequality. And then there are the super-rich philanthropists who care deeply about poverty, but don’t want to speak about economic injustices, since they might have to question their own privileged position. Talking about poverty is politically safe, since it can be done without asking why some have so much and others so little.

The second objection we need to consider is the so-called trickle-down effect. This is the idea that, if we allow the rich to become richer through policies like cutting tax, they will invest their extra capital productively, and thereby create jobs and improve welfare for all. Their increased wealth will ultimately trickle down to the poor and the middle classes. It would be in everyone’s interest, then, to pursue a set of economic policies that favor the owners of capital (that is, the rich). And so, the argument goes, a short-term increase in inequality can actually be a good thing, as it will lead to the creation of a bigger pie and everyone will get a piece. As the former UK Labour prime minister Tony Blair said in 2001, “If you end up going after those people who are the most wealthy in society, what you actually end up doing is in fact not even helping those at the bottom end.”³⁶

As we’ve already seen, this is not how it works out in practice. Empirical studies have repeatedly confirmed that trickle-down economics is a false theory. It does not work. Or, as US senator Elizabeth Warren put it: “Wealth does not trickle down. It trickles up.”³⁷

Trickle-down economics has been discredited among academics for some time. In a study analyzing all major reductions in taxes on the rich across eighteen affluent countries in the period 1965–2015, David Hope and Julian Limberg found that tax cuts for the rich led to higher income inequality, and did not have a signficant effect on economic growth or reducing unemployment. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF)—which is generally seen to be ideologically aligned with neoliberal economic theory, given its concern with macro-economic parameters such as economic growth rather than equity—has come to the conclusion that wealth from the top does not trickle down.³⁸

But it’s not just that trickle-down economics has been empirically proven not to be true: there is increasing empirical support for the opposite view, namely that inequality hurts the economy. As has been shown by Heather Boushey, former president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, economic inequality hinders productivity and growth through various mechanisms. It means that children and teenagers grow up without the support and opportunities to realize their full economic potential. It harms social mobility, which in turn hinders innovation. And the stagnation of wages for all except the rich and super-rich goes hand in hand with decreasing consumer demand that could otherwise help grow the economy.³⁹

You might think that, given all this evidence, the idea of trickle-down economics would have disappeared by now. Sadly, this is not the case. Australian economist John Quiggin was right to classify trickle-down economics as a “zombie idea”: an idea that has been proven wrong, and should be dead, but which nevertheless keeps rearing its head from time to time. Despite all the proof that cutting taxes for the richest does not lead to universally beneficial economic growth, we keep seeing the idea reappearing in politics. Most strikingly, Liz Truss, who served as British prime minister for forty-four days in 2022, proposed trickle-down economics as a way of responding to the escalating cost of living crisis caused by the Covid pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine. She announced a package of measures aiming to lower the tax rates that apply to the rich, including a reduction in the highest income tax rate from 45 percent to 40 percent and a reversal of the planned increase in corporation tax from 19 percent to 25 percent. The financial markets reacted in alarm to this announcement, prompting the IMF to call upon the UK government to reconsider. Only a few weeks later, Liz Truss had to resign, and her budget was seen as the culprit.⁴⁰

Despite all this, these two objections still have their defenders; you can find them in the media, politics, and in public discussions even today. Many of them are employed by think tanks funded by the super-rich. In fact, the think tank that advised Liz Truss, the Institute of Economic Affairs, has had a major influence on her successor, the multimillionaire Rishi Sunak, who has appointed several of this pressure group’s biggest supporters to his cabinet. Again, I fear that John Quiggin was right when he concluded, “History shows that, no matter how favorably the well-off are treated, there will always be arguments to suggest that they should receive even better treatment.”⁴¹

3 It’s Dirty Money

The data is clear: wealth inequality is increasing, the super-rich harbor dazzling amounts of money, and they are accumulating it at a faster pace than anyone else can increase their meager savings—leaving the poor in a trap. But there are still other weighty reasons why excessive wealth is a problem.

Let’s start with the most obvious one: the deeply immoral and often also illegal nature of this wealth. The Londoners who took part in the study of the riches line all felt that, when it came to the question of whether there was anything problematic about a person’s wealth, the answer depended on how that person behaved. Some super-rich people deserved it, they said, because they were making the world a better place—they were creating decent jobs, providing goods and services that met people’s needs and improved their quality of life, inventing various types of useful technologies or new drugs that helped cure different diseases.¹

But is this true? Do the super-rich, on balance, make the world a better place?

Here’s the thing: almost all of the time, in the process of doing what they do (and this includes activities that make the world a better place), the super-rich are also making the world worse. Whether or not they are doing good, they are also doing something bad—something really bad. They are causing harm.

Academic discussions about the problem of extreme wealth inequality tend to ignore wealth that was generated in ways that are harmful. Or wealth that grew in ways that have adversely affected others. This isn’t surprising, since it is abundantly clear to almost everyone that any wealth generated by immoral or illegal processes lacks legitimacy. Political philosophers have written enough tomes on inequality to fill entire libraries and still think it quite logical to pass over dirty money, since there is no moral reasoning needed for us to make up our minds about it: this money is bad. People who become very rich as a result of amassing dirty money have acted unethically at best. Some are simply criminals.²

Yet the world of dirty money-making is not hermetically sealed; it permeates our societies, and harms (and sometimes kills) ordinary citizens. Dirty fortunes create a lot of collateral damage. They greatly interfere with our ability to achieve a fairer world. We cannot afford to ignore them any longer: identifying, containing, and eliminating dirty money might well have to be our first task if we want to protect ourselves from the damage caused by wealth concentration. Politicians around the world ought to put this at the top of their agenda when they meet in the highest democratic forums—the United Nations, the European Parliament, and so on. We urgently need international cooperation so that we can close tax havens and halt other practices that permit the accumulation of dirty money. If the World Economic Forum is serious about its mission to make the world a better place, its members should discuss it, too. But they won’t, of course: they prefer to listen to entrepreneurs talk about how they can solve all our problems while at the same time making a profit. Or, they might talk about it once or twice, in order to disprove their critics, but then do nothing about it. There is little evidence that the super-rich are willing to look at themselves in the mirror and ask hard questions about whether their money is tainted. They, along with most politicians, prefer to focus on positive stories, on public–private partnerships, on addressing issues that don’t affect them.³

We should remember that there are many different forms that dirty money can take—and that what counts as “dirty,” in the sense of illegal or illegitimate, is not a black-and-white issue. While there is some really dark money that cannot see the light of day because otherwise its owners would end up in prison, there are many shades of grey here. Dirty money is not just about violent dictators selling their countries’ valuable resources to firms who bribe them with millions of dollars. Dirty money also takes forms that many regard as harmless—that is, money tarnished by everyday practices that somehow seem, if not innocent, then inevitable, difficult to weed out. Sometimes these practices are not even considered immoral at all, at least as long as they have not led to court convictions. As we should have learned from The Godfather, criminals are very good at legitimizing their ill-gotten fortunes, and justifying them to themselves.

So let’s start sifting and sorting, and find out which categories of wealthy people really ought not have become wealthy the way they did, because their fortunes violate basic moral principles that are endorsed across the political and ideological spectrum. My aim here is not to give a complete overview of the illegal or immoral ways in which the rich might have amassed money. It is rather to show that, for a significant proportion of super-rich individuals, we do not even have to ask about the negative consequences of their having so much money—a question reserved for the next two chapters. They simply should not have had that money in the first place, full stop.

The first—and perhaps most obvious—group of rich people who have been sitting on money that cannot morally be said to be theirs are those who have profited from systematic crimes against humanity. Such bloodstained riches can be found all over the world, but let us focus on two canonical examples: the German industrial fortunes that are linked to Nazi atrocities; and the wealth derived from transatlantic slavery.

It’s widely known that several German business families contributed to the success of the Nazi regime and profited from the atrocities the Nazis committed—including the previous owners of BMW, Porsche, and Dr. Oetker. Not only did industrial tycoons put together the funding for the Nazis’ election campaign for the fatal elections of March 1933, knowing that Hitler was planning to end democracy, but they also benefited materially from Hitler’s regime, including through the use of tens of thousands of forced or slave laborers in their factories. As part of the Nazis’ goal to “purify” the German population—which would lead them to murder 11 million people, 6 million of them Jewish—they imprisoned Jews, political dissidents, gays, and Roma and Sinti from all over Europe in bestial conditions in concentration camps. Men, women, and children were put to work until, in most cases, they died or were sent to the gas chamber. This inhumanity did not deter business owners. Close to Auschwitz, in German-occupied Poland, IG Farben acquired—for little money—land whose Polish inhabitants had been forcibly evicted by Nazi occupiers. IG then built a factory where it put to work thousands of prisoners from the nearby Auschwitz concentration camp.⁴

German citizens have protested about many of those fortunes that Nazi collaborators simply held on to after the war, arguing that reparations were too meager or took too long. The German historian Andreas Wirsching notes that now, seventy years after the end of the war, there are more and more German banks and companies commissioning historical research into their Nazi legacies. He attributes this increased willingness to investigate the past to a generational shift among company leaders and historians and archivists, as well as new opportunities for conducting such research thanks to the unification of Germany. Yet at the same time, Wirsching also detects a strong note of commercial self-interest, since such research is effectively a seal of approval, or certificate, that states: “National Socialism and its consequences have been evaluated and dealt with.” He adds: “What the actual results are is almost secondary (to exaggerate slightly).” And yet, some present-day German billionaires still prefer not to give too much attention to the roles played in the war by their forefathers. In his recent book Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties, journalist David de Jong stresses the need for the contemporary heirs of rich Nazi supporters to be transparent about the fact that the wealth they inherited is tainted by their ancestors’ collaboration in genocide and war crimes.⁵

If the historic owners of those businesses had done the right thing, it is highly unlikely that their companies would have become so wealthy—or even exist at all today. The super-rich in Germany and neighboring countries—and anyone who has inherited money from businesspeople and companies that flourished during the Third Reich—should all ask themselves to what extent the money they have today is the fruit of collaboration with the Nazi regime. This should be more than just some PR operation. It is a moral imperative if you want to have a clean conscience.

Much the same goes for the second case, which has produced the wealth of many people alive today: slavery. This is especially important in the US, though fortunes generated by the transatlantic slave trade proliferate across the UK, Portugal, Spain, France, and the Netherlands. In America today, racial inequality in the possession of wealth is directly related to the systematic exploitation of Black people for the profit of white slave-owners. Just before abolition, in around 1860, about four million enslaved men, women, and children were living and working on American soil. It has been calculated that those people lost out on an estimated $20.3 trillion in wages for their work. That means, quite simply, that all American families and institutions who have slave-owners among their ancestors, and have inherited anything of value from them, would have had less, had the enslaved not been robbed of their liberty and proper compensation for their work. And, conversely, present-day African Americans would have significantly more wealth, in contrast to the meager 4.5 percent of total private wealth currently shared among Black Americans, while they make up 13.6 percent of the US population.⁶

It is hard to object to the claim that wealth holders are not morally entitled (and, in a just world, would not be legally entitled) to the portion of their wealth that is based on historical crimes against humanity. They should not have that money, regardless of whether they were directly involved in those wrongs, or whether it was their ancestors’ doing. You might rightly point out that this principle applies as much to the middle classes as it does to the rich and super-rich. That’s true, and to the extent that wealth is based on wrongdoing, it should be returned to those from whom it was taken, or otherwise given over to restore the harm done—independently of whether its owner is extremely rich or merely well-off. No one is entitled to keep the profits of historic crimes.

There are, increasingly, examples of such reparations being attempted. In 2016, the University of Glasgow recognized that, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it had accepted gifts and bequests from people who profited from slavery. In September 2018, upon the publication of a study that documented these findings, the university announced that it would develop a set of initiatives to acknowledge this part of the university’s past, as well as to fund a range of intellectual activities advancing the study of slavery and its history. In 2019, it signed an agreement with the University of the West Indies in Jamaica to collaborate on these matters, and pledged £20 million to fund activities relating to restorative justice. One of the results of this collaboration is a Masters Programme in Reparatory Justice, in partnership with UWI.⁷

But, as has been stressed by Olivette Otele, Distinguished Research Professor of the Legacies and Memory of Slavery at SOAS in London, restorative justice for slavery is not merely a matter of financial compensation. It is crucially important that the relationship between the injustices of slavery and present-day inequalities are understood, and that the descendants of the enslaved determine the agenda of reparations. Otele points out that restorative justice ultimately needs to take place at the national level, which is what the Netherlands did when, in December 2022, the government apologized for the country’s role in slavery and established a fund to raise awareness and address its present-day effects. In other countries, too, there are calls for the state to engage in reparations. For example, in 1825, as the price for gaining independence from France, Haiti was forced to take on a large debt with the French state, who wanted to indemnify the former slave-owners. For decades, the Haitian government has been asking France for a reimbursement of those debt payments, which would indeed restore a historical injustice.⁸

The range of examples that Otele gives of institutions that have successfully undertaken restorative-justice projects—such as the American universities of Brown and Harvard, and the British company Greene King—show that any organization can take important steps toward making reparations. Even families can do this, as the British Trevelyan family showed when in 2023 they made a public apology for the 1,000 people that their ancestors had enslaved on the island of Grenada, and set up a community fund for economic development of the island. Think what would happen if all the descendants of those who profited from slavery, including the British and Dutch royal families and many American inherited-wealth dynasties, were to do something similar. Can you imagine what a huge shift of money and power that would represent?⁹

A second major group of super-rich people who become wealthy immorally—and who clearly should not be allowed to keep that money—are kleptocrats and officials engaging in corruption. Kleptocracy literally means “rule by thieves” (from the Greek kleptes, “thief,” and kratia, “power” or “rule”)—we’re talking here about heads of state and political leaders who loot their own countries. Take, for example, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, vice president of Equatorial Guinea and son of Theodore Obiang, its president. Despite the fact that in the 1990s the country started to sell oil, the majority of its population has not seen any improvement in living standards; most are still living in dire poverty. This hasn’t prevented the vice president from indulging in a jet-setting lifestyle, though. In the period from 2004 to 2011, he reportedly bought an $80-million mansion in Paris, another one for $30 million in California, and another for $15 million in São Paulo, a $38.5-million Gulfstream jet, two yachts, fourteen luxury cars, $44 million in fine art, and much more besides. At auction, he spent $275,000 on the crystal-covered glove that Michael Jackson wore on his 1987–8 tour. Recent changes in international rules have led to the confiscation of some of his properties in Europe. But there is no sign of the president and his family losing their iron grip on the country, or their enjoyment of vast, unearned riches. In November 2022, President Obiang was re-elected in what everyone except his own clan recognizes as fraudulent elections.¹⁰

Most kleptocrats operating today are the authoritarian rulers of countries where the majority of people are living in extreme poverty, such as Gabon and Congo-Brazzaville. Citizens of those countries do not enjoy the fruits of the oil, diamonds, or other raw resources that could make them all prosper. Instead, these revenues line the pockets of politicians and their friends, as well as the multinationals with whom they collaborate. But it’s not just the multinationals of the Global North who are implicated here: as the philosopher Leif Wenar has argued in his book Blood Oil, consumers of that oil are also complicit. We all choose to accept that oil gets sold by those able to gain control over it, rather than supporting the principle of resource sovereignty (whereby resources belong to all the people in a given territory, and thus the oil is the property of all, a common resource). Once we start looking at global trade in more detail, there are so many ways in which citizens worldwide, but especially those with the money to consume, are complicit in rights-violating practices.¹¹

Things become even worse when kleptocratic regimes turn to state violence, torture, and other human-rights abuses as a method for maintaining power. Kleptocrats seek political power in order to enrich themselves, and then use that wealth to stay in power, which creates a vicious circle. They commit fraud in elections, jail opponents or let them be murdered, crush independent media, and terrorize voters. Corruption is a standard part of their modus operandi—corruption that is much more vicious, violent, and endemic than the corruption common in modern democracies. Kleptocrats are not rulers that try to advance the interests of the people, but instead they advance their own interests, that of their family members, and a few other people that are instrumentally important to them. Once they have control of their country’s wealth and political power, they do their utmost to keep it.¹²

Many of us will think that it is a total no-brainer that these dictators should not have the money that they do. Mobutu Sese Seko, longtime dictator of Zaïre, should not have seized a personal budget larger than his government’s combined spending on healthcare, education, and welfare.¹³ It was equally outrageous that Imelda Marcos, former First Lady of the Philippines, owned more than a thousand pairs of shoes, when so many Filipinos were living in poverty under her husband’s regime.

Yet while there are an increasing number of people and organizations now outraged at such abuses, this was not always a widespread reaction. As we know from the research of Jason Sharman, professor of international relations at Cambridge University, only since the beginning of this century has there been a change in the global norm around extreme corruption and corresponding rules. While previously kleptocracy was taken as a given, and was often even facilitated by other countries, including those engaging in handing out development aid, there are now international legal agreements making it a crime for countries to “host” money stolen by the officials of another state. However, in Sharman’s assessment, many governments are failing to abide by those rules. Some are merely paying lip service to this new consensus. But even those who are genuinely committed to halting kleptocracy are restricted in their ability to do so.

Those of us living in rich democratic countries should be careful not to understand kleptocracy as a problem that only plagues poor, developing nations. Grand corruption by state officials is a problem from which no country is immune. It also occurs among high-level officials in North America and Europe and in advanced Asian economies such as South Korea and Japan. An important difference, of course, is that the impact on the welfare of a country’s citizens is less devastating. While widespread corruption in a developed economy leads primarily to a larger budget deficit, in poorer nations it means that citizens must continue to live without running water or adequate food supplies. Even so, state corruption anywhere is a dangerous and corrosive force—as two European examples show.

Let’s look first at the case of Vladimir Putin and his cronies. The account given by scholars of Russian politics is grim. Since Putin rose to power in 1999, he has been using kleptocratic techniques to build power, as well as to enrich himself and a close circle of confidants. Corruption is rampant: stealing from the state budget, extorting funding from private companies, even seizing companies outright. Russians who want to belong to the political elite will become embroiled in corruption, and this makes them loyal to Putin. If a collaborator of the regime does not follow the Kremlin line, they will be tried for corruption and jailed. Corruption is thus not only used to acquire vast fortunes for Putin and his friends, but also to ensure that all those involved remain pliable. Once they have profited from Putin’s regime, his super-rich cronies often move abroad. Many have invested their vast wealth in real estate in Europe’s capitals, where they enjoy the advantages of living in a genuine democracy, with all the protections that the rule of law brings for its inhabitants. They are no longer invested in developing Russia for the benefit of all Russians. Nor will they even speak up on their fellow Russians’ behalf, given how unsafe it is for them to do so: there are an astonishing number of collaborators-turned-critics who die extremely suspicious deaths, from unexplained falls from windows to radioactive poisonings. Independent journalists are not safe either; many who engage in critical reporting have been killed. In 2004, the editor of the Russian edition of Forbes was shot dead a few weeks after the magazine published a list of the hundred richest Russians. On October 7, 2006, Vladimir Putin’s birthday, the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a fierce critic of the regime, was murdered in the stairwell of her apartment.¹⁴

The damage caused by Putin’s kleptocratic regime is not limited to Russian citizens. Putin has also been putting his vast financial fortune to geopolitical ends, in particular through buying the support of international allies. His political party, United Russia, has made large donations to right-wing political parties in many other countries. Since this is in most cases illegal, such transactions often have to take place via loopholes in the law. For example, in 2018 the Italian right-wing party the Lega (League) reportedly received €65 million from Moscow, which was channeled via an intermediary organization so as to stay within Italian rules on political donations. A higher campaign budget tends to positively influence election results, and, while a causal relation is impossible to prove, in the first elections after they received the donations (which were elections for the European Parliament), the Lega became the biggest party in Italy. That must have suited Putin nicely, as the Lega has been a vocal defender of Russian interests at the European level ever since. This pro-Russian advocacy has included arguing for an end to the EU sanctions that were imposed on Russia after its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

Clearly, one problem with such corrupt funding is a lack of accountability, because the parties involved will do all they can to make sure that the money cannot be traced. Even if all the evidence points toward Russian financial support for far-right and conservative parties, there is rarely hard evidence. Such is the case with the Dutch extreme-right party Forum voor Democratie (Forum for Democracy), whose leader has staunchly defended Putin in all circumstances, including when he went to war in Ukraine in 2022. No solid proof has been uncovered to show that the party has received money from the Kremlin—but that’s hardly surprising. We don’t always know how kleptocrats buy the allegiance of collaborators abroad.¹⁵

But corruption isn’t just a Russian problem. Elsewhere in Europe, state corruption causes problems, as the Italian example clearly shows. In Italy, kleptocratic practices are undeniably of a different scale to those in Russia, given that it is a democracy with multiple parties for whom citizens can freely vote. Yet corruption has been endemic in Italian politics and society for a very long time. The infamous case of Silvio Berlusconi shows how problematic this set of widely shared societal habits can become if a super-rich person who already has great influence in other sectors (in his case, the economy and the media) assumes political power. Berlusconi served as prime minister in four governments between 1994 and 2011. He was already a billionaire businessman when he first took office. Italian political scientists have argued that during his tenure the government took many corruption-enhancing measures; while Berlusconi himself was directly accused of bribery, false accounting, collusion, tax evasion, corruption, and fraud, as well as paying for sex with a seventeen-year-old girl. Given his ownership of a media empire, he was also accused of having major conflicts of interest. Some of the cases against Berlusconi were dropped because of statutes of limitations, and only in one was he convicted of tax fraud. He received a four-year prison sentence in 2013, reduced to one year, and, because of his age (seventy-six at the time), did a year of unpaid community service instead. He was also banned from political office, but after that ban ended was elected for the European Parliament and, in 2022, for the Italian senate.¹⁶

Putin’s Russia and Berlusconi’s Italy are two particularly memorable examples, but we would be prudent not to assume that widespread state corruption only happens somewhere else—just think of the UK’s “chumocracy” scandal in 2020 or of Donald Trump’s attempt to rig the 2020 presidential election in the US. All these cases are instructive, revealing what is needed to fight against kleptocracy: a clear separation of powers within a government, with a truly independent judiciary; autonomous, impartial and independent mass media who do not have to fear speaking out; financial transparency so that we know who owns what; and careful oversight of other democratic institutions, such as electoral systems. We must protect these instruments against the encroachment of billionaires and multimillionaires, who have—again and again—tried to take the kleptocratic route for accumulating wealth and power, doing what they can to weaken our democratic institutions. Unfortunately, much of the time they succeed.

Of course, war crime and state corruption aren’t the only ways that the super-rich amass fortunes while damaging the lives of fellow citizens. Another form of dirty money is gained by business practices that deliberately cause customers harm.

Take the Sackler family. The Sacklers own Purdue Pharma, a company that sells OxyContin, an opioid painkiller. In the late 1990s, the company started an aggressive and misleading marketing campaign for OxyContin among primary-care physicians, or general practitioners. In the six years following its approval by the Food and Drug Administration, Purdue Pharma deliberately misled doctors by promoting OxyContin as a drug that was less addictive than other pain medications, knowing this to be untrue. Another element of its deceitful marketing strategy was to intentionally target general practitioners rather than medical specialists, aware that GPs have less training on medical issues around addiction and opioids. Purdue Pharma’s marketers also distributed fake scientific charts to these doctors to support their bogus claims.¹⁷

When GPs started to prescribe OxyContin on a larger scale, sales exploded, reaching a level far above what would have been possible if they had been limited to prescriptions issued by specialists. By 2015, the annual sales of OxyContin came close to $3 billion, while Forbes estimated the Sackler family’s wealth to be at $14 billion.¹⁸ The Sacklers became active in philanthropy, in particular giving to major art museums in the UK and USA.

Yet with the unfolding of the opioid crisis, which involved several pharmaceutical companies and saw an estimated 500,000 deaths in the US, the Sackler family and Purdue Pharma increasingly came under fire. By 2020, all fifty states had filed lawsuits against Purdue and Sackler family members for their role in the opioid crisis, and Purdue Pharma filed for bankruptcy. In October 2020, Purdue Pharma pleaded guilty to criminal charges concerning the misleading marketing of OxyContin. By March 2022, the Sackler family members reached an agreement to pay as much as $6 billion in return for liability protection against all current and future civil claims in this case, and $750 million of the $6 billion has been set aside to compensate the more than 100,000 victims and their relatives. Yet that is a very little comfort for families who, in a matter of months, saw their loved ones become addicted and die—including young adults in their twenties and thirties, who started to take OxyContin following routine medical procedures like root canal treatment. Since the settlement plan does not exclude investigation of criminal charges, some of the victims and their relatives hope that the Justice Department will take that step in the near future.¹⁹

It is unclear what the Sackler family’s current wealth holding is. But whatever it is, it should not be more than the profits they would have made by selling OxyContin as the dangerous drug it really is and which they knew it to be—a highly addictive form of medication that should only be administered by specialists. The Sacklers and Purdue Pharma should have accepted that OxyContin was a drug with a small market. They should have understood that trying to increase profits by dangerously increasing demand for the drug, including by misleading doctors and patients, was deeply wrong. They should not have more money than they could have made had they engaged in their business in a morally sound way.

When it comes to dirty money generated by businesspeople, it doesn’t stop there. There’s also the unscrupulous habit of maintaining your wealth by letting others pay for your mistakes. Of course, businesses fail sometimes. Being in business always comes with a measure of risk. Yet there are some people who are happy to take the money that comes with doing business, but, if things go badly, will make others bear the brunt of their failures. In some cases, the amounts needed to deal with the problems are very large, yet often these costs are spread among all citizens, including all taxpayers, diffusing the harm to the owner’s reputation.

Perhaps the most memorable recent example of this occurred during the 2008 financial crisis, when hundreds of banks worldwide had to be bailed out. To survive, they fell back on government support—in other words, on the financial support of all citizens. And without getting into the complicated and technical details of predatory financial products and deceptive credit ratings, we can safely say that the crash was the result of the bankers’ imprudent and extreme risk-taking in the preceding years. This had become possible due to deregulation, which the super-rich had lobbied for as part of their neoliberal belief that a weaker government was better for wealth creation all round. Ironically, once they had become victims of their own irresponsible behavior, those very wealthy bankers and businesspeople had to knock on the door of the same government in order not to go bankrupt. Shored up by taxpayers, they could survive (as the saying goes, “socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor”). Scholars have strongly condemned this socializing of the risks of the finance industry, and, remarkably, even scholars with libertarian inclinations have come to the conclusion that a strongly deregulated financial system can no longer be justified—that it needs limits. Some have been implemented since the financial crisis. But whether enough has been changed to protect us, the common people who pay our taxes and have negligible economic power, is a question that will only be answered when the next financial crisis hits.²⁰

Beyond this, there are also frightening cases of corporate irresponsibility that have led not only to the public shouldering a considerable financial burden, but also to a large number of fatalities. All too often in such cases, businesses will try to wash their hands of a situation as quickly as possible, so that they and their shareholders can avoid paying compensation for the harm done. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than with the Bhopal disaster. Bhopal is the capital of the Indian state Madhya Pradesh, where on December 3, 1984, the worst chemical disaster in human history took place. It occurred in the pesticide plant of an Indian subsidiary of Union Carbide, an American corporation. The plant had serious safety problems that were known both to the company and to the local government. When a faulty valve in combination with a non-functioning safety system led to a huge gas leakage, the toxic waste immediately killed more than 3,800 people, in addition to several thousand more victims who lost their lives in the days that followed. Over the next two decades, another 15,000 premature deaths as well as several hundred thousand cases of adverse health effects, impairments, and congenital defects in newborn babies would be attributed to the disaster.

Union Carbide denied responsibility. The Indian government demanded $4 billion to compensate the victims. Eventually, they settled out of court for $470 million. The judge deemed that this would once and for all remove liability from Union Carbide and protect it against any further claims.

Union Carbide had found a way to make legal amends for their failures. According to some sources, this involved American diplomatic and political lobbying at the highest level. Yet any moral or political analysis worth its salt should look beyond what happened in the courts. The out-of-court settlement was peanuts: $470 million, which was based on the estimate that 3,300 people died and 102,000 suffered from permanent disabilities—figures that have been contested.²¹ It has been estimated that this is less than 5 percent of what a similar claim settled in the US would have generated—in which case the total compensation would have been more than $9 billion. This is money that remained in the company and the pocket of the shareholders, and was not used to compensate residents of Bhopal.

Not surprisingly, news of the out-of-court settlement was gladly received by the stock market, where Union Carbide stock prices rose by about 7 percent. The personal wealth of those with a stake in the company actually rose because they did not have to pay adequate compensation for fatal corporate negligence. Anyone who has, or has ever had, Union Carbide stocks is therefore sitting on dirty money. If they want to redeem themselves, they should donate a significant proportion of the value of those stocks to organizations that care for the victims. Unfortunately, the chances are that people who currently own stock in Union Carbide, or in its successor, Dow Chemical Company, have never heard of the Bhopal disaster. In 2022 I mentioned this case during a lecture in New York, and I asked who had heard of the Bhopal case—no one in the room raised their hand. Yet in India, in Bhopal, there are still many people who suffer on a daily basis because of this grave injustice: because the site is still not cleaned up, because compensation has been insufficient, or because some survivors later became parents to severely disabled children, who now need full-time care, which their parents need to provide without any meaningful public support. All of this could have been avoided if safety had been placed above profit, and adequate compensation above protecting shareholders. Up until today, in companies such as Union Carbide and Dow Chemical Company, millionaires and billionaires are sitting on money that is not rightly theirs.²²

The Union Carbide philosophy of “profits before people” is endemic today, and an even more widespread way in which money becomes dirty is through the daily violation of workers’ labor rights: entrepreneurs around the world are, as you read this, making huge profits while subjecting their employees to inhumane working conditions. Most of the clothes that people in affluent societies wear are sold by companies that have annual profits ranging into the billions, turning their owners and major shareholders into decamillionaires or billionaires. Yet the labor conditions faced by workers in the garment industry are often appalling—and dangerous. In the fast-fashion industry, a limited number of global brands have considerable power over the supply chain, and they effectively dictate prices to suppliers, who are then left with little margin to pay decent wages and create safe working environments. The men and women at the top of these fashion retail companies have sold their souls to predatory capitalism—if they hadn’t, they would choose to establish decent conditions for the workers who make their products, thereby accepting that this might come at the cost of lower profits. But does it really matter if the billionaires who own the companies end up with a few million less?

Things are frequently made worse by local corruption, leading to poor enforcement of safety regulations. This was a major contributing factor to the Rana Plaza disaster that occurred on April 24, 2013, when an eight-storey commercial building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed. The building housed a bank, several shops, and five garment factories. The day before the collapse, large cracks had been discovered in the building. The shops and the bank immediately closed, but the garment workers were ordered to return to work the next day. A few hours after they resumed working, the entire building collapsed. A total of 1,134 workers were killed, and nearly 2,600 were injured, many for life; in some cases, they could only be rescued by amputating limbs. The International Labour Organization set up the Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund, to compensate victims and their families and cover medical costs and lost income. Many of the well-known brands that sell their clothes across the Global North had their garments produced in Rana Plaza, including Benetton, the Children’s Place, and Primark.²³ According to the Clean Clothes Campaign, only Primark and Loblaw stepped up in any meaningful way; other companies, like Walmart, contributed the minimum amount to the relief fund; while Benetton paid much less than what was requested ($1.1 million instead of $5 million), and then only after a worldwide campaign by activists and unions. The fashion industry also promised improvements in the working conditions of the garment workers. But, as the business website Bloomberg put it: “A decade after the Rana Plaza collapse, garment workers are still exploited. Building safety has improved, but the economics of the clothing industry remains stacked against the people who make most of what the world wears.” And that economic structure is one of the great power inequalities, in which the big fashion brands whose owners are listed in the Forbes billionaires list keep pushing the wages down.²⁴

As we well know, this structure—of putting profits before workers—isn’t unique to the fashion industry. Perhaps the most famous example of worker exploitation is offered by Amazon, which, in 2019, became the world’s most valuable public company. Jeff Bezos, the founder and, for a long time, chairman of Amazon, holds more than $100 billion in wealth. Amazon made more than $21 billion in profit in 2021. Yet at the same time, there have been regular reports on the grueling and exploitative labor conditions experienced by Amazon employees. Over the years, exposés have repeatedly been published in the British and American media, revealing horrifying details about conditions in Amazon warehouses: employees are made to work without proper breaks; every step they take and how many tasks they fulfill are constantly monitored; they work up to ten-hour shifts with only one break (which is then in part spent on getting through the metal detectors that are installed to prevent petty theft); they suffer injuries due to exhaustion; they are not paid the salaries they are entitled to; and if they complain about any of this—or, worse, try to unionize—they risk getting fired.²⁵

At the same time, there is a lot of window dressing going on. Amazon workers are not called workers but “associates,” just as Jeff Bezos is an “associate”—albeit one who earns rather more than the associates who are picking up the orders and driving packages around the country, with no time for sanitary breaks. Amazon has more nice words to redescribe reality—“fulfillment center” is the term used for “warehouse,” and “being released” for “being sacked” (although in the latter case the connotations are weird, since prisons also “release” their former inmates). But nice words do not change material facts.²⁶

Given its immense resources, Amazon could easily have improved working conditions and decreased health and safety risks, such as by affording workers more breaks and giving them salaries that would allow for a decent living on full-time pay. Perhaps their leadership team thinks that by hounding workers and treating them like robots, they are maximizing their productivity and hence profits. Even if this were true, the Amazon leadership could choose to have slightly lower profits and instead have better working conditions for its more than a million “associates.”

Amazon’s corporate leadership appears to follow a strategy of making sure workers remain powerless, so that its management and owners decide unilaterally on wages and labor conditions. It’s become widely known that Amazon does not recognize labor unions, and will not negotiate with them. It doesn’t seem to bother Amazon that forming a workers’ union is an internationally recognized human right. Still, perhaps change is in the air. In 2020, the former Amazon worker Christian Smalls started to organize workers at a warehouse in Staten Island. In April 2022, the workers voted to form a union, which is the first time Amazon workers in the US have become unionized.²⁷

At its heart, this is about the fair division of profits. Profits are made by everyone who works for a company, but Bezos keeps the lion’s share for himself and his shareholders, while his employees receive barely anything at all. It’s not as if he’s unaware of this: when Bezos flew to space in a rocket in July 2021, he thanked those who made it possible: “I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all of this.” Given the ongoing critique of labor conditions at Amazon, as well as the fact that its ruthless pursuit of a monopoly position has massively restricted customers’ free choice, that was a pretty cynical remark. But it’s more than that. Amazon also has a track record of engaging in international fiscal engineering, ensuring that the company pays very little in taxes. For example, in 2020 Amazon registered €44 billion in revenue in Europe—a huge increase in sales due to the pandemic. Even so, in its accounts, Amazon registered a net loss of €1.2 billion in its Luxembourg headquarters, meaning it had to pay zero corporate tax.²⁸ It’s not just depriving its employees of fair working conditions, but depriving society of its fair contribution to government funds, too.

Tax dodging is, of course, the most common form of dirty money. And it is also the murkiest, in legal terms. So far, the millionaires and billionaires (and their companies) that we’ve encountered in this chapter have been roundly condemned in the public domain (by ordinary people, or by journalists, or both) for the immoral practices that made them rich. Unfortunately, it is not always so easy to see from the outside who among the super-rich is sitting on money tainted by tax dodging. Some of them are revered as entrepreneurial heroes; others stay out of the limelight and instead bask in the respect and company of their peers. And there are many more tax dodgers who have profited from activities that are often illegal or borderline illegal. The distinction between dirty money acquired by patently unacceptable means and money that one can be proud to have earned, but did not pay taxes on, is not always so clear.

Tax dodging comes in two main forms: tax avoidance and tax evasion. Tax avoidance is the (often creative) use of legal rules—including loopholes—in order to minimize the tax one pays. Tax evasion means dodging tax through illegal practices. Tax avoidance can come in forms that are widely used, and widely accepted. It is legitimate in the strict sense that it is legally permissible. But it is only morally legitimate if, in addition, it does not exploit the rules in a way that violates the original intent of the law. For example, in countries where the fiscal rules include tax breaks for home owners who have a mortgage, people might obtain advice on which type of mortgage to get in order to make optimal use of such tax breaks. This practice is widely regarded as both legally and morally legitimate; after all, the original reason for introducing such tax breaks has been to support home ownership among people. Whether such tax breaks are a good thing for society is another question, since they often increase inequality as they are of no use to the poor.

These benign types of tax avoidance are largely irrelevant when it comes to thinking about the rich and super-rich dodging taxes. In most countries, income tax rates are progressive—that is, they are intended to ensure that you pay a higher tax rate if you earn a higher level of income. But what research on taxation shows is that the very rich are skilled at finding ways to avoid paying such taxes. They engage in tax avoidance that is legitimate, in the strict legal sense, but that is dubious where morality is concerned.

As for the illegal route—tax evasion—there are several options that those wishing to evade taxes can, and do, pursue. One is, simply, not to report the income they receive. They can do this if there is no third party that directly reports their income to the tax authorities, as is the case for the self-employed, business-owners, and, in many countries, those receiving returns on investments, dividends, savings, and so forth. If banks and other financial institutions were compelled to report all income to the authorities, then this route to tax evasion would be closed off. While there might be strong opposition from those who make use of this means of tax evasion right now, there is nothing difficult about making this happen. You need only to stipulate by law that any income, whether from labor, capital, or entrepreneurial activities, must be reported, and duly taxed.

Illegal tax dodging is also made easier by lack of enforcement. In many countries there is a serious understaffing problem: the fiscal authorities who are charged with investigating tax evasion don’t have enough people or resources to do their jobs properly. The understaffing of tax-compliance offices turns tax evasion into a calculated risk for those who have a lot to gain.

For some countries, there is data on how this works. In the US, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) periodically estimates the amount of taxes that are not paid. Its most recent estimates are that, after collecting the taxes that are late, there remains a net tax gap of about $470 billion per year. Analysts agree that increasing the budget for enforcement would bring in much more money in additional tax revenue than what it would cost—about three times as much, and much more if one takes into account the indirect deterrent effect. So even if you don’t care about fairness at all, this is in principle the smartest, most efficient thing to do. So why doesn’t it happen in practice? Because those who would lose out from tax enforcement have a pivotal say in political decision-making.²⁹

Imagine if everyone paid the taxes they were due to pay. There would be full compliance. What difference would that make? Well, to go with the US example, it would mean that the government’s budget would increase by $470 billion. Or, with just above 74 million children currently under the age of eighteen, it would mean that the US government could open a savings account for each American child, and deposit $6,350 in it every year. Each American child would find about $115,000, plus interest, in their account on the day they turned eighteen.³⁰

But instead, tax avoidance is growing, particularly through the use of tax havens, which play a key role in the fiscal affairs of the super-rich. In a fascinating study, the French economist Gabriel Zucman pieced together all the available data for estimating the size of tax havens globally, in order to find out who benefits from them, and what their cost is to foreign nations. His shocking conclusion was that there has never been so much wealth in tax havens as there is today. Globally, about 8 percent of household wealth is held in tax havens—the equivalent of 10 percent of the world’s GDP. For a long time, Switzerland has been the largest tax haven, but in the 2020s, Asian tax havens (especially Hong Kong and Singapore) have become increasingly significant, too. Zucman’s study shows that, from country to country, there are great differences in citizens’ use of offshore accounts. In places such as South Korea, Japan, and the Scandinavian countries, people make relatively little use of them. On the other end of the spectrum are countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Argentina, Venezuela, and Greece, where rich citizens make vast use of tax havens.³¹

Who are the people who avoid paying taxes? Not surprisingly, it is the super-rich around the world who primarily make use of the possibilities that tax havens offer. They have an entire industry that helps them conceal wealth abroad and, as we’ve seen, they derive most of their money from wealth or capital, rather than from working. It is in fact the truly ultra-rich who benefit most from tax havens: an estimate based on data for Norway, Sweden, and Denmark suggests that the 0.01 percent richest in those countries own about 50 percent of the wealth that citizens from those countries have stashed in tax havens, and in that way are able to evade paying about 25 percent of the taxes that they owe.³²

In April 2016, with the publication of the Panama Papers, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) put names and faces to a large group of individuals making use of tax havens and their shell companies to store and shift money anonymously. Vladimir Putin, the prime minister of Iceland, the king of Saudi Arabia, and the families of many prime ministers and presidents from across the globe, were revealed to have been channeling their cash into shell companies in Panama. Set up by the law firm Mossack Fonseca, these shell companies appeared on paper to have other directors, so that without going through Mossack Fonseca no outsider could trace them back to their real owners. An anonymous whistleblower, “John Doe,” leaked this information to journalist Bastian Obermayer from the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. “John Doe” insisted on never meeting Obermayer and only chatting over encrypted channels; he judged that his life would be in danger if his identity were revealed.

A member of the ICIJ, Obermayer shared the information with other journalists in the consortium, and they worked hard to connect the real owners to the shell companies. While there can occasionally be legitimate and legal reasons to register a company’s accounts in a tax haven, it is infinitely more likely that the money is stored there either because it is the product of illegal activities (including straightforward theft), or because the super-rich are trying to skirt paying taxes. The Argentinian footballer Lionel Messi (long celebrated as the world’s best soccer player) and his father were among those exposed by the Panama leak. They have since been convicted of defrauding Spain of €4.1 million, but settled with the Spanish tax authorities so that they did not have to serve any jail time.³³

But not all countries hold tax dodgers to account in this way. In places where “tax morale” is low and corruption endemic, people might just shrug their shoulders. What should one expect, if it’s so easy to get away with it? The Canadian political scientist Tom Malleson has argued that this is a deeply misguided way of responding to tax evasion. We should all condemn it for the criminal act that it is. In reality, most tax fraud goes undetected, and even when detected it often only results in a warning. Malleson points out that the median loss for tax fraud in the US recently was $309,000, compared to $2,100 for robbery, yet the punishments do not reflect this. In the case of tax fraud, only 68 percent of convictions have led to time in prison, with an average sentence of seventeen months, whereas in low-level robberies 99 percent of offenders are jailed, with an average sentence of 107 months. Among those who are convicted of selling marijuana (which, moreover, is legal in several other countries, unlike theft, which is illegal everywhere), 91 percent are sentenced to prison, with an average sentence of twenty-nine months—40 percent longer than the average sentence if you steal from the public by committing tax fraud. A rich person’s crime is thus not punished with the same degree of severity as a poor person’s. There is a word for this: class injustice. Given that white people are over-represented in tax fraud, there is also a racial dimension to this disparity in sentencing.³⁴

When I interviewed Marlene Engelhorn, the Austrian-German heiress and co-founder of taxmenow, she likewise stressed that we should question which groups a state’s bureaucracy devotes its attention to. “We should look very carefully at all the bureaucratic energy that currently is focused on people that in a welfare state rightfully get their transfers, like unemployment benefits.” She stressed that we often refer to these as donations from the state, overlooking the fact that they are part of social security systems to which we all contribute. Yet what questions do we ask about the rich? “All this bureaucratic energy of finding out everything about poor people should be re-concentrated on wealthy people, because they are the ones who are the actual beneficiaries of societies, but they don’t want to share. And it makes absolutely no sense,” Engelhorn observed. What is worse, in countries across the world, we find that welfare fraud is just a tiny fraction of total tax fraud. For example, in Austria welfare fraud was estimated in 2022 to amount to €14 million, compared with €12–15 billion for tax fraud, and yet, as Engelhorn points out, we focus much more on the former than the latter.³⁵

Corporations, too, make ample use of tax havens, Amazon being the—admittedly huge—tip of the iceberg. To avoid paying taxes, they “shift profits,” along with other complicated feats of fiscal engineering. Big corporations tend to be multinational firms, and the international legal system treats each of the firm’s subsidiaries as separate entities. A multinational firm will thus have profits (or losses) in several countries. And it will pay the corporate tax rate that is applicable in those different countries. Globally, corporate tax rates differ a great deal. That is especially the case if you look beyond the law at the effective tax rates (that take deductions, exemptions, and loopholes into account). Subsidiaries of a multinational firm will make internal transactions, from financial loans to the use of logos and trademarks, and there is quite a bit of leeway in determining what prices to charge for those transactions. By cleverly manipulating these prices, the profits of a multinational company may end up being recorded (on paper!) as having come from the subsidiary that is based in the country where tax rates are lowest. For consumers of the final products this doesn’t make any difference to what they buy, but profit-shifting of this kind is hugely advantageous to a company as it allows it, perfectly legally, to minimize the taxes that it has to pay. Companies try, ideally, to pay no taxes at all, even if their profits soar into the billions.³⁶

As an example, the economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman have detailed how Google has made use of profit shifting. In 2017, Google Holdings in Bermuda made $22.7 billion in revenue. This entity is the legal owner of some of Google’s technologies, which it licenses to Google’s affiliates in Europe. Thanks to this organizational setup and intragroup transaction, Google pays little or no taxes in Europe. Instead, it pays corporate taxes in Bermuda … where the corporate tax rate is zero. Saez and Zucman estimate that close to 60 percent of the profits of American multinationals abroad are registered in low-tax countries.³⁷

The executives running the multinational companies who make use of profit shifting are generally the same people who make the top twenty of the Forbes billionaires list. We are talking here about individuals who have assets worth at least $50 billion. Yet somehow they think they have a duty as CEOs or CFOs to hire an army of legal and financial advisers to make sure they pay as little in tax as possible. In the meantime, the infrastructure of many of the countries they operate in is in dire need of investment. In those countries, investment in infrastructure either doesn’t get made, or tax rates on workers are raised in order to fund it. There are thus ordinary people in communities all over the world who lose out because of this corporate tax dodging. It may be technically legal under the current rules of the game, but that doesn’t make it any less morally indefensible. All the money that rich tax avoiders refuse to pay is money that could have been used to fund policies for improving the lives of the poor. It is money that could have been used to pay workers good wages, so that they could provide for their families. The prevalence of tax avoidance—especially through the use of tax havens—is an important factor in why wealth keeps trickling upward.

There is one further—chastening—implication of all this hidden money: wealth inequality is likely to be even greater than current estimates show, since the very richest have wealth that cannot be detected.

How do all these super-rich individuals—from heiresses to CEOs—find out how to dodge taxes? That’s easy. There is an entire sector of financial and legal advisers that help them to minimize the taxes they have to pay, while staying just within the law—a sector that has been dubbed the wealth-defense industry. These advisers, from tax accountants and financial planners to lawyers, exploit every possible tax loophole and are as creative as possible with the law, in order to make sure their clients pay as little tax as possible. They themselves are typically not in the ultra-rich 0.1 percent, but tend to belong to the next 9.9 percent of rich and super-rich people. There’s a clear financial win-win for members of the wealth-defense industry and their clients. Clients evade millions and even billions in taxes, while their advisers earn a very good salary indeed, and make use of these tax-dodging techniques themselves. Most ultra- and super-rich people need do nothing themselves to defend their wealth; there are others who will do it on their behalf, for a small slice of the financial gain they make in paying fewer taxes.³⁸

The precise details differ between countries, since each country has its own rules regarding taxation, but here’s a neat example, provided by Chuck Collins, to show how it works. Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, made extensive use of all the legal loopholes and other fiscal engineering allowed by US law, in order to pass on his fortune to his children without them having to pay tax. One such strategy was to make gifts that were disguised as loans. In 1987, Fred invested $15.5 million in one of Donald’s real estate projects. In 1991, Fred sold his stake back to Donald for $10,000. The tax authorities lost out on gift tax on what was effectively a gift from father to son of $15.49 million.³⁹

While the potential gains from tax evasion are clearly the greatest for those who have most, the wealthy-but-not-ultra-rich also make use of these strategies. Take the following tactic to avoid inheritance tax in the Netherlands. Under Dutch law, heirs have to pay inheritance tax ranging from 10 percent to 40 percent, depending on the relationship between the heir and the deceased, as well as the amount of the inheritance. There are some exemptions, and by far the most generous of these relates to the bequest of a company. If an heir inherits a company, they do not need to pay inheritance tax on the first €1.13 million of the company’s value. On the remaining amount, 83 percent is also exempt from tax. So not surprisingly, wealthy people frequently turn their personal assets into company assets, so that their heirs can (largely) avoid paying inheritance tax. Solicitors know the ropes and will be happy to help—for a fee, obviously.

This is not a private issue. It is not even merely an issue between the individual who is evading taxes and the tax authorities. This is an issue that goes straight to the heart of the social contract. When the authorities lose money through tax avoidance and evasion, everyone else loses too. Tax dodging lowers the total tax revenue, with cascading effects. There is less funding available for the provision of public goods and social security. Ordinary people lose out; society’s institutions begin to break down. The NHS crumbles. State schools become understaffed and under-resourced. Those who are not rich enough to call upon the help of the wealth-defense industry—that is, most of the population—have to fork out more in taxes to try and make up the shortfall. Either way, tax avoidance is not, as Donald Trump said, “smart.” It is egoistic. It is unpatriotic. And it is tightly coupled with extreme wealth.

The fiscal engineering performed by the wealth-defense industry treads a fine line between legality and illegality. Tax avoidance is legal; tax evasion is illegal. In practice, it is not entirely clear to what extent that distinction matters, since the likelihood that the tax files of the super-rich will be checked by the authorities is minuscule. Most governments simply haven’t put enough resources into monitoring tax returns and the financial transactions of companies, despite the fact that bolstering the relevant bureaucracy would pay for itself many times over.

Still, it’s clear that rich and super-rich people prefer, all things considered, to stay within the boundaries of the law. It’s always comforting to know that, if the tax authorities did decide to check your tax returns, you wouldn’t end up in court and perhaps even in jail. It should therefore come as no surprise that, over the last few decades, the super-rich have tried to change fiscal law in many countries, so that they can pay less tax while staying within the bounds of legality. In other words, they have lobbied and exerted their influence to make laws more plutocratic. Shifting the burden of taxation away from taxing capital to taxing labor is one way in which this has been done; lowering the highest tax rates that individuals have to pay is another; introducing more loopholes a third.

A striking example comes from the US, and has been laid out in detail by Morris Pearl and Erica Payne, the current and former president of the Patriotic Millionaires. In their book Tax the Rich! How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer, published in 2021, they document how wealthy Americans lobbied for changes in the tax codes that, step by step, little by little, have meant they have paid less and less in tax. This has produced a situation whereby the US now has the same effective tax rate for both rich and poor—except for the very richest, who pay the least, because they have no income from labor at all and make maximum use of the wealth-defense industry. After putting all the different types of taxes together (consumption taxes, payroll taxes, state-level taxes, federal taxes, and so on), Saez and Zucman estimate that the average effective tax rate in the US is 28 percent. The bottom 70 percent of the population pay slightly less—mostly around 25 percent—and the wealthy pay slightly more, but it is the top four hundred richest families who pay least of all: only 23 percent. They mainly pay the relatively low corporate and property taxes, rather than the higher payroll and consumption taxes.⁴⁰

In most countries, income from labor is taxed at a higher rate than income from capital. In other words, the income you generate by working is taxed more than the income you generate by having stocks, bonds, savings, property, or the profits from entrepreneurship. This is a problem in almost all countries, except in those that have no income tax at all, such as Bermuda. Pearl and Payne offer the following example to show what a difference this makes. Take two families who each make $400,000 a year. The “Working Family” generates this income from labor. After having taken the standard deduction of $24,800, they pay about $104,970 in taxes (federal tax rates range from 10 percent to 32 percent). The “Rich Family,” meanwhile, also makes $400,000, but they do so entirely from investments. They take the same standard deduction, after which they don’t have to pay any taxes on the first $80,000 of taxable investment income, and they pay only 15 percent tax on the remainder. The Rich Family therefore ends up paying $44,280 in taxes, $60,690 less than the Working Family.⁴¹

The upshot is that it is much more fiscally advantageous to live on capital than it is to live on sweat and toil. And only those who are super-rich can do the former. Even if they don’t actively seek to dodge taxes, all extremely wealthy people have money that is tainted by the work of the wealth-defense industry, and by the efforts of the capital-owners and super-rich people who have spent decades lobbying to make unfair changes to our fiscal systems and labor legislation—changes that, in the end, punish workers and the middle classes, whose assets are generally confined to the home they live in and some modest savings. The rich are now profiting from wealth accrued in ways that would previously not have been legal but now are, thanks to new plutocratic rules. Such changes are morally indefensible. To the extent that the rich and super-rich have money that is traceable to these illegitimate changes in the fiscal law—and they almost all do—it is money that they should not have had in the first place. It is yet another type of dirty money.

It’s easy for most wealth holders to agree wholeheartedly that kleptocracy and criminal activities should be strongly condemned. And then they would add that, of course, they are staying within the boundaries of the law, and hence are doing nothing wrong, and can continue to sleep well at night.

Not just easy; far too easy.

This attitude fails to recognize that, for all the reasons discussed in this chapter, it is almost impossible to amass and maintain extreme wealth without some portion of it being dirty. Theoretically, yes, it could be done; in practice, though, even the most morally pure case of a rags-to-riches hero or heroine who is treating workers well, will be at severe risk of crossing over to the dark side as soon as they appoint a financial adviser. Clearly, only some cases of extreme wealth raise questions about direct violation of the law. But all extreme wealth raises questions about the harm that has been done as it has accumulated, the operation of accountants in the twilight zone of legality, and indeed, the unfair shifting of the boundaries between what is legal and what is illegal.

This last point brings us to the next major problem with extreme wealth: it not only provides greatly improved maneuverability within existing legislation but also allows for greater influence on future norms and rules. In other words, extreme wealth corrodes democracy.

4 It’s Undermining Democracy

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has set the standard for the rights of oppressed and disadvantaged groups ever since it was proclaimed by the United Nations in 1948. Article 1 of the declaration begins with its essence: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood.” The declaration then spells out what this core notion of equal human dignity means in various areas of life. Article 21 concerns politics. It states:

Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.¹

Democracy has long been recognized to be intimately connected with the foundational moral principle that all human beings are equal in dignity. Throughout history, people have made huge sacrifices to be treated as equals in the eyes of the world, and to secure their right to participate in the political process. This struggle endured long into the twentieth century—think of the fight for universal suffrage in Europe, or for equal rights for Black South Africans under the Apartheid regime—and it continues to this day. Recent uprisings in countries as diverse as Hong Kong and Iran prove that people are willing to risk everything to live as equals in freedom. Their sacrifices are a stark reminder of the value of democracy.

Today, many democracies are also liberal democracies. In its most basic contemporary form, liberal democracy simply requires that each adult citizen be given one vote, regardless of race, class, gender, religious beliefs, or political views; all citizens should be afforded an equal opportunity to take part in political decision-making, either directly or indirectly.

Liberal democracy is, of course, not the only possible political model. Regimes can be authoritarian, as with a dictatorship or a theocracy. And, like any other political system, liberal democracy can weaken and fail. This can happen in two ways: either it becomes less democratic—that is, while its citizens may have democratic voting rights, the preferences of the elites dominate political decision-making. This is currently a particularly urgent concern for the US, which political scientists have begun to classify as an oligarchy. Or it becomes less liberal. In this second case, the rights of minorities are no longer protected, and popularly elected leaders can enact the will of “the people” as they interpret it. In illiberal democracies, those in power curtail the ability of the free press, independent thinkers, and political opponents to criticize the government; they also weaken the legal system. Hungary under Victor Orbán is an example of this kind of democracy.²

If we genuinely care about protecting human rights, we need to care about protecting democracy in general and its liberal nature in particular. And we might even have to go beyond that, since liberalism as an ideal stands very far from the oppression that many groups have experienced in the name of liberalism. Settler societies, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the US, have seen a great divide between the idealized discourse of fundamental human rights, and the reality of genocide and oppression that colonialism has wrought on indigenous populations. Similarly, there is not a single liberal democratic society that has so far succeeded in protecting the rights of racial and ethnic minorities, or queer and trans people. Some scholars are therefore very critical of the use of the word “liberal,” as they point out the many historical abuses that have been committed in its name, and argue for much more democratic forms of governance that include citizens’ assemblies and also democratize the economy.³

My sense of the current political situation, however, is that those rightly wanting more democracy and greater protection of everyone’s rights should join forces with the more “moderate” defenders of liberal democracy as we know it. Because they are both subject to increasing reactionary threats from those who are antagonistic to liberal democracies, not to mention its radical progressive alternatives.

Many of us today can sense this erosion of our democracies taking place. Many have also intuited that it is connected with wealth inequality. For years, politicians, scholars, and activists alike have been warning of the pernicious influence that wealth has on our democratic system. But how, exactly, does the concentration of wealth undermine democracy? If we take a step back, we can see that wealth inequality threatens democracy at the deepest level, warping several of its defining features.

The first of these is collective decision-making. We are not just individuals who happen to live side by side with other individuals who are unaffected by our actions and behavior. We are people living together in a shared physical space, who all have different needs and desires about what to do with that space and its resources, and for this reason we all need to agree on a set of rules to manage our lives. Any group of individuals living in proximity to one another will inevitably interact, exchange things, and have to agree on who owns what. The alternative is chaos, extreme insecurity, and rule by the strongest. If we want to get a sense of what that would be like, we need look no further than the scenarios presented by dystopian science fiction, where anyone can kill anyone else at any given moment—and get away with it. It might be entertaining to read these stories in books or see them dramatized on screen, but I’m pretty sure most us would rather live in a society where our lives and the lives of our dear ones, our projects and our personal possessions, are secure.

In small-scale communities, radically non-hierarchical forms of collective decision-making can suffice to make decisions about how to divide up limited shared resources (like shelter, food, and water). In this setup, people sit together and talk, and, since the community is small, everyone can be heard and have a say. This mode of decision-making—where everyone gathers to discuss the issues of the day—can also work in collective housing or in small communes, where it can be a particularly useful way of dividing up the burdens of protecting the common interest (whether that be against an outside threat from other people, or against natural disasters such as flooding). Larger communities might have established rules of decision-making over time, as is the case among indigenous tribes where the elderly decide on collective matters. In present-day societies, however, given their considerable size, we have to rely on more delegated and structured ways of collective decision-making. In most countries, this is done by voting for officials who should, on behalf of the entire population, make decisions that are reasonable and can be justified to those whom their decisions affect.⁴

As we shall see, our ability to make genuinely collective decisions evaporates when extreme wealth enters the picture. This isn’t merely a logistical problem, but a moral one. It undermines the core democratic principle of political equality, most pithily enshrined in the slogan “One person, one vote.” The guiding idea is that no single individual’s view should weigh more heavily than another’s—at least, not on the basis that they have accumulated power through luck or coercion. Of course, when developing policies and weighing the interests of many different groups that will be affected, the interest of some groups will often outweigh the interests of others. That can be for sound reasons: when developing disability policies, it makes sense to give much greater weight to the views of the disabled themselves than to those of other people. But the interests of any given group should never count for more simply because that group has more power and is willing to use (or abuse) that power to get things to go its way.⁵

Both the principle and the practice of democratic decision-making require a set of formal and informal institutions that allow citizens to make well-informed decisions—and these, too, are threatened by wealth inequality. In a healthy democratic society, policy and law must be based on fact and argument, rather than on lies, deception, and rhetoric, or on intimidation and other forms of (physical or non-physical) violence. This means we need a properly functioning, independent judiciary that can settle disputes. We need an independent free press that has the intellectual and material resources to do proper reporting and investigating. Journalists should be able to do their work with integrity and public support, and should not fear for their professional or personal future if they report on findings that some powerful individuals might not like (including the owners of the media). We need independent and accessible universities whose mission is to seek the truth and advance proper reasoning, always playing by the rules of the scientific method that opens up one’s findings and arguments to evaluation by others. And so on. These are the institutions which, as historian Timothy Snyder says, we should defend, if we want to avoid sliding into tyranny.⁶

So what, exactly, does money have to do with all of this?

Several of the forms of dirty money that we’ve just encountered are, of course, blatantly undermining democracy. In the case of kleptocracy or state capture, it couldn’t be more obvious: the citizens of Equatorial Guinea can vote but have none of the democratic rights listed above, and the tremendous power of Vladimir Putin and his circle of allies makes it extremely difficult for Russian people to enjoy them either. But as we’ve seen, there are many shades of grey when it comes to dirty money, and much of the money that undermines democracy is only somewhat dirty, or even apparently clean.

To get a more detailed picture, let’s zoom in close and look at the various mechanisms by which money can be turned into political influence, thereby giving some citizens more political power than others. We can begin with the mechanism that shows the relation between money and democracy in its purest form: the commodification of citizenship. In other words, the ability to buy a desirable passport, provided that you’re able and willing to pay for it. This is, simply, the sale of political rights in exchange for money.

It’s easy to see why someone might want to buy a new passport: it is the formal proof of legal citizenship of a country, and citizenship comes with the rights to live, work, and vote in that country, and to be protected by its legal institutions. If one lives in a dictatorship, or an illiberal country in which the rights of some minorities are not protected, then being able to join a different political community is a very attractive—possibly even life-saving—prospect. But often, the reason for wanting to acquire another passport has less to do with human rights than the lucrative opportunities citizenship of another country offers.

For the super-rich, there are two easy options: get a golden visa or a golden passport. A golden visa refers either to residency for a limited period or permanent residency obtained by investing in (or sometimes donating to) a country. A golden passport turns that investment or donation into full citizenship. People apply for golden visas and golden passports for different reasons. For some, it is a route to a higher quality of life in a more stable society. For others, it is a way to cover up criminal activity. Or it could allow you to do business in a much more favorable context—allowing you to pay less corporation or income tax, for example.

For the American right-wing libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel, buying himself a New Zealand passport was the first step toward purchasing a large plot of unspoiled land. He plans to fly there in the case of severe social unrest or climate catastrophe. Thiel has no family or other connection to New Zealand. The number of days he spent there before his citizenship application was granted? Twelve.⁷

For the less rich or well connected, there are stricter residency requirements. Often, however, you only need money, and the willingness to spend the minimum number of days in the country where you seek citizenship. There are companies who will—for a fee, of course—provide advice and deal with all the paperwork. These companies are clear about the reasons for such a second passport—to have a “plan B” in an unstable world, and to gain visa-free access to many countries. In the Caribbean island of Antigua, you only need to donate $100,000 to the Antigua National Development Fund to get a passport, which is attractive because it gives you visa-free access to more than 150 countries around the world. There are other ways of doing this, though: you could, alternatively, invest $400,000 in a government-approved real estate project. Passports from Malta or Cyprus are of particular interest to very wealthy people, since they allow you to live and work anywhere in the European Union. In Malta, you just need twelve months of residency and a €750,000 donation to the national investment fund. Other countries—like Portugal, Ireland, the UK, and the USA—also offer permanent residence permits in exchange for investment.⁸

This practice is both morally and politically problematic. Why? For starters, because selling passports for vast amounts of money undermines the principle of political equality. A country that sells its citizenship has two sets of political rules: one for wealth holders who can buy their way into the country, and another for the ordinary folk who cannot. It commodifies political rights, but with a price tag that only the super-rich can afford. To make matters worse, it rewards crime, inviting wealth holders who are sitting on dirty money to become members of a political community. In Malta, a quarter of the people who acquire citizenship via the golden route are Russians, many of them oligarchs. In the UK, there has been outrage that the golden visa scheme has allowed criminal money to enter the country, as well as less savory individuals like oligarchs and the family members of dictators. Not surprisingly, there are calls on the government to review the regulations around golden visas.⁹

This scheme also undermines politics in another way. If a government decides to impose sanctions on citizens of a particular country (for example, by freezing their assets), then by changing passports, individuals can try to avoid those sanctions. Golden passports are thus rendering useless an essential instrument of foreign policy. In 2015 and 2016, in the wake of the US and European sanctions on Russia, there was a surge in Russian oligarchs acquiring Maltese passports. In March 2022, the problem reared its head again. Against the backdrop of sanctions on Russians and Belarusians who were supporting the Russian war against Ukraine, the European Commission called upon all its member states to dismantle this golden route to citizenship of a country in the European Union.¹⁰

Yet while the Russian case shows how politically damaging these golden visas can turn out to be, the moral objection to the super-rich purchasing passports also holds outside periods of war and sanctions. One reason for objecting on moral grounds is the sharp contrast in how refugees are treated. In southern Europe, more than 25,000 refugees died between 2014 and 2022 while they tried to reach Europe by boat. Malta has been condemned for the continued neglect of its legal duty to rescue and support those in danger at sea. When these refugees arrive in Europe, they are often forced to live in very difficult circumstances, generally without permission to work, while waiting for years to hear about their asylum applications. In London, refugees are housed in hotel rooms without windows, sometimes smaller than prison cells, and without access to decent food or spare clothes—yet the minister for immigration described these hotels as “luxurious.” In the US, under President Trump and continuing under President Biden, the process for people to seek and receive asylum is intentionally restrictive.¹¹ In short, refugees who seek residency in a country in the Global North, either because their basic human rights have been severely violated, or because their lives are in danger in their home countries, or because they are forced to flee due to the extreme poverty or the devastating effects of climate change, face a wall of resistance. In the meantime, multimillionaires and billionaires can just buy their way in, purely because they happen (whether legitimately or otherwise) to sit on a heap of money.

It doesn’t stop there. The morally objectionable practice of selling golden visas and passports not only stands in sharp contrast to the treatment of refugees, it is also profoundly ironic: governments have spent decades reducing the tax rates for the richest, only to then decide to try to attract more funds by selling the highest political good—citizenship. Wouldn’t it have been more democratic—not to mention more efficient—to take the appropriate measures to tax the rich properly, as they were in the period between 1945 and 1975, and then to invest those taxes back into the economy? Even if this approach led to exactly the same amount of tax revenue for the countries that currently sell citizenship, it would have done so in a way that respected the principle of political equality, as well as fiscal fairness—it would have ensured that wealthier residents contributed more to the collective budget. But we are where we are, and golden visas are now worsening global inequality, since many of the buyers of these passports are the super-rich citizens from corrupt or undemocratic countries, often in the Global South. Their relocation to European countries such as the UK or Malta represents a large shift of resources from the economic periphery to richer countries. Why are we encouraging this?

There is another, perhaps more familiar mechanism by which money translates into political power: when wealth holders fund political candidates and parties. Rich people are much more likely to do this, and with large amounts of money—and it would be extremely naïve to think that large donors don’t get special treatment, whatever official statements from politicians may say to the contrary. Donations generally come with the expectation that if the funder one day needs some help from the politician, he or she will get it. This common-sense wisdom is reflected in the saying “He who pays the piper calls the tune.” Receiving money makes a politician indebted to their donor, making them more likely to try to please them, do them a favor, spread their views or, at the very least, self-censor their own views to avoid upsetting them.¹²

Admittedly, this mechanism is very difficult to prove. To the extent that such cash for favors is openly discussed, it will never be mentioned in an email or make it to the minutes of a meeting. So what evidence do we have? Once in a while there will be someone who does just come out and admit it, even though what they’re saying and doing is widely regarded as morally unacceptable. Transparency about such practices is rare and surprising. Yet choosing to reveal what is, in essence, a soft form of bribery, perhaps even corruption, could have several possible explanations. It might be because the person in question wishes to signal that they have deliberately chosen to be amoral, or because they want to normalize corruption, or because they are too stupid to understand that such behavior is societally damaging, or because they are suffering from a form of psychopathy that leaves them without shame. Whatever the underlying reason, there is a high-profile case of a donor who went on the record saying that his donations to political parties should be understood as financial favors and that he expected political favors in return. That person is Donald Trump. In 2015, a journalist asked him why he had been making donations to both Republicans and Democrats. The journalist asked: “You explained away those donations [to the Democrats] saying you did that to get business-related favors. And you said recently [that] when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.” To this, Trump responded: “You better believe it … I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.”¹³

We might perhaps think that this problem is unique to the US, since the country has fewer restrictions on donations to political parties than many other countries, and money plays a much bigger role in political campaigns. Alas, we should assume that this is happening everywhere, given the not unreasonable suspicion that large donations to political parties are never really for free. In 2021, a very large donation by a businessman to the Dutch Christian Democratic party, CDA, was made at around the same time that the party submitted a legal proposal to parliament that would give favorable treatment to companies as part of Dutch inheritance law. This special treatment would allow children and other family members to inherit a family business without paying much by way of inheritance tax, while the inheritance of a family home or savings would continue to be taxed without such an exemption. Well before this donation was made, there had already been building opposition to such special treatment of companies, since it has upward-flowing redistributive effects: it strongly favors those with large inheritances, partly because they are much more likely to inherit a business, but also because it’s easier for rich families to incorporate their money into a business (with the help of the wealth-defense industry). Luckily, in the Netherlands donations to political parties that are larger than €4,500 have to be publicly registered. The list of such donations can be consulted by all people. That some donations have been exceptionally large has worried many politicians, and in 2022 all political parties—except those on the extreme right—accepted a legal change that limits each person’s total political donations to a party and its subsidiary organizations to €100,000 annually.¹⁴

Large donations that can be used to trigger favors clearly undermine political equality. But as the American political philosopher Thomas Christiano points out, there are also other democratic values at stake. When money can be used to buy votes, those who funded the elected politician will see their interests protected in the policies that are implemented—but a large part of the costs of those policies will be borne by everyone else. Vote-buyers are, in a certain sense, free-riding on the spending of society as a whole. We are all paying for legislation that favors the interests of just a few private donors.¹⁵

As all this suggests, the role of money in politics extends far beyond individual favors: it sets the political agenda. In countries where an ability to raise funds is a crucial determinant in who will be the next leaders, political candidates who favor the interests of the rich and super-rich are much more likely to be on the ballot. Rich and super-rich people are more likely to be donors, and they typically prefer candidates of their own social class. Those who cannot donate to campaigns are much less likely to have their interests and views represented in the election debates or, later, reflected in policy. This is hardly meeting the democratic ideal of treating citizens as equals by giving them an equal say in the process of collective decision-making.

Worryingly, research by political scientists suggests that, in fact, the agenda is not just set to meet the interests of those who can make the largest donations—the super-rich 1 percent—but also to support the rich more generally. In an influential study, the political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page showed that, in the US, Congress is most likely to make policy decisions that align with the interests of businesses and citizens in the ninetieth percentile of the income distribution (that is, the rich and super-rich). There is not much scholarship on how this works elsewhere, but a handful of studies in other countries have found a similar bias toward the policy preferences of the rich. Still, there are also interesting differences between countries. Take Norway, a social democratic country with limited inequality, strong unions, a general ban on political advertising on television, a political class made up of individuals who are not particularly rich themselves, and political parties that receive two-thirds of their financing from public subsidies. The political scientist Ruben Mathisen found that, in Norway, the preferences of the rich were likewise better accommodated by government policies, but much less so than in the USA; in fact, education carried more weight than wealth in determining whether your needs would be met. Notably, though, the policy preferences of different social classes didn’t differ much, which might be explained by the universal character of the Norwegian welfare state and the broadly homogenous demographic makeup of Norwegian society as a whole (unlike in other European countries, members of the working class are not predominantly from an ethnic minority). Still, Norway is unusually well equipped to keep all its citizens happy, since its substantial oil revenues mean it can fund a solid welfare state without having to raise taxes on the rich.¹⁶

Almost wherever you are in the world, the better-off—and people with university degrees—are vastly over-represented in the political sphere. Meanwhile, those from the working class are massively under-represented, and have very little political influence. In many countries they rightly feel excluded and alienated from politics, leading some not to bother to vote at all. It is hardly surprising, then, that we see a pervasive political bias toward the interests of the rich and the super-rich.

The situation is concerning, to say the least. But it’s made worse still by another, more direct strategy that the rich and powerful deploy when politicians are in office: they pay lobbyists to promote their interests. Hiring a lobbyist is expensive, and so this practice means that the interests of wealthy individuals are—yet again—much better accommodated by policy-makers and politicians.

In Europe, it is often said that lobbyists have a major impact on political decision-making at the level of the European Union. In Brussels, where the European Commission and Parliament are situated, there are about 25,000 registered lobbyists. The EU requires all organizations, their lobbyists, and the budget they devote to lobbying to be listed in a transparency register, which the EU calls “a tool to allow European citizens to see what interests are being represented at Union level and on whose behalf, as well as the financial and human resources dedicated to these activities.” That is a laudable aim, but what does it do to prevent the massive power-through-lobbying imbalance between groups that have loads of money and those that do not? In the EU, only 28 percent of registered lobbyists are working for non-commercial organizations; the rest are lobbying for private business interests. While views differ on which groups have most influence, it seems very unlikely that the funds available to lobbyists would not translate into political influence. And those funds are very unequally distributed. In fact, it is quite possible that some interests are not represented at all.¹⁷

The problem is not so much the mechanism of lobbying in itself, but the hugely unequal ability of different groups to do so, given the vast disparity in their finances. An equitable form of lobbying, in which all sides have roughly equal power to be heard, could be useful—it could even enhance democracy, since it would provide a lot of information to politicians and policy-makers, and help them make better-informed decisions. The problem lies in the vastly unequal playing field.

There is another, more insidious variation on lobbying, whereby major companies try to influence political decisions by threatening certain actions if things don’t go their way—a form of corporate blackmail. And we are not concerned here about small firms—there is no need to worry that the bakery on the corner has much more influence on policy-making than any of its neighbors. But large companies do. They can undermine democratically chosen aims by wielding corporate power. For example, if citizens have collectively decided that they want their country to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions, and their democratically elected government has sought to impose stricter regulation on emissions, major polluting firms might threaten to withhold campaign donations, or shift their production lines to other countries (and thereby sacrifice many local jobs) rather than cleaning up their act.

Many a corporate threat will, in the first instance, be made via a direct phone call, and as such can be hard to document. Once in a while, though, an example leaks to the press, often because some smart journalist asked the right question at the right time. In the Netherlands, this happened to the third Mark Rutte cabinet, in office from 2017 until 2021. This government consisted of a coalition of four center-right, conservative, and Christian parties. At the suggestion of the economically conservative party VVD, the coalition decided to abolish the tax on dividends. None of the parties had included this as a proposal in their electoral manifestos, so there was public outrage when it was announced. It was well known that this policy would especially benefit the shareholders of Dutch multinational companies. It would also be very expensive—it was estimated to cost the government $1.9 billion in foregone tax revenue. Dutch civil servants from the Treasury advised against abolishing the tax, since if the government’s goal was to attract foreign companies to the Netherlands, other fiscal instruments would be much more effective. In short, almost everyone was against it. From government memos that were eventually leaked to the press and then shared with parliament, it became clear that major Dutch multinational companies, in particular Shell and Unilever, had lobbied for the abolition of the tax. When the then CEO of Unilever, Paul Polman, informed the Dutch prime minister via phone that Unilever had already decided to move the company completely to the UK, the plan to abolish the dividend tax was scrapped. What was most striking about this drama was how large, and how invisible, the influence of two big multinational companies with Dutch roots—Shell and Unilever—was on the democratic process. Citizens never even had a chance in the run-up to the election to discuss the proposal. Parliament was not fully informed. Only because of the independence of the Dutch media, and the shrewdness of certain journalists, did this drama see the light of day. Which makes you wonder: how often are citizens and their political representatives not informed about how and why decisions are made, and who the real decision-makers are?

And it doesn’t stop there, of course: the influence of money in politics extends even further, traveling beyond government institutions and into the public sphere. There is a worrying trend of super-rich people buying up media outlets and using them to control both the spread of information and the arguments that get aired publicly. A free and independent press is vital to the functioning of our democracies. Yet the media—and particularly the news—is becoming a commodity that can be bought and sold to the highest bidder, providing yet another mechanism for the wealthy to turn financial power into political power.

There is probably no more significant example of a media billionaire whose extensive power threatens democracy than Rupert Murdoch. He started his career in the conservative tabloid press in Australia, initially taking over two Adelaide newspapers his father had run, before gradually building his empire in newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, online media, and cable television in a wide range of countries, though his presence is especially felt in Australia, the UK, and the US. Since launching his earliest newspapers in Australia, Murdoch has relied on provocation and sensationalism as a business model. In the UK, he is notorious for allowing the widespread use of unethical and deeply illegal tactics at his paper News of the World, in particular hacking the voicemails of a wide range of individuals, from celebrities, civil servants, and politicians to murder victims and British soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Murdoch allegedly tried to persuade Labour MPs to stop pushing for further investigation of the scandal, and when a cross-party parliamentary committee issued a report condemning how News of the World operated, he dismissed it as party politics. Only after further damning revelations of phone hacking did he close the newspaper down. British journalist Henry Porter commented in 2010 that Murdoch’s attempts to conceal the truth and spread conspiracy theories during the investigation showed his total disdain for the democratic process. Moreover, when the former News of the World editor was subsequently hired as communications director by David Cameron, then leader of the Conservatives, Porter observed how, as a result, “media power and political power achieve[d] an ever greater degree of merger.”¹⁸

In hindsight, this was only the beginning of a much stronger merger between Murdoch’s media empire and the political sphere. In the UK, Murdoch’s newspapers played an active role in spreading the disinformation and false promises that made the British population vote to leave the European Union—with all the economic and social harm that this has caused its citizens and trade and industry. Other British newspapers immediately wrote about the damage Brexit had caused as soon as those effects became clear—from not being able to hire Eastern European workers for the processing of turkeys for Christmas, to airport chaos for British passport holders wanting to travel to EU countries. It took a very long time for the newspapers owned by Murdoch to begin reporting on the problems caused by Brexit.¹⁹

On the other side of the Atlantic, the political takeover by Murdoch’s media empire, in particular Fox News, was almost total under Trump’s leadership of the Republican Party. Fox, which has been described as tabloid television, unapologetically bases its reporting on fear and anger—so much so that the grandson of an eighty-four-year-old man who shot a Black teenager simply for ringing his doorbell, attributes his grandfather’s reaction to a racist paranoia caused by watching Fox News nonstop. Former president Barack Obama has blamed media like Fox News for the increasing polarization of American society, and neatly summarized how this followed from a profit-maximizing business model: “The economics of the media, the clicks, are now based on: how do I attract your attention? Well, the easiest way to attract attention without having to have a lot of imagination, thought, or interesting things to say, is just to make people angry and resentful and to make them feel as if somebody’s trying to mess with them and take what’s rightfully theirs.”²⁰

Fox’s pro-Trump reporting got Trump elected; some senior Fox staff then took on key functions in Trump’s White House; and a synergy emerged between what Trump did, thought, and wanted, and what Fox reported. For Murdoch, it was about the bottom line—how to keep those large numbers of viewers loyal to Fox. Needless to say, there is a huge democratic cost to this complete commodification of news, where facts do not matter as long as what you’re saying is selling. This became painfully obvious when it was leaked that the claims aired on Fox News about the 2020 presidential election—that it had been stolen, and that electronic ballot boxes changed votes cast for Trump into votes for Biden—were completely fabricated. And while everyone at Fox knew this to be the case, they nevertheless continued to air baseless claims that the election had been stolen. In April 2023, Dominion, one of the companies that provided the electronic ballot boxes, took Fox to court for its lies. Murdoch didn’t admit to any wrongdoing by Fox and the Fox anchors didn’t apologize to the American people for knowingly lying to them. Instead, Fox settled out of court with Dominion for $787.5 million. The lawyer for Dominion commented afterward that “lies have consequences,” but, as veteran investigative journalist Jane Mayer has observed in a conversation with her colleagues Susan Glasser and Evan Osnos, the power this billionaire holds over American politics is still huge. American democracy is still “at the mercy of a billionaire dynasty.”²¹

What Murdoch and his staff at Fox fail to recognize is that it is extremely important for democracy that the information we receive is true, and not misleadingly presented; that it is based on solid reporting, and sufficiently nuanced. This requires news media to be strongly regulated so that control by just a few people becomes impossible. Journalism is a public service that has to live up to democratic principles of the highest order. Deregulation of the media market in combination with wealth concentration is a very dangerous cocktail, as Murdoch’s case proves.

Beyond this most visible strategy, there are also more subtle ways that the rich and super-rich have shaped the public debate. Rich people give significant sums of money to research bodies and think tanks that reflect their views and provide arguments supporting their funders on various social, economic, and political issues. As research on propaganda has shown, you don’t need to tell the truth to convince people to support a particular ideological position or political leader. Making use of a range of rhetorical strategies that draw more on emotions or on psychological mechanisms to deceive can be even more effective, and this strategy doesn’t require your claims to be supported by well-reasoned arguments or solid empirical facts. Over time, the result has been a change in the ideological climate and what is perceived as “sound evidence.”²²

There is one particularly salient case of this back-door propagandism which epitomizes the way that extreme wealth damages democracy. It is almost in a league of its own: the case of the Koch network, led by the ultra-conservative American billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. It is likely that some of their activities remain secret, and hence that we do not know absolutely all the ways in which they have been shaping American politics. But we do now know quite a bit about how the Koch network operates, thanks to the work of investigative journalists like Jane Mayer, and political scientists like Theda Skocpol from Harvard University and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez from Columbia University.²³

Charles and David Koch inherited Koch Industries from their father in 1967, and built it into a vast multinational active in a range of industries, including chemicals, fossil fuels, and raw materials. David Koch died in 2019; today, his brother and his heirs are estimated to have combined personal wealth in the range of $120 billion.

The family’s interference in politics started back in 1977, when Charles and David began funding organizations promoting ultra-free-market ideas and policies. But it was about twenty-five years ago that they massively stepped up their game, setting up a range of new organizations, including the Koch seminars, where wealthy people could network and where fundraising for ultra-free-market and libertarian political goals took place. The Koch network didn’t just fund political candidates, but also ideas, research, and higher education. It financed universities and think tanks and supported lobbyists who advocated for a range of policies that would make the rich richer, such as deregulation, tax cuts for corporations, and elimination of the estate tax. It also successfully advocated for a number of policies that have made workers and vulnerable people worse off, such as the privatization of social security; and, in 2010, it campaigned against President Obama’s healthcare reform. In general, the Koch network has succeeded in making the Republican Party shift to the extreme right, with all the disastrous consequences that this has had for Americans today, including increasing attacks on basic democratic rules, and steep opposition to changes in gun regulation that would stop the killing of thousands of innocent people in the US each year—there were more than 44,000 gun deaths in 2022. And the reactionary influence of the Koch brothers is not just killing Americans: the entire planet is having to deal with the deeply harmful effects of climate denialism by the Republican Party, which has wasted many crucial years failing to do anything to curb rising greenhouse gas emissions.²⁴

The Koch brothers’ empire of influence shows that it is not enough to look at discrete actions by individuals or even individual organizations: wealth is built into our politics in a much more fundamental way. Wealth shapes policy and opinion systemically, while the electorate appear to be nominally in control. This doesn’t just happen within a single country but on a global level, too. To see this, we must turn to the international networks of super-rich individuals that hover over today’s decidedly unjust global economic system. Who are the people helping determine global fiscal rules? Who are those who shape the world’s political and economic ideas, influencing what individual states and governments believe they can achieve?

The New York Times reporter Peter Goodman calls them the Davos Men. And those men (and, here and there, the odd woman) have built up a very powerful network that aims to advance a pro-business agenda in a global setting. They are named after the picturesque town in the Swiss Alps where the World Economic Forum (WEF) holds its yearly meetings, bringing together elite business leaders and politicians to address the world’s most pressing problems. Several journalists, including Peter Goodman and Anand Giridharadas, have followed the attendees of these meetings and documented how they think. In a nutshell: theirs is the neoliberal way.²⁵

The Davos Men seek to influence the rules of the global economy in a way that, ultimately, allows capital to accumulate, and shifts decision-making power to their own class (or keeps it there, once they have acquired it). At the root of their discussions in Davos lies the neoliberal credo: it’s in everyone’s best interest to let the private sector address the big challenges of our time. The private sector, after all, has problem-solving powers that governments do not, since it does everything so much more effectively and efficiently than the state. Yes, perhaps giving power to the private sector will make certain businesspeople very rich, but, more importantly, it will also make all of us better off.

Where have we heard that trope before? That everyone’s lives are improved when entrepreneurs are in control?

We saw it when we looked at global poverty statistics, which showed us that, in reality, living standards for the most vulnerable have only improved a little, while for the very richest they have improved a lot. The people at Davos, and at the WEF, are the same people who keep insisting that we consider the question of whether everyone is better off than they were before, instead of asking: why were the gains from globalization distributed so unequally, and who got to decide? This is a question they conspicuously avoid. The WEF website allows interested readers to consult essays on a range of topics that the work of the organization seeks to address, but economic inequality is not one of them. Inequality is simply not an important issue in the minds of members of the WEF.

From the case studies provided by Goodman, we know that the activities of the Davos Men are far-reaching. These have included ghost-writing the new pension legislation in France, which will allow private equity to gain control over billions of pensions funds, thereby increasing their own profits; supporting—in the order of tens of millions of dollars—Donald Trump in his campaign for re-election; and helping the British Conservative Party to gain power, and, once in power, to implement an austerity package that has hugely increased poverty and deprivation, while making rich Brits much richer. The Davos Men do everything for their own benefit, while their efforts to help the poor are superficial at best: as Anand Giridharadas has documented, rich philanthropists always seek out strategies for fixing poverty that rely on markets, and never ask any questions about the structural causes of those problems and inequalities, or consider more effective ways of addressing them.²⁶

These vital journalistic accounts of elite philanthropy and policy-making, each based on more than a decade of reporting on billionaires, are backed up by the academic research into what sociologists call the transnational capitalist class. This broad group consists of the very rich and powerful: the board members of the biggest global hedge funds and investment companies; the CEOs of the biggest companies; the directors of organizations such as the WEF that facilitate the work of these investors and CEOs; and the heads of some very large media conglomerates that support the dissemination of narratives biased in favor of wealthy people. Together, they have successfully re-engineered the economy for their own benefit—slashing the tax rates for the wealthiest, and multiplying the loopholes in the fiscal system.²⁷

I suspect that many reading about this for the first time will find it quite shocking. That was my reaction when I first encountered this body of work by scholars and investigative journalists. How are we supposed to feel when we discover that there exists a very powerful fraction of the super-rich that is not only extremely wealthy but also actively seeking to do whatever it can to bend the rules in its own favor and at the disadvantage of others?

We had better be clear about the nature of the challenge that we’re facing. The challenge is not just that we’re seeing large and increasing inequalities across the world. The challenge is also that there is a well-connected group of people who are actively rigging the political rules in order to grow the capital they already have.

And this is precisely what unites the rich with the super-rich: their capital, or wealth, just keeps getting bigger. Not every individual might be actively and deliberately involved in making this capital accumulation possible, but as long as they feel entitled to let their money “grow,” or as long as they demand annual pay that is multiple times what the average worker receives, they are supporting an unfair system that produces unacceptable levels of inequality. Not all members of the dominant class are actively involved in seizing political power as the Davos Men do, but they all feel that it is “only logical” that they follow suit and make use of the rules that see their total wealth grow. Anyone who has “more than enough” money—who crosses the ethical limitarian threshold of €1 million—is profiting from the endless efforts of the Davos class to shape the world’s politics in the way that suits them best.²⁸

By now, it should be abundantly clear that the economic elite have too much political power, and that they are making things worse for ordinary people. The working and middle classes in the Global North are seeing their jobs disappear, their relative pay decline, the economic insecurity worsen. The world could have been much fairer, but this elite have also significantly worsened global inequalities in comparison with how things might have been under equitable trade regimes. And, since their drive for capital accumulation is focused on the short term, they have allowed global warming to crescendo into climate disaster, which has already had devastating effects across vulnerable communities in the Global South. These catastrophes are leading to increased migration streams away from the Global South, which is in turn leading to increasing xenophobia in countries of the Global North. We are thus witnessing a polycrisis, much of which can be traced back to the way the global economic elite are pushing their own agenda. All of this social and economic upheaval suits fascist politicians nicely, as they can twist these developments to their own ends, further undermining democracy from within. It should be no surprise that once these fascists seize power, they start dismantling the “liberal” elements of our liberal democracies, including fundamental human rights. They begin to weaken the power of the judiciary so that their power can be consolidated. Historians of totalitarian regimes can tell us what happens next.

When democratically elected parties that have willingly collaborated with the global economic elite discover just how big a threat fascists now pose to liberal democracy, they start to push back, normally by stressing the fascists’ undemocratic, illiberal nature. And rightly so. But they should also ask themselves what, if any, responsibility they have for the rise of these factions. In the meantime, those of us who have not fallen for the lures of the proto-fascist sirens, should recognize danger from two sides. On one side there are the fascists; on the other, the established neoliberal forces that are willing to “help” us tackle poverty and climate change, but only with weak, market-based solutions—in other words, policies that favor the interests of large businesses and wealth holders. They either do not care or else are unable to see what they are doing: they fail to understand that they are part of the problem.

So here we are, with this long list of ways that wealth undermines democracy. Do the disastrous effects that concentrated wealth has on democratic values really require a limitarian response? Can’t we think of strategies to prevent financial power from turning into political power, other than forcing rich people to get rid of their surplus money? For example, we could try to reform the legislation on campaign funding, or the state could finance impartial public radio and television in order to restore the balance of views and arguments in public debate. Dean Machin, a former British philosophy professor who is now a policy adviser, has argued that we should present the super-rich with the choice between incurring a 100 percent tax on their wealth above the level that makes them super-rich, or forfeiting some political rights. The idea is that this would prevent the rich from buying political influence and power. Similarly, you could argue that if we implemented proper anti-corruption and campaign legislation, the money donated by the rich could no longer affect politics in such a significant way, and there would be no democratic reason to impose a cap on wealth. We would in effect be building a protective barrier between the sphere of money and the sphere of politics.²⁹

While some of these institutional measures are necessary for a healthy democracy, none of them will restore political equality between wealth holders and ordinary citizens. The reason for this is that, as we’ve seen, much of the political influence of rich people escapes the workings of formal institutions, such as legislation and regulation. Rich people could give up their right to vote, but if they are still able to set up and fund think tanks that produce ideologically driven research, or if they still have direct private access to government officials, then they will still have disproportionate levels of political power.

Imposing formal institutional mechanisms to decrease the impact of money on politics is thus feasible only to a limited extent. Large inequalities in wealth will always be a threat to political equality and other democratic values. And there is another, even greater threat posed by wealth concentration, which such measures can do very little to tackle: climate breakdown.

5 It’s Setting the World on Fire

In 2022, ExxonMobil made a profit of almost $56 billion—the highest in its history, and more than double its profit in 2021. Shell posted profits of $40 billion, again double the previous year, and, again, the highest in its history. Taken together, BP, Shell, Chevron, Exxon, and Total Energies amassed profits of $199.3 billion in 2022. President Biden called these figures “so high it’s hard to believe.” They truly are staggering. As Greenpeace pointed out, if you earned £40,000 a day from when Jesus was born to the present day, you still wouldn’t have made as much as Shell did in profits that year.¹

That same year, energy prices in many parts of the world rose so high that many working- and middle-class families could no longer afford to warm their homes. Everywhere, more and more households were suffering from energy poverty.

In short, what was happening was this: the big oil companies were profiting from economic unrest in the market due to the Russian war in Ukraine, and doing so at the expense of ordinary people.

What were the options available to those companies? They could have lowered prices for hard-hit households. They chose not to. They could have invested their profits in greatly upscaling renewable energies. They chose not to. Admittedly, there was no reason to expect that they would do this, given that they have repeatedly rejected proposals by their own shareholders to invest more in renewable energy production and step up their game in climate action. Instead, they channeled profits to their shareholders in the usual way. And the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere rose again, hitting record highs.² As Mark van Baal, founder of the shareholder activist group Follow This put it, 2022 was the year in which “the empire struck back.”³

Can we live within the boundaries of environmental sustainability while these and other companies seek record profits? Can we avert the climate crisis from within a system that creates such extreme wealth inequality? Can environmental safety and stability go hand in hand with the lifestyles of the super-rich?

Many think not. The British writer and environmental activist George Monbiot has endorsed limitarianism on the grounds that it will be impossible to save life on Earth without putting a cap on how much wealth an individual can have. The French economist Thomas Piketty has commented in no uncertain terms on the relationship between extreme wealth and climate safety: “It is impossible to seriously fight climate change without a profound redistribution of wealth, both within countries and internationally.”⁴ Piketty and Monbiot are not the only ones who see a strong link between environmental breakdown and extreme wealth. When I talk to people about my research, they often raise the question of how inequality is connected to the state of the planet and our duty to take care of nature.

What, exactly, is the link? What’s the relationship between the super-rich and the climate and ecological crises? Is it really the case that extreme wealth is detrimental for the planet? If so, why?

Let’s begin with the basics. In 1990, with the publication of the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate scientists told anyone willing to listen that global warming was occurring due to changes in human activity. Since the Industrial Revolution, they revealed, humans have been emitting way more greenhouse gases than the Earth can absorb (in its so-called “carbon sinks”), causing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and ocean to rise. The major greenhouse gases are methane, which gets released by cows and sheep or by thawing permafrost, among other sources; nitrogen, which largely comes from agriculture, industry, and combustion-based vehicles; and carbon dioxide, the most well known, which is released when we use fossil fuels or burn biofuels like wood. Scientists warned that if we didn’t halt emissions of these three gases, we would face a cataclysm.⁵

We can use 1990 as the year when no government, organization, or company could claim any longer that they did not know climate change was happening, and what caused it. But even by using 1990, we are giving governments and oil corporations the benefit of the doubt. In 2015, journalists from the Pulitzer Prize–winning news organization Inside Climate News uncovered documents which revealed that Exxon’s executive management was warned by its own scientists back in 1977 that CO₂ released by the use of fossil fuels would warm the world and could potentially endanger humanity. In the US, the oil and gas industry’s largest trade organization knew about the harm emissions could do since at least the 1950s, and other fossil companies (such as the coal industry, General Motors, and Ford) since the 1960s or 1970s.⁶

In the decades since 1990, politicians and the public have started taking steps to reduce emissions. Some of the most common strategies that have been advocated to stop further global warming are: for individuals to consume less, particularly by not flying and by switching from animal-based to plant-based diets; for companies and households to switch to electricity for fueling energy-intensive activities (transportation, cooking, heating, and so on); and for governments to change land use (encouraging rewilding, reforestation, and so on).

Despite these efforts, our emissions just keep getting worse. We have emitted more carbon dioxide since 1991 than throughout the rest of human history. In 2022, scientists warned that we had just six and a half years left at current rates of emissions before we surpass our “carbon budget”—that is, the maximum amount of CO₂ that we can emit while still having a chance of keeping global warming at 1.5°C.⁷

At 1.2°C of warming, we are already beginning to experience the disastrous effects of climate change. It is no longer a dystopia for some time in the future: climate change has arrived, and is already taking its toll. Droughts have become more frequent and harmful, leading to stressed irrigation systems, crop failures, an increased risk of wildfires, and water insecurity. In 2018, the Western Cape province of South Africa suffered a terrible water crisis, as a result of three consecutive years of limited rainfall. It led to the entire city of Cape Town no longer having enough water for its residents. Warming has made this kind of drought three times more likely to occur.⁸

Violent flooding, too, is on the rise. In recent years we have seen images of severe floods in southern China, eastern Australia, Bangladesh and elsewhere. In all these cases, the severity of the floods was described as historic or exceptional, and experts linked them all to climate change. The likelihood of violent flooding is increasing significantly even in areas where it used to be rare. Scientists estimated that, before climate change, the chance that such an event would happen was once every 400 years, whereas now, because of climate change, those figures have risen to once every 44 to 210 years.⁹

Meanwhile, wildfires have become more frequent, last longer, and cover greater areas—and hence have been more devastating in their effects. They kill millions of animals, destroy swaths of land and plant life, lead to a huge loss of property, and, importantly, generate a sense of increased insecurity and danger for an ever-larger group of people. For people living in other areas, the threat doesn’t come from wildfires but from rising sea levels. Rising sea levels are often used for dystopian images of the effects of climate change, with New York or Amsterdam under water, but they are already affecting people today. The small islands in the Pacific have already lost significant areas of land to the sea, and some islands are predicted to disappear below sea level and become uninhabitable within the next twenty years.¹⁰

In poor countries, the rise in droughts, flooding, and extreme weather is leading to an increased risk of widespread hunger and famine. The UN World Food Program warns that if global warming reaches 2°C, 189 million more people will suffer from hunger, and that number would rise to 1.8 billion in a world that is four degrees warmer. There are multiple causes of famine, including wars and government mismanagement, but lower crop yields in the Global South due to climate change will only make the situation worse.

To alleviate this suffering and stand a chance of preventing things from becoming unimaginably bad, we need, as a matter of urgency, to reduce our emission of greenhouse gases. The actions we’ve taken so far clearly haven’t been sufficient. Asking people to stop flying or stop eating meat won’t be enough: we need much more far-reaching and structural measures. We need, in short, a genuine transition to an ecologically sustainable economy. And this is where the question of wealth concentration comes into the picture.

Wealth concentration exacerbates climate change in a number of ways. First among them is simply that the rich have much higher carbon emissions than the middle classes or the poor. This holds for all countries, and all regions of the world. Recent data shows that, with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa, belonging to the top 1 or top 10 percent of the income distribution in a country is a better predictor of high emissions per person than geography.

In 2019, the global average CO₂ emissions reached 6 tons per person. As Lucas Chancel reports, the global bottom 50 percent of the income and wealth distribution emit on average 1.4 tons per person, and contribute only 11.5 percent of the total emissions. The middle 40 percent of people emit around 6 tons each, and are responsible for 40.5 percent of total global emissions. The top 10 percent emit almost 29 tons per person, which makes up 48 percent of total global emissions. Yet within that last group, the 1 percent stand out: they emit a staggering 101 tons per person per year.¹¹

In addition, these averages differ significantly between regions. In North America, the richest 10 percent emit 69 tons of CO₂ per person each year, compared with almost 22 tons for the middle 40 percent and 10 tons for the bottom 50 percent. In Europe, emission figures are respectively 29 tons, 11 tons, and 5 tons; in East Asia 40 tons, 8 tons, and 3 tons; in Latin America 18 tons, 5 tons, and 2 tons; and in Sub-Saharan Africa 7.5 tons, 2 tons, and 0.5 tons. Carbon inequality is thus a significant factor in global inequality.¹²

The contribution of the 1 percent highest emitters to total emissions is not only extremely large, but has also been growing over time. Globally, the emissions of those who emit a lot but not the most (technically, those between the seventy-fifth and ninety-fifth percentile of the distribution of greenhouse-gas emissions) have decreased by about 10 percent between 1990 and 2019, while the emissions of those responsible for the 1 percent highest emissions have increased by 23 percent in the same period.¹³

Thus, generally speaking, a person’s affluence is the best predictor of how polluting their lifestyle will be. Rich people have larger homes, travel more, use less public transportation, and have investments in polluting industries. In the case of the super-rich, we are looking at huge mansions and second homes, multiple cars, private jets, and capital accumulation from profits in industries that contribute to climate change. Yes, there are always exceptions, and some rich or super-rich people have devoted their fortunes to nature conservation; but for each of those green heroes, there are exceptions in the other direction—for example, those involved in developing space tourism or relentlessly pursuing fossil-fuel extraction.

Just look at who flies. Most people in the world have never taken a plane and will never fly anywhere. The rich and the super-rich, meanwhile, fly all the time, and are responsible for most of the emissions generated by air travel. These emissions especially impact the poor, who have no way of defending themselves against increased climate harms and risks. An Amsterdam–New York round trip, for example, creates on average 906 kg of carbon dioxide emissions, plus another 1,728 kg of other greenhouse gases (that are generally ignored in debates about carbon offsetting). It’s easy to find a ticket for this journey with a major airline for less than $800. For most people, that price is an awful lot of money. But given how costly that flight’s emissions are for the future of all living beings on the planet, such a trip is startlingly cheap. In order to pay the “true” price for a trip from Amsterdam to New York and back again, I would also have to pay the monetary value of compensation of the damage caused by those emissions. Forget about the $5 that the airline company offers to offset your flight by planting a tree somewhere (that may well burn down in the next wildfire). Even the $125 of offsetting suggested by organizations selling high-quality carbon offset credits is too low. How could that possibly compensate the lost livelihoods of people in Kiribati, Barbados, or Bangladesh? Or the cost of overshooting the remaining carbon budget? Some scientists and scholars working on climate governance and ethics think we should pay much higher compensation, up to $400 per ton of carbon. So rather than flying to New York for $800, if I were to pay the true price for this highly polluting activity, I should probably pay double that—but even $1,600 seems a trifling amount, both to the wealthy people flying, and to the people already suffering the ill effects of climate disaster.¹⁴ Would it be enough to curb their jet-setting?

Corporations that sell consumer products go to great lengths to convince us that, if we make a tiny contribution, they can “go green.” In the summer of 2022, Shell told its European customers that, if they paid a single cent extra on every liter of fuel for their cars, their mileage would be carbon neutral, since Shell would use the money to plant trees. Nine law students of the Free University of Amsterdam’s Climate and Sustainability Law Clinic filed a complaint at the Stichting Reclame Rood, a self-regulatory complaints board for the advertising industry in the Netherlands. The board upheld the complaint by the students: the claim that planting one tree for every liter of fuel consumed would make a driver’s mileage carbon neutral was untrue and misleading.¹⁵

In the case of the aviation industry, though, we aren’t just talking about the rich indirectly harming the poor through their excessive, carbon-emitting travel habits. In many countries, ordinary taxpayers are actually paying for the rich to fly—since aviation is subsidized by public money. Sometimes this is done directly, when the leaders of a country think that an airline is so important that it deserves state funding. But all airlines benefit from the fact that, for historical reasons, the kerosene used in the aviation industry is exempted from fuel taxes. Not only is this a significant indirect subsidy, it also gives airlines an unfair advantage over other, more sustainable means of transportation, such as long-distance coaches or express trains.¹⁶

And as we know, the truly super-rich don’t just fly a lot, they also fly in luxury—that is, in private jets, which are the single worst form of transportation when it comes to the climate (putting aside space tourism for a second). Ironically, many of the delegates who attend Davos to discuss what public–private partnerships can do to tackle climate change, travel there by private jet. An estimated 500 jets flew into the airports around Davos for the meeting in 2022, causing emissions roughly equivalent to 26,700 cars driving from Paris to Davos. Flying by private jet is between four and fourteen times more polluting than traveling on a commercial flight, and fifty times more polluting than traveling by train. Not surprisingly, several climate activist groups have started to target airports that cater to private jets. They are demanding a ban on all private jets for personal use.¹⁷

It’s quite simple: because they are so immensely wealthy, rich and super-rich individuals can—and do—cause disproportionate damage to the climate in all areas of their lives, thereby harming those who are too vulnerable to defend themselves. In this way, the rich dramatically violate a principle that all moral philosophical traditions would agree on: the “polluter pays” principle. This principle doesn’t just apply to the polluting consumers, however; it also applies—even more so—to investors and producers. Big oil companies have known for decades that we can’t continue to emit gases and that fossil fuels should stay in the ground. But instead, they kept on digging, selling, and making huge profits. I do not expect that it will be possible to make them liable for the damage they have done. No doubt they have an army of legal advisers who will make victims’ access to justice impossible. But whatever their legal advisers say, morally speaking the right thing for an energy company to do right now is to make a plan that will phase out fossil fuels as soon as possible, redirect all their profits into making that energy transition, and pay compensation for all the damage they have caused. As we have seen with the extreme profits they generated in 2022, they won’t. Their only aim is to generate more wealth.¹⁸

Without government intervention, there isn’t much reason to be hopeful about what we can expect from the big polluting companies. They will not just walk away from the vast wealth they can make and hoard by selling fossil fuels, or by continuing the carbon-intensive production of steel, plastic, and consumer goods, rather than developing “green” versions of those products. Yet the people presiding over these industries are also fathers, mothers, grandparents. What will they tell their grandchildren? How do they want to be remembered after their deaths? The message to people who have become rich or super-rich through working in the fossil-fuel and other highly polluting industries is pretty clear: you don’t deserve this money. It is filthy. Give it away, to improve the lives of the people you have harmed through your work. If the rich (and everyone else) had respected the “polluter pays” principle when they generated their money—whether through production or through their financial investments—or when they spent it, they would be much less rich. Presumably some entire industries would have ceased to be profitable.¹⁹ But it gets worse. It’s not just that, in a bid to boost profits (and thus to increase the wealth of their millionaire executives and shareholders), polluting companies have lobbied to avoid paying the costs of environmental damage. Some of them have also deliberately spread misinformation about the real nature of climate change. This “denial machine” has been well orchestrated, and for a very long time has successfully sown doubt about the truth of our situation. The targets of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement could have been agreed upon much earlier, and much precious time might not have been lost.

The climate-denial machine is particularly powerful in some countries, like the US and Russia. In the US, conservative think tanks—such as those sponsored by the Koch brothers—have long aimed to weaken and undermine the scientific consensus on climate change, and they have successfully obstructed the development of climate policy at the national level. A 2014 study showed how a group of ninety-one climate-denial organizations received annual donations of about $900 million, mainly from conservative foundations. These foundations are funded not just by billionaires but also by corporations like ExxonMobil.²⁰

In other countries, including those within the European Union, conservative multimillionaires and their companies have less money and there is more robust legislation on anonymous or shady donations, which make it harder to fund these efforts. Still, the polluting companies that make big money, such as airline companies or companies that produce steel or non-renewable energy, are equally engaged in trying to lull people into a false sense of security. At the start of 2023, the estimated remaining carbon budget to stay within the 1.5°C of warming was a mere 260 gigatons of CO₂ emissions, which, if we continue business as usual, gives us until halfway into 2029 to make our economies entirely fossil free. We cannot afford to let these industries hoodwink us any longer as to the nature and consequences of their activities.²¹

Keeping the planet safe for humanity will require deep decarbonization and a fundamental economic transition—from production that is fossil-fuel based to production that is climate neutral. Otherwise, it will be impossible to stay within the remaining carbon budget. Yet this “green transition” will come with winners and losers. Overall, we have reason to believe that the green economy that should emerge from this transition will lead to much better, healthier, and happier lives for almost everyone when compared with the path we’re on right now. The super-rich might, perhaps, be able to buy their way out of disaster by hiring private firefighters in case wildfires threaten their homes, or by purchasing bunkers to retreat to when things get really bad, but that’s not an option for 99.99 percent of humanity.²²

It will be a steep challenge to make a green economy a reality. Those who have become rich from the products of carbon-intense industries, either as CEOs or as investors, stand to lose not just money but the power and political control that comes with it. For the CEOs of those dirty companies often have close connections with prominent—usually conservative—political parties. And when it comes to following what the scientists of the IPCC have told us we need to do to reduce emissions and move to a decarbonized world, the track record of those parties is poor—to put it mildly. Here we can observe a worrying nexus between the profiteering of the entrepreneurial super-rich, political inaction, and the financial support of organizations that are part of the climate-denial machine. Just as with protecting democratic values, trying to tighten regulation so that money can’t buy political power or fund climate-denial machinery would certainly be a very good thing. But, as with politics in general, the barrier between climate action and the sphere of money will never be strong enough. Not when we still have billionaires and decamillionaires to contend with.

There are clear, demonstrable links between climate disaster and extreme wealth, but it is important to recognize that at heart this is a deeply moral issue. There are certain moral imperatives that the rich and super-rich must follow when it comes to climate change, simply because morality demands it.²³

This partly comes down to the aforementioned “polluter pays” principle. Those wealthy individuals and companies who have been responsible throughout history for the vast majority of greenhouse-gas emissions, have not paid for that pollution, which has allowed them to amass their great wealth. Meanwhile, those who will pay the price bear no responsibility. Despite having very low per-capita carbon emissions, the inhabitants of the small island states in the Pacific Ocean—such as the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, and Kiribati—are in the process of losing their land, livelihoods, possessions, and even their capacity to live as members of a self-governing political community.

But there is also a question of “distributive justice” here. When it comes to emissions, the rich and super-rich have taken much more than their fair share. The finite, emissions-absorbing capacity of the atmosphere is a valuable common resource, owned by all humanity. If we look at our current consumption patterns, we must draw the conclusion that we all want more of this resource than remains available according to the carbon budget. If the remaining carbon budget is very limited, then this raises the question: how should we divide up the emissions that are left?

In one of their earliest studies on the topic, Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty looked at what our personal carbon allowance ought to be. They divided a carbon budget of 1,000 gigatons (that is available for the entire planet) by the number of people that are alive or will be alive between 2015 and 2100, and estimated a “sustainable per capita emissions level” of about 1.3 tons per year. If we use the remaining budget to stay under 1.5°C of global warming, then we each get a carbon budget of 1.9 tons of emissions per person per year until 2050. Atmosfair, a German organization that offers high-quality carbon offsetting, has suggested a fair emissions budget of 1.5 tons per person per year.²⁴

There is much one can say about these figures. You could argue that citizens of developing countries need more emissions to develop, and therefore their emissions share should be larger. You could, conversely, argue that it would be very hard for people living in societies with a high-emissions infrastructure to reduce their emissions, and that therefore their share should be larger. Also, you could very plausibly object that between 2020 and 2050 or 2100 the individual emissions budget should not remain exactly the same: rather, it would make more sense to give each of us, say, 5 tons to start with, and then over time decrease that amount so that we end up with zero emissions later, while still keeping to the average of 1.3 tons or 1.5 tons overall.

We might quibble about what a fair individual emissions budget should be, but it doesn’t matter what the exact figure is. What matters is that we currently emit multiple times that amount, and a major reduction in the amount we can emit is inevitable, regardless of whether our personal carbon budget is set at 1.3, or 1.9 tons. Remember, the average American currently emits 22 tons of CO₂ per year. Whatever we agree is our fair personal carbon allowance, it is going to be much, much lower than what rich people—and middle-class individuals in affluent countries—are currently emitting.

There’s no way around it: almost all of us will be forced to adapt our current lifestyles. There is currently no technology that neutralizes the harmful effects of greenhouse gases, or that makes it possible for long-distance aircraft to fly on renewable energy, and so we will have to change the way we travel, drastically reducing the number of flights we take. The same goes for the way we eat. Recall the earlier data on the emissions generated by one transatlantic return flight. The data on the emissions caused by current patterns of food consumption are equally sobering. Based on emissions in the current food industry, a vegan diet equals 1.06 tons of carbon per person per year, rising to 1.4 tons for vegetarians and 2.63 tons for people who eat on average 100 grams of meat a day. For the time being, we are unable to produce our food in a carbon-free way, especially the types of food that we are currently consuming. But if the entire world were to switch to a plant-based diet, the effect on global emissions would be huge. This would in part be due to the lower emissions generated by producing this food, but also because vast swaths of livestock pasture and land currently used to grow the crops for feeding livestock (rather than for feeding people) could be rewilded, allowing for carbon drawdown and ecological renewal on a vast scale. However, as George Monbiot argues in his book Regenesis, making such changes—which would also allow the entire world population to be fed—would require a transformation in the farming industry: we’re talking here about substituting the production of animal proteins and fats with the production of proteins from plants, fungi, and bacteria, with all the changes in practice, equipment, and supply chains that this implies. In other words, while there are changes that people at all income levels must make, we also need systemic reform. The way we produce food is just one example of a system that needs to change; for a green transition we need fundamental transformations in many other sectors too. For example, in the case of transport and mobility, we need to not only drastically reform the aviation industry, but also to move from private to shared cars, and to public transport and much better cycling infrastructure in most places. All such structural changes need major injections of money, and fast.²⁵

If, in addition to these decarbonizing efforts, we also see increased investment in shared spaces—more parks, more public meeting places, and so on—we will all be able to live very good lives within a fair emissions budget. But the indulgences of the super-rich, such as living in a large villa or owning several houses, flying regularly, or using private helicopters or jets for transportation, will be out of the question. We must thus conclude that we don’t just need to address our own lifestyles and our major industries; we also need to do something about extreme wealth concentration, because it is translating into lifestyles that are ecologically unsustainable.²⁶

You might object that while it’s true that on average the ecological damage caused by the rich is much greater than the ecological damage caused by the non-rich, it’s not the case that every single super-rich person is generating higher-than-average emissions. In other words, it is perfectly possible to lead a frugal lifestyle (and hence to emit very little) and also to be very rich. What is damaging is the consumption of emissions-intensive goods and services, not the possession of money per se. Therefore, limitarianism is aiming at the wrong target. We should be focusing on encouraging the rich to reduce their emissions caused by consumption, not limiting their possession of income and wealth. What ecological sustainability requires is frugality, but frugality and excess wealth can—in theory—go hand in hand.²⁷

On the face of it, this objection is correct, as frugality and wealth concentration can coexist. But from a statistical point of view, environmental sustainability and wealth concentration are very strongly correlated. With few exceptions, the super-rich are massively overconsuming, and make multiple times their fair share of emissions. And since consumption is strongly correlated with household wealth, one could argue that this provides an indirect argument for limitarianism. If we think about policy-making and institutional design for the real world, we always rely on empirical regularities—on what we observe at population level. A fair government can’t choose its policies on an individual basis, and hence there will always be some individual cases where the rule seems unfair. But such a minor drawback will be vastly outweighed by the major moral gain of securing ecological sustainability and a living planet for all future generations. It’s also worth noting that, to the extent that the super-rich do not consume all their personal wealth, most of the time they invest it in companies that are not climate neutral, and so create additional emissions this way. Merely taxing their consumption would still allow them to drastically overshoot their fair emissions budget via their investment choices. A focus on consumption alone will not encompass every aspect of climate justice.

Another objection might go like this. Theoretically, there is another proposal that would be more precise in its target than limitarianism: implementing a personal carbon allowance that would allow individuals to generate emissions of up to 1.5 tons per year, and that’s it. All types of consumption that create a lot of emissions, like buying gasoline, flying, eating meat and dairy products, would come not just with a monetary price, but also with an emissions price. Each person could then choose what they spend their carbon-emission allowance on: they could eat meat, fly, drive a fossil-fueled car, buy stuff—but they could not do all of these things, and certainly not as much as they pleased. This would be an extremely powerful but also coercive way to make sure that the current population remained within the emissions budget that intergenerational fairness and climate justice demands. In this hypothetical situation, the rich (and, indeed, the middle classes) would be forced to limit their spending to zero-emissions goods and services, since not much of their personal allowance would be left after securing food, clothing, housing, and a minimum of transportation. This would be a way to build a boundary between the sphere of money and the sphere of ecology: a privileged position in the economic sphere would no longer enable you to gain a privileged position in the ecological sphere.²⁸

There are some serious problems with this idea. First, the personal carbon budget would apply to everyone, yet the problem was not created by everyone—certainly not by people who are currently emitting 3 tons per year or less. What’s more, the poor and lower-middle classes have much less money to buy less carbon-intensive consumer goods, like expensive electric vehicles. It’s also concerning that the idea of a personal carbon budget individualizes a problem that has been created by systems—in other words, by what various industries have offered us in terms of carbon-intensive and carbon-neutral consumer goods; by the effects of our governments’ housing and transportation policies; and so on. For the transition to an ecologically sustainable economy we need to make structural changes on a vast scale, and it is unclear how imposing an individual carbon budget will help with that. We’d do better to look for ways to advance that transition as quickly as possible, which means closing some industries, expanding some others, slowing down the production of material goods, and decarbonizing those processes as much as we can. Little of this will happen without clear rules, regulation, and leadership.

Still, if there ends up being wide support for personal carbon budgets, and if the limits they impose on individuals and families would help put enough pressure on governments and companies to make them provide carbon-free goods, then it would in principle be the most fair way to spend the remaining emissions. It is unlikely to be feasible in the short term, and I am very skeptical that it ever could be achieved; the best we can hope for is that some powerful people design an app that allows us to track our own emissions, which could lead to a movement of individuals voluntarily not emitting more than their fair share. But this will very likely be only a tiny proportion of the population. Under a voluntary system, the political pressure that coercive personal carbon allowances would create would be absent, and thus the overall effect on the green transition would be too weak.

If you are an economist reading this, you might raise a slightly different objection, and argue that we should tax the polluting activities (such as traveling by plane, eating meat, driving a gas-guzzling car) rather than the income and wealth of the super-rich. The idea here is that it’s more efficient to increase the price of polluting activities or goods, rather than to use an income-based measure to stop people from polluting. This objection assumes that, at the societal level, everyone is better off when we tax specific types of consumer goods, because each of us will only choose the ones we really want, at their true price. In the model of neoclassical economic theory, which assumes an equal distribution of financial resources, this is true. But as we know, income and wealth inequalities are currently very large. A very wealthy person would be willing and able to pay more for goods that they value than a poorer person who valued the goods just as much. It follows that the more unequal a society is, the more important it is to have government rationing rather than relying on the price mechanism.²⁹

If we were to tax polluting activities, it wouldn’t spur multimillionaires and billionaires to change their behavior; they would keep on massively over-emitting. Increasing the price of flying, eating steak, or driving an SUV might be a justified and effective way of changing the behavior of the non-rich, but it will do nothing to rein in the excess emissions of the super-rich. There are only three ways to make the super-rich halt their gross over-pollution: criminalize that behavior; give them a low-emissions budget that they cannot make larger by buying emissions rights from others; or make sure they are no longer so rich that price increases don’t bother them—by limiting their wealth.

We have a set of rules for normal times, when there is a balance to be struck between different values and principles—even if we might disagree about some of the details. We want the state to be reliable, and we believe that in normal circumstances people can legitimately expect to be able to hold on to the money they have, as long as the money is not dirty and they pay their taxes.

But these are not normal times. While our inclination may be to avoid alarming news and to tell ourselves that everything is going to be all right, scientific evidence should make us strongly question such complacency. Science tells us that we are turning the Earth into a place that will become uninhabitable for most humans, and indeed for many other living species. We are thus, whether we acknowledge it or not, in a state of climate emergency. We have, at most, a decade to halve emissions, and two decades to phase them out completely. We cannot simply tinker in the margins, but must undertake a complete overhaul of how we produce, what we consume and how we live together. We need to protect the people who are already suffering the consequences of climate change, and compensate for the harms and injustices done in environmental disasters where the poor and powerless have lost out owing to the activities of the rich and powerful—as in the exceptional heat waves and floods that India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have been experiencing over the past decade.

Many people have ideas about how to use our collective resources to ensure an ecologically sustainable world. In his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, published in 2021, Bill Gates lays out many new technological solutions, and he encourages investors and governments to do what it takes to make these technological developments happen. Climate scientists have reacted to Gates’s book by pointing out that we know what needs to be done, and that the technology is already available. The problem is the lack of political will, obstruction by climate denialists, and the failure of leaders to do what it takes. For example, Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, has developed a plan to transition to green energy based on 100 percent wind, water, and solar power that doesn’t require any investment in emerging technologies. Given his expertise, he is certainly better equipped than me (and presumably also than Bill Gates) to judge what is possible. But even if, for the sake of argument, we stay agnostic as to what the feasible and necessary changes would be, it is obvious that we need vast investment in renewable energy, in the large-scale transformation of energy systems in cities, in the expansion of public transport networks, and so on. Bill Gates hopes that business leaders, supported by governments, will save the day. Yet in Gates’s book, there is not a single word about power imbalances, about the harms done by the climate-denial machine, about excessive wealth and excess emissions, or even simply about where all the money is going to come from. Given that we are in a state of emergency (and on this Gates and I agree), we might do better to adopt a strategy of taking the money where it should be taken from—the super-rich—and letting governments lead the way on the investments and the green transition. This will require us to remember what a committed government is really capable of. Although forty years of neoliberalism has left many of us feeling disillusioned, and has also, in some countries, genuinely weakened the government, surely we won’t succumb to the fantasy that the system that got us into this dangerous situation in the first place—profit-obsessed, poorly regulated capitalism—will now provide the solution?³⁰

The solution is at hand, and it’s not that difficult: impose a confiscatory tax on the fortunes of the super-rich, and use those funds to spearhead the green transition, adequately protect those who will need protection from climate change, and rectify the environmental injustices done in the past.

But what if increasing taxation isn’t likely to happen in the short run? Here we must keep ethics in sight. Rich and super-rich people need not wait until their governments get their act together and collect the funding for a climate “moonshot” strategy. Super-rich people can easily find ways to donate to effective environmental causes, rather than spending their wealth on developing climate-damaging projects like space tourism. Nothing is preventing them from taking the lead to save the planet. Given their fortunes, they are in a unique position to make positive change.

Some of the multimillionaires I spoke with are doing this already. One of them supported the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion financially in its early days. This highlights a point that we must repeat over and over: the super-rich have a choice. Every day, they choose whether to continue holding on to great sums of money, or to put it where it’s actually needed. Philanthropy doesn’t have to be luxurious—you don’t need to sponsor a sports team or a rich university. The super-rich should use their money to support climate litigation, or increase the production of renewable energies, or invest in one of the many strategies to aid the green transition.³¹

This brings us to yet another connection between extreme wealth and the ecological crisis. We all need to act to protect the living planet—but why should middle-class families put their meager savings into buying a heat pump or solar panels, or trade in their gasoline-fueled car for an expensive electric one, or sign up for a car pool, if they see the super-rich living in mansions, flying private jets, or collecting money from investments in polluting industries? If the most affluent individuals don’t act first, they are violating the “ability-to-pay” principle, which is one of the core ethical principles used in taxation design, but also more recently in thinking about how the burdens of climate action should be distributed. This principle states that when there is a problem that a group of people need to solve, those with the greatest capacity should shoulder the heaviest burdens, and take most responsibility. The 90 percent will resent having to make sacrifices if the 10 percent keep emitting so intensively; they will resent even more that the 1 percent are emitting many times what the 90 percent emit. We are in a planetary crisis, and this will require action from everyone. We need leadership from those who have power. We need the richest to set an example. Otherwise it’s going to be difficult to ask the non-rich to make sacrifices.

Although it might be stating the obvious, saving the planet requires more than a cap on extreme wealth. There is a vast literature that can offer analysis and guidance to us all. Everyone living above the poverty line and whose emissions are higher than just a few tons per year must do what they can to lower them. Everyone who can vote should vote for political parties that understand the climate and biodiversity crises and have a smart plan of action. At the very least, we need parties that don’t engage in greenwashing or put up smoke screens to protect their corporate friends. We should exert pressure on the establishment to act effectively and swiftly by joining (or otherwise supporting) climate activist groups. And if the establishment doesn’t get its act together very soon, then we should seriously contemplate Andreas Malm’s claim that the sacredness of property rights is costing us a habitable earth. Given the dismal track record of polluting companies, and the almost-as-dismal track record of many political leaders, we shouldn’t be surprised if we start to see climate activists growing so desperate that they start to destroy property on a larger scale. Since property is not a living thing, and their activism is protecting the lives of vulnerable people who otherwise must live in an uninhabitable world, they may well have morality on their side.³²

Let’s take stock. What has our inquiry into the problems with extreme wealth told us so far? Economic inequalities are huge. Wealth concentration is phenomenal. But there are also clear differences between countries, as government policies, the protection of workers, and the power of corporations differ significantly. But even given these differences, we can see some patterns in the harms caused by extreme wealth. As we saw in Chapter 3, wealth accumulation is often tied to immoral and criminal practices. In almost all cases, rich and super-rich people should not have amassed so much money in the first place, and reparations for past harms—including tax evasion—are long overdue. Further, we’ve seen that extreme wealth concentration is a serious threat to democracy, in myriad ways. And the ceaseless drive to accrue more and more money is halting the green transition and driving climate disaster. But this wealth also has vast potential as a force for good: taken out of the hands of self-serving individuals, it could massively accelerate the green transition.

How does this relate to our proposed limits on wealth? The political limit should be such that it cannot cause democratic harm. It is up to each political community to decide where that limit lies; I hold that ten million, in pounds, dollars, or euros, seems about right—low enough to make it too expensive to buy political influence. The limit that the climate case would suggest is more difficult to calculate, since the picture is, as we’ve seen, much more complicated. What it does very clearly give us, though, is a reason to take the lower ethical limit seriously: in a world on fire, how can you justify buying luxurious, Earth-destroying consumer goods, when there are so many Earth-protecting projects you could fund?

The ecological argument clearly shows the two sides of limitarianism. We need limitarianism because there is a clear case to be made against extreme wealth concentration. But we also need limitarianism because there is so much good that money above the riches line could do, if only it were used for addressing collective problems.

There is, however, one stubborn myth standing in the way: the myth that we deserve all the money that we can acquire by legal means—that it is ours, and therefore it is entirely up to us, within the boundaries of the law, to decide what to do with that money. In the land of the rich, this myth is the most insidious and damaging.

6 Nobody Deserves to Be a Multimillionaire

In any given debate on tax, you’ll hear the following argument. The money that people earn on the market rightfully belongs to them, and as such the government has no business taking it away. To the person making this point, it will seem obvious that the very richest in society have achieved great things that make them deserving of their huge fortunes (dirty money aside). He or she might even add that the super-rich are usually geniuses or born leaders; it is their talent, and their effort, that has got them where they are today.

If this claim were true, then it would significantly weaken the case for limitarianism. If we could truly say that we deserved our wealth, then yes, although we should still try to manage the negative consequences of wealth concentration, there wouldn’t be an intrinsic moral reason to put a limit on how much a person can have.

So, is this claim correct? Can someone be said to deserve their riches if they’ve genuinely earned them through hard work and skill? The answer to this question takes us to the heart of the case for limitarianism—and back to philosophical basics.

Limitarianism rests on the fundamental philosophical insight that markets and property are social institutions. What does this mean? It means that, in the world as it is, there is no property, and there are no markets, outside the social context—these things cannot exist without a shared system of rules and norms in which a coordinating party, typically the government, plays a crucial role. We usually acquire property via market transactions; those markets are shaped, protected, and enabled by our governments. Without governments to protect our interests in the market, we would end up in what the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes described in 1651 as the “state of nature.” Life would be horrible, and no one would be safe—think of those sci-fi dystopias. As Hobbes put it:

In such a condition, there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.¹

Hobbes reasoned that anything would be better than this violent state and that it would therefore be rational for everyone to submit to a governing body, who would provide protection in return for obedience. Thus the idea of “the social contract” was born—the idea that it is rational for human beings to agree on a set of rules that govern our public life, in order to make life better for all.²

It is the state’s responsibility to implement the social contract, providing a set of rules that protect our basic rights and liberties, and preventing people from taking power into their own hands or infringing on the rights of others. Key to this is its protection of our property rights, which are central to our freedoms, our security, and our well-being; as well as its provision of public goods—from roads and railways to firefighters and nurses—that enable us to safely pursue our own endeavors.

Yet for the government to exist and to exercise these functions, it must have resources—it must collect tax. Without tax, the government couldn’t protect our property, and enable transactions in the market (by defending us against fraud and theft during those transactions, for example).

The fundamental philosophical point is that secure ownership of property cannot exist without taxation. There is no property (as we know it) without the state, and there is no state without tax. There is no pre-institutional property; it is all part of the same socio-economic system that also generates a tax system and a government. The American philosophers Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel have explained this in their influential work on ownership; as they argue, property rights are “conventional”—they follow from agreements we make as a society. Since there are no markets without governments, and there is no government without taxes, there is no way to decide on what constitutes our property without first thinking about societal rules. It is, you could say, a package deal that cannot be neatly disentangled. The claim that we have an individual moral right to the income and profits that we can earn on the market is a mistake. Property rights, the role of government, and the rate of taxation must all be adjudicated together, by the wider political community.³

People who object to taxation, or denounce it as “theft,” fail to understand that without tax—that is, without a social contract that binds people together—there would be no income or assets, no secure transactions and no smooth markets in the first place. There would just be chaos and danger.

Importantly, then, there is no pre-taxation distribution of resources that can serve as a benchmark to decide what the default position should be. In contrast to what many libertarians, economic conservatives, and neoliberals believe, the pre-tax distribution of income and wealth is not produced without intervention by the government and continued societal cooperation. It therefore cannot be construed as a “natural” distribution of property that the government should keep its hands off. Some degree of tax on income and wealth is always legitimate and just. The real debate should be about how much should get collected and from whom, and how the money should then be spent—how it can help shape the markets fairly, and support a fair, inclusive social contract. Almost no one can say that they deserve to keep all of their earnings. As we shall see, this is particularly true of the super-rich—regardless of how they came by the cash.

Perhaps the most obvious case of undeserved wealth is that of inheritance. Inheritances are a significant source of extreme wealth, sometimes making individuals very rich indeed. Economists have engaged in vigorous disputes over what proportion of total wealth comes from inheritance and what is “self-made.” A recent study suggests that in Europe (including the UK) in 1970–80 the share of inherited wealth was less than 40 percent, and rose to 50–60 percent in 2010. In the US, the share was closer to 50 percent in 1970–80, increasing substantially in recent years.⁴

The share of inherited wealth looks set to continue rising in the future. We are at the eve of a massive intergenerational wealth transfer: the capital that the wealthy have accumulated over the last few decades will soon be transferred upon their death to their descendants. Cerrulli Associates, an American research and consultancy firm which provides advice for the financial services industry, has estimated that, among high-net-worth individuals (those with more than $5 million available for investments), a staggering $84 trillion will be transferred to the next generation by 2045.⁵ That is between three and four times the total GDP of America.

If nothing changes, then the current generation of wealth holders will be able to pass most of their fortunes on to their chosen heirs. The proliferation of fiscal loopholes, the abolishment of inheritance and estate tax in several countries, the use of tax havens and international fiscal engineering, and the vast power of the wealth-defense industry will all help the elderly super-rich to pass their money down without much going to the tax collector. In the meantime, those older people who have only modest amounts to pass on to their children—such as the value of their home after the mortgage has been paid off, or some small amounts in savings—will see all of it being taxed in line with the inheritance tax rules that apply in their country. They don’t have access to the fiscal engineering strategies that would allow their heirs to pay little or no inheritance tax.

This massive transfer of assets from one generation to the next will see wealth inequality increase significantly in the decades to come. Lucky heirs will not only profit from what their parents will have given them from birth, they will also inherit a fortune. Meanwhile, the descendants of people in the bottom 50 percent of the population will not receive an inheritance of any significant amount.

Can any of us say that we deserve money that has been bequeathed to us? In the case of inheritance, it is obvious that it is simply luck that determines what we get: if you’re left millions of dollars, it’s because you happened to have been born into a super-rich family; you cannot in any plausible sense say that you morally deserved this fortune. After all, no one can choose their parents or the time and place of their birth. Philosophers tend to disagree about a lot of things, but there is a striking unanimity among them that inherited wealth is undeserved. The heir has not made any personal effort or life choices that have generated that wealth.⁶

Does it follow, then, that we should abolish inheritances completely, through a strict confiscatory tax? This is a question we should be willing to ask. As the philosopher D. W. Haslett has observed, we abolished the inheritance of political power; why, then, should we not abolish the inheritance of economic power, too?⁷

What complicates the answer to the question is this: inheritance is a process with multiple stakeholders. We have to make a judgment that takes into account the point of view of the person who bequeaths their wealth, as well as the point of view of the person who receives it. And we also have to ask how inheritance affects society at large. Different values and principles are at stake for the giver of an inheritance, the heir, and the wider public. When designing any rule or institution, we always have to consider the values and principles of all relevant stakeholders. In the case of inheritance, there is a clash between those values.⁸

The standard argument against inheritance tax (or bequest taxation) is that donors should have the freedom to do what they like with their money. Yet that cannot be true, since society has all sorts of restrictions on freedom if exercising that freedom negatively affects others: you can’t stalk or kidnap someone simply because you fancy doing so, as it would impinge on that person’s basic liberties. And inheritances of a significant size do indeed have negative effects on other people—on society at large. They undermine equality of opportunity. They undermine social mobility. They provide negative incentives: why would you bother to work for a living when you’ve just been given a lifetime supply of cash? The latter was a worry shared by those who built up large fortunes in the past: Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie, for instance, argued that a (large) inheritance “generally deadens the talents and energies of the son, and tempts him to lead a less useful and less worthy life than he otherwise would.”⁹ Besides, inheritance is not the best way to ensure an economy runs as efficiently as possible: passing on a company to an heir doesn’t guarantee that they’re going to be the best leader for that business.

Are there conceivably circumstances in which these negative effects wouldn’t play out? The answer is that, yes, there are: if everyone inherited more or less the same amount of money. All but one of these consequences are caused by the fact that most people inherit almost nothing, whereas some inherit millions, and even billions (the only snag that persists into this hypothetical, egalitarian scenario is the fact that it is unlikely always to be a smart idea to make one’s heirs run one’s business upon one’s death). The essence of the problem is the vastly unequal nature of inheritances, rather than the idea of them per se. And the problem is more specifically to do with large inheritances, since receiving a small amount of money will not undermine social mobility or equality of opportunity, or give you an opportunity to waste your talents, sipping tequilas on the beach, rather than contributing to the welfare and prosperity of all.¹⁰

There is one further complication. Clearly, a donor shouldn’t just be able to shout “Freedom!” and do whatever they please. But they could reasonably object that taxing their bequest is unfair if what they most desire is to do as much good for their children as they can. To this end, the donor might therefore have lived a life below their means, saving as much as they could so as to bequeath it. Here, the donor has a point. After all, the government should not punish those who choose to spend less so that they can give more. For some people, leaving something to their children is a very important, motivating aspiration, much more than spending their money on trips to exotic places, buying lots of expensive stuff, or going out for meals on a regular basis. It would be a cruel society that punished this family-oriented idea of a good life in favor of the consumerist idea of one. So, in principle, the lawmaker should not disregard this aspiration. But there are other factors to take into account, such as whether the inheritance is dirty money, or whether it is so large as to threaten the common good.

A different, more frequent objection to inheritance tax is that it is a kind of “double” taxation. The donor has already paid tax on the money when they earned it. When they later transfer that money to their heirs, more tax will need to be paid. Isn’t it most unfair that the money should be taxed twice?

Actually, it isn’t. There is a significant difference between inheritance tax and bequest taxation. An inheritance is (unearned) income for the recipient. In principle, everyone’s income gets taxed (although, as we have seen, the wealth-defense industry is very good at eliminating some of those taxes). A teacher earns a salary: they are taxed. A shopkeeper makes a profit: they are taxed. A musician sells another record: they are taxed. The only exception is for very low income, which is, most of the time, exempt.

The deeper philosophical response to the “double taxation” argument comes from recognizing that all ownership is embedded in the social contract. And the same is true for taxation and market transactions—that is, how much money a person can accumulate in the first place. Government—and taxation—is what makes inheritance possible at all. It is democratic deliberation that determines whether and how your property can be transferred to another person. This is visible not just through inheritance but also in debt cancellations, which imply that one person’s claims to property are annulled so that the debt of another can be canceled.

Let’s look at where this leaves us. A sizable proportion of the super-rich are super-rich thanks to inheritances and gifts. These are not deserved in any real sense. In moral terms, the conclusion is simple: to the extent that someone’s wealth is based on inheritances or gifts, it is unearned and therefore undeserved. Given the important role that inheritances play in transmitting intergenerational inequality, there are increasing calls to abolish the right to inherit, or to increase inheritance tax drastically. We are in dire need of a new approach to inheritances—one that recognizes that they lead to morally unjustifiable wealth concentration. At the end of this book, I shall offer a concrete proposal of my own.¹¹

Okay, so inheritances cannot justify extreme wealth. But what if you’re the one who earned it, perhaps through a combination of hard work and a very high salary? Surely wealth built up in this way should be seen as deserved—surely the person who worked so hard should get to keep what they got paid. Shouldn’t they?

It is not at all clear that our wages correspond to what we deserve, morally speaking—recall the exploitative wages that we encountered in Chapter 3, or the fact that women and ethnic minorities are systematically given lower earnings for the same work. There have been many detailed empirical studies proving the existence of discrimination in the labor market and documenting particular discrimination against groups such as women, the disabled, the elderly, and people of color. But even one’s appearance can be a source of discrimination. All other things being equal, good-looking people have been shown to earn 5 percent more, whereas being regarded as among the least attractive leads to a wage penalty of about 8 percent. Some forms of labor-market discrimination (in hiring, earning, promotion, etc.) might be deliberate, but psychologists believe that many causes of discrimination are not intentional or even conscious. That alone should give us pause. But there’s also the question of the top end of the scale.¹²

Pay inequalities today are huge, with genuine extremes if we look at the salaries of corporate executives, or sports stars, media personalities, and entertainment-industry execs. We are talking here about people who earn millions a year, and also, to some extent, those who earn a bit less—say, several hundred thousand a year (although one might quibble where one draws the line between “well paid” and “extremely well paid”). Let’s just say that we are looking at people whose riches are either beyond the “ten million” political limit or will soon surpass it, given their earnings. Pay for corporate executives has soared, especially in the US and the City of London. Of the 350 US firms with the largest revenue, CEO compensation was estimated at $27.8 million in 2021. Between 1978 and 2021, American CEO compensation grew by 1,460 percent, whereas the compensation of the typical worker increased by just 18 percent in the same period. CEOs were compensated 399 times as much as the typical worker.¹³

It’s not just CEOs who earn millions each year. The best-paid soccer players earn £300,000 to £500,000 per week. Take the French soccer player Kylian Mbappé, who at the time of writing was earning €6 million per month, nearly €1.5 million per week—more than most people will earn in their entire lives. In 2023, the press awarded the spot for the best-paid player to Cristiano Ronaldo after he moved to Al Nassr in Saudi Arabia, where he had signed a contract paying him $213 million per year. This translates into $407 per minute or almost $7 per second. In the entertainment industry, the ten highest earners, ranging from Bob Dylan and Jay-Z to Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, collected earnings ranging between $150 million and $580 million in 2022.¹⁴

Can these corporate, sports, and entertainment-industry giants claim that they deserve their earnings? Or indeed, can anyone earning over, say, $250,000 a year claim that they’ve really earned it?

Several arguments tend to be put forward to justify income at this level. First, there is the argument about the difficulty of the work undertaken, or the responsibility of the job. Since difficulty and responsibility are real burdens, these certainly could be reasons to receive higher pay in comparison with someone doing work that wasn’t difficult or carried no responsibility. But in the current setup, there are plenty of jobs that aren’t exceptionally difficult or that don’t entail much responsibility and nevertheless are very well compensated. Morris Pearl, who retired from high-end investment banking at the age of fifty-four and describes himself as part of the 1 percent, put it like this:

Did I work especially hard? Maybe a little, sometimes. Most of my work involved sitting in an office reading and writing emails and talking on the phone. Did I work harder than the guy who had to connect the hoses to the fire hydrant in the snow or the woman who had to smile while schlepping pitchers of beer around all night? Not really.¹⁵

One would expect that if difficulty and responsibility were the main criteria determining pay levels, many other types of work, such as childcare, would be well paid. After all, it is difficult to do this job well—to keep multiple children safe, have their needs met, and make sure they are properly stimulated so that they can develop, all at the same time. Moreover, it is a job with considerable responsibility, since the early years have a very large impact on the rest of people’s lives. But despite the challenges of this work, and the significant level of responsibility, the pay is pretty poor (the fact that in many countries most childcare workers are women, often immigrants, no doubt explains something too). Annual pay for childcare workers employed full time is £14,000 to £24,000 in the UK, $18,500 to $38,000 in the US, and €29,000 on average in the Netherlands. It would be nice to see investment bankers or CEOs who earn 250 times that wage take on childcare work for a few months and then see whether they still think that their jobs are 250 times more difficult or entail levels of responsibility 250 times greater. Difficulty and responsibility clearly cannot be what the extremely high levels of their pay reflect.¹⁶

A second argument that often gets wielded in defense of very high pay is that it reflects exceptional talent, which translates into exceptional performance. The idea is that people who command very high pay are a cut above the rest—they are smart, wise, have excellent strategic insight, and show great leadership. Or, in the case of athletes, they are the best and will ensure their team wins. Such talent is so unique, and the performance that one can expect from the individuals in question so extraordinary, that they merit correspondingly remarkable pay.

There are several problems with this argument. First, it isn’t true. If it were, top earners would lose out on their compensation when their company or team did badly. Yet there have been several memorable cases where a company performed badly, and despite this the CEO was given a pay rise or a bonus for good performance even as hard-working employees were laid off. Some top earners have, in essence, even said as much. A striking statement came in 2009 from Peter van der Veer, in his final year as CEO of Shell. Van der Veer, whose compensation in 2008 was €10.3 million, conceded in an interview to the Financial Times that varying pay levels did not affect his performance. He said: “You have to realise: if I had been paid 50 per cent more, I would not have done it better. If I had been paid 50 per cent less, then I would not have done it worse.” While the honesty of this statement may be surprising, the claim itself is not. Most professionals are driven by a mixture of external and internal motivation. If all companies worldwide were to agree on a maximum level of compensation for CEOs, then they wouldn’t put in any less effort.¹⁷

If an exceptional salary does not reflect exceptional performance, then what explains the fact that top executives earn hundreds of times more than the average worker? The empirical literature suggests that much of their pay is “rent”—that is, money above what one would earn in a genuinely competitive market. “Rent-seeking” refers to how much more a person is paid above the rate for which they would be willing to do the work. Most of the highest salaries consist of such rent. These enormous rents are facilitated by oligopolistic structures which influence the level and structure of executive pay. Those who advise on or approve the top levels of compensation in companies look at similar companies, and make sure that what they offer reflects more or less what others in similar positions get around the world. These people are themselves often extremely well compensated, making it all the less likely that they will advocate restraint. And CEOs will be rent-seeking too, since they know what top executives in other companies earn and will generally strive for a higher salary as this reflects higher status.

Another reason for the rise of rents is the fact that, in many cases, including that of very well-paid soccer players, we are looking at a “winner takes all” market in which one person or brand is able to dominate and crowd out the competition. Thanks to the internet, some markets, like those for professional sports, music, and TV streaming services, have turned into high-stakes competitions: the winner goes home with a huge prize, and the losers get much less, often even very little. This is also in part due to network effects: since we want to consume (or read, or listen to or engage with) what other people in our social networks consume, market dynamics will lead to one big winner. This is particularly visible in the arts and music industry, where some artists and performers earn very high incomes yet are, objectively, not much better than many others who can hardly get by. Jon Hamm, the American actor who played the lead role of Don Draper in the TV series Mad Men, was a waiter for many years before he landed this life-changing role. When it comes to deciding the winner that gets to take all—which actor will land a major part in a film or TV series—luck is much more important than tiny differences in talent among very talented people.

Unfortunately, this is not how we see things, since we tend to believe that if we are successful, then it’s mainly thanks to our own individual qualities. The explanation for this is the psychological mechanism called “attribution bias,” which induces us to take credit for our successes, and then put the blame on circumstance when we fail. This doesn’t mean that everything in life is about luck, of course; it’s rather that luck very often plays a decisive role in such instances, even when it is only a small factor. This sounds counterintuitive. But say the talent of the candidate determines 90 percent of the decision as to who gets the job, and the differences in ability between candidates are very small (as is often the case), then luck will determine who is appointed CEO, or picked for the leading role in a TV drama, or not. This is not to deny that talent matters, obviously. The scientific evidence does confirm that skill is important—you do need to have upper-tier abilities in order to access those top positions. Similarly, putting in the effort is also very important. But there are many, many more people who are talented and have put in the effort than there are spots at the top. It is ultimately luck, as well as biases in the way humans judge each other, that decides who triumphs in their industry and reaps the top earnings that come with it.¹⁸

There is a second, much more fundamental problem with the argument that high pay can be justified because it tracks talent and performance, and that leads to a deeper philosophical question: why do we think that rewards should track talent or performance? Why should these be the best criteria for determining a fair financial reward?

In the case of talent, we again encounter the issue that our innate skills are not something for which we can claim credit. Rather, as John Rawls, the most influential political philosopher of the twentieth century, put it, they are part of “the natural lottery”—what the chance encounter of one spermatozoid with one oocyte/human egg cell has given you in terms of genetic material. Sure, natural talents have to be nurtured and developed after birth. For this, the first 1,000 days in a person’s life are the most crucial period—and again, we are too young in those first 1,000 days to be able to take credit for our choices.¹⁹

For Rawls, this was obvious:

Perhaps some will think that the person with greater natural endowments deserves those assets and the superior character that made their development possible … This view, however, is surely incorrect … No one deserves his place in the distribution of native endowments, any more than one deserves one’s initial starting point in society.²⁰

Yes, we are entering dangerous terrain here. I am all too aware that if one takes this argument further, we end up with what philosophers call “full determinism”—the idea that everything we can do and be is fully reducible to chance, and to circumstances beyond our control. Although some philosophers subscribe to this view, I don’t want to go there myself. Accepting full determinism runs the risk of erasing us as individual agents, as beings who have some degree of control over our actions and our lives. It would violate moral principles of recognition and respect. Some people might regard the idea of full determinism as an insult, as it would make us little more than automatons. It isn’t consistent with how we give meaning to our time on Earth, with the way we experience the episodes of our life. Even accepting the huge influence that luck and external factors have on our lives, we have all still encountered situations where we didn’t react on a whim, but felt that we were at a crossroads, and could make a genuine decision about whether to take one path or another. We don’t have to erase our agency completely in order to acknowledge the role that luck plays in our lives. The point is, rather, that we should more fully appreciate the extent of its influence.

In sum, we should take ownership of the talents and attributes that make up who we are, while at the same time acknowledging that to a large extent they were simply given to us, and hence we cannot take credit for them. This also implies that we cannot say that we deserve all the financial reward that these talents can generate in the market.

Does it follow that we should all be rewarded equally? No. What it does mean, however, is that we cannot simply say that differences in pay reflect how deserving we are. But there are several other principles that can justify disparities in wages and other forms of financial reward and compensation. One principle is that pay should reflect differences in the actual burdens of the job. Think of top athletes who live under an iron regime of training, making significant sacrifices with respect to their personal and social lives, while their friends enjoy themselves. “Not having a life outside work” is a burden that makes this work more onerous, and is a reason for higher pay. But so is the exhausting nature of certain types of care work, the onerous nature of working during the night, or the destabilizing nature of having to be on call 24/7. Many jobs that are currently not well paid would have to be much better remunerated if the principle that salary should reflect such burdens was implemented for all workers.²¹

Another principle that justifies pay differentials is that they can provide an incentive for people to do the kind of jobs we most rely on as a society. My doctor does fantastic work and is committed to her patients, and I would not want her to go off and do something that she might find more relaxing than the demanding work of tending to her patients in a healthcare system under pressure. If pay differences were completely erased, she might not even have become a doctor in the first place, as this would have taken away the incentive to devote the money and years gaining the knowledge and technical skills that her job requires. If all talents, and all types of work, were rewarded equally, the world would be flooded with artists. But we also need doctors, teachers, engineers, and architects. So, up to a certain point, pay differences are justifiable.

You might ask—if not talent, what about performance? Couldn’t that justify pay differences, or even very high pay? Performance is a combination of skill and effort. Working hard is surely a good thing, but it’s important to note that being able to make an effort has an innate aspect. Some people are born with much higher levels of energy, are much faster in processing sensory and cognitive information, are physically strong and do not tire quickly. Others experience physical, mental, cognitive, or sensory challenges—some of which might be regarded as disabilities, but which could also be challenges experienced by those who would not describe themselves as “disabled.” No one chooses to be slow, easily tired, or overwhelmed. The same argument applies here as for talent: we should recognize that, to a large extent, we can’t take credit for the amount of effort we are able to put in, though that doesn’t mean we should discount it as a legitimate source of pride, worthy of recognition and material reward.

It’s not just that we don’t want to erase ourselves as individuals completely (the specter of full determinism); it’s that, even if we take our innate ability for making an effort as a given, we are still able to decide whether to put the effort in—or not. And society has a stake in making sure that we choose to apply ourselves. Suppose you work as a cashier, and there are no factors, such as a disability, that restrict how many hours you’re able to work. It would be counterintuitive to say that you should get the same yearly wage as all other cashiers, regardless of how many hours you’ve worked. To most people, across the ideological spectrum, it will be obvious that if you work more hours, and hence put in more effort, you should be paid more.

Where do these reflections leave us? They give us reason to accept some pay differences, based on certain considerations—such as how much society needs a particular job to get done, the scarcity of the talents required for that work, how well those talents and corresponding skills have been developed, how much effort you put into the job (including how many hours you work), whether the labor is dangerous, onerous, or otherwise burdensome. All of this can justify some level of pay inequality—perhaps a pay differential up to a factor of ten. But it cannot justify the gulf we see today between childcare workers—who earn £14,000 to £24,000 in the UK, $18,500 to $38,000 in the US, and on average €29,000 in the Netherlands—and the CEOs who earn multiple millions a year.

Some reading this will object that many super-rich individuals are wealth creators—people who have made their millions through their own ingenuity, and who have generated many jobs for others along the way. Certainly, along with inheritances and earnings from labor, money generated by entrepreneurship—either as profits from one’s own business or as a return on stock-market investments—is a significant source of extreme wealth. As a quick look at the Forbes billionaires list or any of the national “rich lists” will confirm, many of the world’s wealthiest men and women have earned their money this way. Can they claim that they rightly deserve their billions?

There are surely reasons to say that they deserve some of it. But there are also many reasons why it is an illusion to think that a company’s owners are morally entitled to keep whatever profits it generates. Of course, they might be legally entitled to do so—but as we’ve seen, what is legal does not always correspond with what is moral, especially not when it comes to fiscal rules.

How far should entrepreneurs and investors feel entitled to keep their profits? Well, for starters, all the arguments we’ve just covered still apply. If you’re successful as an entrepreneur, but have been given a head start by a significant inheritance, then you’ve benefited from an unfair advantage. Of course, you might then do very good things as a result, such that society as a whole profits. But that doesn’t change the verdict that large inheritances are never morally deserved, and hence the profits derived from those inheritances aren’t, either. In addition, there is the huge influence of factors that no one can claim credit for: intelligence, creativity, stamina, and other such attributes, which, as we have seen, are not of one’s own choosing (although as adults we do have a choice over whether we try to develop them further, and whether we put them to good use or not). Beyond this, rich children have access to nutritious food, stimulating after-school activities, the best teachers, and many other services that significantly help their early development. All of these factors help to generate that entrepreneurial wealth, and none of them are fair.

Another issue concerns uncorrected market failures. According to standard economic theory, a perfectly competitive market will be best for consumers: competition should drive down prices to the level where long-term profit becomes minimal and prices reflect a good’s true cost. While this is a nice idea in theory, in reality it is unfortunately seldom the case that markets are perfectly competitive in this way. Instead, what economists call “market failures” are ubiquitous. The costs and harms of producing consumer goods are often shifted onto the local community, or onto society at large—as in the case of environmental damage. And if a market becomes winner-takes-all, it ceases to have the virtues of competition. Rather, it assumes oligopolistic or monopolistic features, which allow for vast profits but reduce consumer welfare, by contrast with a truly competitive market. Big companies often actively try to achieve such market dominance—to crush their competitors—sometimes using unscrupulous tactics to do so. In all these scenarios, corporate profits are being made partly at the expense of other stakeholders, and are thus, from an ethical point of view, unfairly large.²²

Beyond this, there’s the question of whether those profits are really being divided up fairly. No one can become super-rich by themselves. There is a very simple thought experiment we can use to assess the truth of that claim. Take any multimillionaire or billionaire, and put them on a desert island. They still have all the same talents and personal traits as before. How rich could they become? Not very rich, obviously. Being rich is only ever possible because there are others with whom we interact: a company owner needs customers, and managers, and employees, and all the other groups in the supply chain (and, indeed, in society at large) in order for their business to exist at all. So the question of the conditions of those interactions, including how to set the price of goods and to divide up the profits, cannot be avoided.

As we saw in Chapter 3, Amazon could choose to have a lower return for its shareholders, and thereby significantly improve the lives of Amazon workers. Even a minimal adjustment to their returns on investment would allow for a significant improvement in the working conditions and lives of Amazon employees based in countries with weak legal protection for workers and without strong unions. There is a profound moral decision to be made here, based on the following questions: does the economy, in this case represented by a multinational company like Amazon, exist to serve the people, or are the people there to serve the winners of the economy? Do we consider decent working conditions to be optional, or a prerequisite for meeting a minimal moral threshold? Similar questions can be asked in relation to our care for our planet. The clothing chain Zara could move from producing “fast” to sustainable fashion, thereby reducing its significant negative impact on the environment (both in terms of emissions and waste). But this might cut into the net returns of the shareholders, most importantly of its founder Amancio Ortega (currently twenty-third on the Forbes billionaires list, with an estimated total wealth of more than $60 billion). Ortega is reported to receive about $400 million each year out of his 60 percent ownership of Zara, which he invests mainly in real estate in Spain. (In this we have the perfect example of what it means when people say that the main goal capitalists see for capital is to accumulate.)

There is also the very important question of global justice. Recall Jason Hickel, Dylan Sullivan, and Huzaifa Zoomkawala’s estimate that workers in the Global South have lost out on trillions through unequal global trade relations. Not to mention the atrocious treatment of workers in developing economies by rich businesses based in the Global North. How can Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple and who became a billionaire thanks to Apple, sleep peacefully at night knowing about the poor, sometimes horrendous, working conditions endured by men and women in the assembly line of Apple’s Chinese factories? There are plenty of companies which make considerable profits and whose shareholders get a very nice return on their investments, yet which have, in the process, violated the human rights of their workers, or others in the supply chain, or who have degraded the local environment or even the planet. Organizations such as the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre have documented a large number of such abuses.²³

There is one final reason why we shouldn’t assume that the profits that entrepreneurs generate can rightfully be seen as theirs and only theirs: they are building their wealth on the collective bequest of past generations. MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, understood this perfectly. Upon their divorce, she announced to the world that she would donate her entire fortune to organizations working to make society more just and caring. She began her letter announcing this decision with the following words:

Last year I pledged to give the majority of my wealth back to the society that helped generate it, to do it thoughtfully, to get started soon, and to keep at it until the safe is empty. There’s no question in my mind that anyone’s personal wealth is the product of a collective effort, and of social structures which present opportunities to some people, and obstacles to countless others.²⁴

What MacKenzie Scott invokes in this letter is the fundamental philosophical argument that, without collective institutions, public goods, basic infrastructure, and collaboration with other people, it would be impossible for anyone to become rich—in other words, that we all rely on the social contract. Extreme wealth is always built on a foundation that others have created. As the Italian-British economist Mariana Mazzucato has shown in her book The Entrepreneurial State, many entrepreneurs who have made fortunes have relied on innovations that were originally funded by the government—and hence by all of us as taxpayers and as citizens who shape the agenda through our votes. For example, many of the tech companies that have created billionaires—such as Google and Apple—depend for their success on technologies that can be traced back to state support, including, most famously, the internet itself. It is doubtful whether, without governments across countries investing in research with the common good in mind, any of today’s tech billionaires, from Sergey Brin and Larry Page to Bill Gates, would ever have become so wealthy and successful.²⁵

This point has been readily grasped by many of the scientists who have developed medicines and technologies that have benefited humanity hugely. Take the American doctor Jonas Salk, who invented the first vaccine against polio in 1955. There is no doubt that he could have become immensely rich from exploiting that invention—but instead he chose to sell a license to several pharmaceutical companies who would roll out production, while not earning from the patent himself. Within a few years, polio virtually disappeared in America. It is reported that when he was asked who owned the patent, he replied: “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”²⁶

Again and again, we encounter examples that remind us that rich and super-rich people face a choice. If, like Salk, they recognize their moral duty toward their fellow human beings, they might make the right one.

You might ask how important these historical foundations are, really, in determining who gets to enjoy extreme personal wealth. One way to answer this is to invoke another thought experiment. Suppose a ship with a hundred passengers on board gets wrecked halfway between two islands. In one scenario, the shipwrecked passengers manage to reach a desert island that has no infrastructure and no previous civilization. In another, they reach an island that has all the infrastructure, technology, and other trappings of a prosperous twenty-first-century country—only, magically, all the people on that second island have just left it a day or two ago (this is possible in thought experiments; perhaps they had all just set off to conquer the galaxy). How much material prosperity would this same group of shipwrecked people be able to create in their lifetimes on the first compared with the second island? The difference would be enormous. That just shows how much of our prosperity is dependent on what previous generations have developed for us. We cannot create prosperity without standing on the shoulders of our forebears, meaning that, however entrepreneurial we are, our own contribution to our success is limited.

With this question in mind, the American political scientist and Nobel Prize winner in economics Herbert A. Simon calculated how much wealth in countries such as the US or those of northwestern Europe could be traced back to “social capital,” as he put it. According to Simon, at least 90 percent of income in those countries is made possible by collective institutions, such as technology or governmental structures. He argued that this justified using this money for an unconditional basic income, granted to all citizens.²⁷ Certainly there was no case for keeping it in the coffers of the wealthiest individuals.

It should be clear by now that although various principles can be used to justify some degree of income and wealth inequality, they can only justify inequality up to a certain point. None can be used to justify extreme wealth, whether it comes from inheritance, labor, or entrepreneurship. We’ve already encountered the various negative impacts of extreme wealth concentration on the well-being of the poor, on democratic values, and on ecological sustainability. Yet the problems with extreme wealth concentration run even deeper. Even when we try to put those impacts to one side for a moment, we discover that there is still no meaningful justification for anyone having so much. We have thus found a set of arguments for limitarianism based on principles, and a reason to organize society in such a way that excessive wealth accumulation becomes impossible. And if we think hard about how much wealth an individual could justly claim to deserve, the hard upper limit of ten million that I have proposed may seem very generous. Many reading this should begin to feel the argumentative pull of the lower, ethical limit of one million.

These arguments might be disorienting if you’ve never looked at wealth in this way before—as the product of the social contract and historical contingencies as much as the individual’s choices, effort, and skill. It can likewise be very upsetting to become so aware of the role of luck in our lives. Some of us are born enormously lucky: in good health and with many innate talents, to loving parents, in a caring community, in a safe country, with ample material resources and lots of opportunities. Others are born with a less favorable lottery ticket: in poor health, with mental or physical impairments and few talents, without loving parents, in an uncaring community, an unsafe country, with insufficient material resources and few opportunities. We do not have a say in which of these situations will be ours. It is entirely beyond our control.

Still, neoliberal ideologues will insist on stressing that, in modern societies, everyone can become a billionaire—no matter how unlucky you were at the start of your life, you can still make it. And they will be certain to find examples showing that this is possible—just think Oprah Winfrey or J. K. Rowling. This is the mantra of social mobility: you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps; you only need to have the ambition and will to succeed.

This narrative is very convenient for the dominant class. For the most part, they have managed to convince us to treat each other as responsible for our successes and failures—for whether we have done enough to seize the opportunities that life offers us. This notion allows neoliberals to say that the very richest deserve their fortunes. At the same time, it allows them to hold the poor responsible for their misery.

Yet the existence of a few who have “made it” should not make us buy into the ideology that tells us that we are all self-sufficient individuals who can achieve whatever we want, as long as we keep believing in ourselves. Empirical research has confirmed, in study after study, that social mobility is very limited. And to the extent that it still exists in some countries, it is lower today than it was a few decades ago.²⁸

Again and again, biographies of people who have transitioned out of poverty and into the financial or governing elite confirm that they are the exceptions that prove the rule. Take Tim ’S Jongers, who was born in Antwerp in 1981 into extreme poverty. He was raised in, as he described it, a house without a toilet (there was a hole in the garden). His family was dysfunctional and his young life was marked by material deprivation, emotional duress, and no prospects. He ended up adopting some of the criminal behavior that was widespread among his peers; as a teenager, he saw no other future for himself. Then two things happened to make him try to change his fate: first, his older brother ended up in a drug rehabilitation clinic; and second, his mother’s new boyfriend intervened, telling him that he had huge potential that he must not waste. At a young age, he left his family and started to build his life on his own. For years, ’S Jongers struggled to get by with little or no support, and no resources. Years passed, until eventually conversations with his friends made him realize that he was not taking proper care of himself. He decided to enroll at university in Antwerp. While studying, he worked at night in a shelter where homeless addicts were offered clean needles and hot soup. His task was to make sure they were safe. He lived in two worlds: during the night, in the world of the hopeless, those whom society had given up on; during the day, in the world of the hopeful, most of whom had never experienced misery on this scale, and took it for granted that they would end up in the upper-middle class—or higher. For his master’s degree, ’S Jongers moved to the Netherlands, where, a few years later, he was hired by the Council of Public Health and Society to advise the local and national government in the Netherlands on poverty-alleviation policies. A few years later, he became the director of the Wiardi Beckman Foundation, the scientific council of the Dutch Labour Party. Not surprisingly, journalists today frequently ask ’S Jongers whether his life story is not proof that anyone can make it. But he is quite adamant that for the rest of his life he will suffer the consequences of growing up in extreme poverty, including the toll taken on him by excessive levels of stress. As he has repeatedly insisted, his ascent of the social ladder is not proof that social mobility is possible.²⁹

Social mobility is dead in some countries, and crumbling in many others. But still we cling to the myth of meritocracy. Ironically, this belief prevents us from taking the action that would make social mobility a reality: the massive redistribution of wealth. This simply cannot happen until we recognize that no one could ever “deserve” the extreme riches enjoyed by today’s economic elite.

There is an important philosophical objection to limitarianism that some readers may have thought about by now: that it would unfairly restrict our freedoms and opportunities. Modern societies grant each person a set of basic freedoms that should not be violated. Central to this is the idea that we should all have the opportunity to pursue our own conception of a good life, which can include the life of an entrepreneur or of a thriving career person. Once those opportunities are guaranteed, it is up to the individual to take responsibility and seize them.

The principle of equal opportunity is fundamental to most liberal democracies, and indeed to most modern societies. The worry is that the limitarian ideal would violate it.

Take a person who chooses to forgo leisure in order to work more. If that extra work then generates surplus money that they can use to obtain luxury items, they should have the opportunity to do so. As such, limitarianism undermines equality of opportunity, and should therefore be rejected, since no matter what your political views are, everyone defends the fundamental principle of equal opportunity—or so the objection goes.

But this is wrong.

Limitarianism restricts the financial reward associated with particular opportunities, not the opportunities themselves. In a limitarian society, you would still have the opportunity to be CEO of a major international company, but you could no longer earn millions on a yearly basis.

If you took a very broad understanding of the word “opportunity,” you could counter-argue that the opportunity to achieve a particular status (namely, being a CEO with a vast salary) would no longer be available to very rich individuals. You might moreover add that it’s not merely the opportunity to enjoy additional earnings that is being ruled out, but also what those earnings could be used to obtain (activities and goods that are associated with a luxurious lifestyle and which reflect your high status).

This is correct. In a limitarian world, those at the top would see their financial opportunities curtailed. But this is the price we pay for the massive opening-up of opportunities for all other groups, and for making our societies more just. Limiting the opportunity of a small handful of individuals to become excessively rich would enhance the opportunities available to most other people in the world. In fact, all other individuals would benefit from the huge financial investments that the increased tax revenue would make possible. The global poor would benefit, because if profit-maximization ceases to be worthwhile (why make those dizzying sums if you can’t keep them?), the wages of the workers in factories making fast fashion or technological gadgets could be raised to the level of a living wage (a wage that allows workers to lead a decent life). The disadvantaged in affluent societies would benefit from social policies such as more accessible mental-health services or housing for the homeless. Those living in areas where the harms of global warming will be greatest, and who would otherwise see their opportunities quickly diminish in the coming years, could be kept safe from the harmful effects of super-rich people’s historically polluting, climate-degrading lifestyles. And even those in the middle classes—in fact, even the wealthy themselves—could enjoy greater opportunities. If the increased tax revenue is used to strengthen society’s safety net, then all citizens would have less reason to worry, and more opportunity to think creatively and optimistically about the future. In New York—where there is no public health insurance—families would no longer have to live dreading a situation where, for example, an employed parent might lose their job only for their child to become seriously ill. In London, fewer people would be a paycheck away from homelessness. In the Netherlands, the government could reverse its closure of sheltered workplaces for vulnerable adults, which is an important welfare state provision regardless of how rich the vulnerable person’s family is (sheltered workplaces not only generate an income, but also make vulnerable people feel respected and that they belong).

In a limitarian society, there would be enough resources to have expert healthcare for all. High-quality public education for all. Affordable housing for all. The opportunity to live a life free from the excessive stress endured by many workers today. None of this is currently available. In a limitarian society, these opportunities would be open to all.

7 There’s So Much We Can Do with the Money

The Covid-19 pandemic was a truly traumatizing time for people around the world. Millions lost their lives. Some contracted long Covid and are, months and years after the initial infection, still suffering from debilitating impairments, such as exceptional fatigue that leaves them unable to spend time with other people, let alone work. And even those who were not infected still suffered when, without warning, schools were closed, or when they lost their jobs, or were compelled to continue working in difficult and often dangerous conditions. Many elderly people were prevented from seeing their families and became very lonely, while children, especially those living in precarious material circumstances, have struggled with their mental health and accumulated learning deficits.

Very little of this affected the extremely wealthy, who already had access to many forms of defense against the pandemic. They spent lockdown in large houses with spacious rooms, which meant that home-schooling was less of a challenge—especially when tutors could be hired to help their children catch up on any missed lessons. Their privileged jobs, supported by the most advanced technological backup—expensive tablets and laptops and high-speed internet connections—made it easy to keep working while avoiding meeting other people in person. And if the family started to feel a bit stressed, there was always the holiday house in the countryside, for a change of scene.

The pandemic should have taught us a great lesson in humility. It should have given the lie to the view of human nature that neoliberalism promotes, with its stress on people as atomized individuals who are each responsible for their own fate. Our well-being depends radically on what others do for us, as well as on the structures of our societies.

The rational reaction to being confronted with this collective vulnerability would have been to work together in fighting our common enemy, and to focus on protecting the most vulnerable. But it didn’t quite happen like that. Rich countries collaborated to develop vaccines in an unprecedentedly short time frame, but hardly shared them with countries with limited financial resources. There were few signs that the pandemic had provided the super-rich CEOs of pharmaceutical multinationals with any reason to question their endless quest for wealth accumulation.

When the pandemic was at its peak during 2020–21, the richest four hundred American billionaires saw their fortunes grow by $4.5 trillion, making them 40 percent richer. In the UK, while small businesses faced closure, the six biggest tech firms increased their market value by $4 trillion and twenty-four multimillionaires became billionaires. While millions were dying and billions suffering around the world, the richest were profiting massively.¹

Rather than spreading the pain of the pandemic evenly or letting the stronger shoulders carry more of the burden, inequality of wealth translated into inequality of suffering: those who had more suffered less. The pandemic intensified market failures by increasing oligopolistic structures in several industries, such as food delivery and tech. Monopoly situations are inefficient and bad for everyone except executive management and shareholders: they allow companies to increase prices without really losing customers, and thus produce excess profits. Progressive taxation on those profits might address this issue, but as we’ve seen, the dominant class have made sure that corporate profits are taxed much less than workers’ income—and they have increased the number of fiscal loopholes, meaning they can pay even less, and sometimes even nothing at all. So, while families were mourning loved ones who died because they didn’t have the luxury of working in safe conditions, the dominant class did what it has always excelled at: accumulate money.

What would the alternative have looked like? If governments had effectively taxed today’s decamillionaires and billionaires, they could have used the revenue to provide everyone with protective masks and home test kits. They could have provided unemployment relief for those who lost their jobs, particularly given that, under pandemic circumstances, finding a new one was often not possible. They could have installed proper ventilation equipment in schools, which would have lowered the risk of the virus spreading, while allowing schools to remain open. They could have distributed laptops and free Wi-Fi to poor households, so that children and students from disadvantaged families would have had adequate learning facilities while at home.

If we had tax rates of the kind implemented before the neoliberal era, and clamped down on tax avoidance and evasion, governments would be more able to take the steps needed to protect and support all of us—whether during a pandemic or at other times. An effective, progressive tax rate (especially on income from capital and wealth) is not only justified on the grounds that no one can be said to deserve extremely high levels of wealth and income. It is also more efficient: the overall level of well-being in society would be higher (and in some very unequal countries vastly higher) if the surplus money were either redistributed to those who have very little, or else used to fund public goods that benefit us all.

Behind this claim lies a fundamental insight known as the declining marginal value of money. The idea was first developed by the British Utilitarians Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and it is shared among economists, psychologists, and philosophers. The basic intuition is very simple: the more money you have, the less any additional unit of money contributes to your quality of life.

Suppose we can increase a person’s monthly income by $1,000. If you are currently poor, or living near the poverty line, this will be transformational. People living with an income around the poverty line can only afford the essentials. In fact, often these essentials are only for physical survival, and do not include what is required for emotional well-being or social participation. Children who grow up in poverty are often hindered in developing friendships. They are ashamed to bring their friends home, so no friends visit. They cannot attend birthday parties since their parents have no money for birthday presents. As teenagers, they cannot join their classmates on trips to the mall or the movies, since they will often need to work after school and on weekends to help keep the family afloat.

For someone who belongs to the dominant class, an extra $1,000 will make no difference. If you have millions in assets, or if you have a yearly income of a few hundreds of thousands or more, a monthly increase of $1,000 won’t really affect what you are able to do, or how you are able to live. The additional (or marginal) increase in welfare that money brings thus declines the more you have.

Scholars dispute whether the value of additional sums of money always remains positive but at a decreasing rate, or whether at some point we encounter a saturation point. That seems to depend on your underlying understanding of well-being. If you take well-being to mean having your basic human needs met, and being able to do a range of things that are broadly considered by your society to help you flourish, then there will be a saturation point. You can eat more and better food, and you can have more and better clothing, but at some point you will have everything a person needs. There is no point in having twenty pairs of shoes.

If well-being is understood as having your desires met, no matter what those desires may be, and no matter which new desires you develop tomorrow, then there might not be a saturation point. It is always possible to want another object or experience that costs money. Think of unique paintings: wouldn’t it be nice to have a Van Gogh in your house? Or to fly to space as a tourist? We now know from the space trip that Jeff Bezos organized that a single person can buy a twelve-minute-long flight to space for $28 million. Wouldn’t that be amazing!²

Sure, it might be, but it’s also unreasonable to expect that such fanciful thinking should become anything more than that. There are many reasons why we shouldn’t go after these excesses in real life, and we are totally justified in demanding that people forgo them. We can all lead perfectly good lives without ascending 66.5 miles above Earth, or having The Starry Night hanging in our living rooms. Art and other forms of cultural heritage should be available to all to see, learn from, and admire. That’s why we have museums. And unique experiences that are so exclusive because they are extremely expensive are simply a very wasteful, often harmful allocation of money. The $28 million it cost to fly into space for twelve minutes could have saved an estimated 6,200 lives.³

For many people, the extreme wealth enjoyed by some and the deprivation suffered by others are fundamentally morally unacceptable. There is no need to come up with any further arguments than that. I agree. Other reasons are readily available—if we are willing to acknowledge that much of our own financial situation is tied to luck, historical injustice, or unfair trade and tax rules. But this is perhaps the simplest: the excess money of the rich and super-rich should be reallocated to meet the urgent needs of the vulnerable and suffering, because this shift of resources would clearly bring us all into a better world. It is the essence of morality that if we can prevent suffering at little cost to ourselves, we should do so. Excess money is money one can easily do without. We should all think about how much we need, and what we can give up. And, if you are living in a situation similar to mine in the Netherlands, I would strongly doubt that you need more than a million euros in personal wealth to live a very good life. Why sit on that money if it can do so much good elsewhere?

This argument is based on an important assumption: that it is possible to address today’s most urgent, unmet needs with money. But is that assumption true?

Among conservatives and neoliberals, there is a mantra that it doesn’t help to “throw money” at a problem, since most problems cannot be solved simply by increasing the budget. “More money” doesn’t make people more responsible. “More money” doesn’t address harmful societal issues such as endemic corruption. What people need is to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. What countries need is a government that does not interfere in its citizens’ lives.

Frankly, this line of reasoning is usually just an excuse for doing nothing. It enables the super-rich to continue being stingy and uncaring. It’s true that most problems require more than just cash. For a few problems, money may not even be the most urgent or most important thing that is needed; think of issues such as granting LGBTQ+ people equal rights. But for almost all problems that go beyond granting rights where rights are due, the smartest, proven solutions also require funding.

Obviously, foremost among these is extreme poverty. What does it mean to be extremely poor? We have all seen images of exhausted children who are no more than skin and bones;of famine victims who are still alive, but so undernourished and weakened that it is only a matter of time before they will die.

Many development experts have argued that money is not the solution. Institution-building is the answer. Combating corruption, holding politicians to account, respecting property rights, supporting entrepreneurship. These experts are right in so far as simply throwing cash at a government in a developing country in many cases leads to money spent badly, often via the enrichment of kleptocrats. Yet the fact that many forms of financial transfer from rich to poor countries are not currently helping to end poverty doesn’t imply that there are no other ways to use money to effectively and efficiently change the circumstances of the most deprived on Earth.

In April 2011, a colleague and I visited the village of Otjivero in Namibia. Dirk Haarmann, at that time a pastor of the Lutheran Church in the capital Windhoek, was guiding us through the village and introducing us to the villagers. I still vividly recall Dirk’s explanation of what it meant, in this village, to be poor. Poverty meant not only that there was no food, and no money to buy food. It also meant that there was no one around you to whom you could go and ask for food. A young child cries, he is hungry. What can the mother do? She starts to boil water. The sound of boiling water makes the child believe food is being prepared. The mother keeps on telling the child that food is being prepared, and eventually he becomes so exhausted that he falls asleep. The mother has bought herself some time. She can only pray that tomorrow there will be some opportunity to find something to eat. Being poor, to these villagers, meant that life was literally a daily struggle for survival.

The most straightforward way to connect money to poverty is by giving money to the poor, no questions asked. Dirk and his wife Claudia were members of Namibia’s Basic Income Grant (BIG) Coalition that had long been arguing for a nationwide unconditional basic income of 100 Namibian dollars (about US$14) each month. This would increase the income of the poorest 20 percent of the population by 50 percent. In order to see what the effects on poverty and economic activity of such an unconditional basic income would be, Namibia’s BIG Coalition had introduced a pilot in one village back in 2008.⁴ That village was Otjivero.

Between January 2008 and December 2009, everyone who lived in the area was registered on the scheme and given a basic income of 100 Namibian dollars per month. Most residents had settled in the area because they had nowhere else to go; the village was plagued by unemployment and deep poverty.

Despite the fact that the income was very modest, it had significant effects on the villagers’ lives. Before the experiment started, 76 percent of residents were living below the “food poverty line” (the minimum amount of money one needs not to go hungry and forgo basic necessities). One year after the introduction of the basic income, the number of residents who did not have the money to afford basic daily provisions dropped to 37 percent. The scheme encouraged significant migration into the village. Poor family members of the residents moved to Otjivero, even if they were not eligible for a grant themselves. Without that migration, researchers estimated that the poverty rate would have dropped even further, to 16 percent. Child malnutrition decreased from 42 percent to 10 percent. The drop-out rate at the local school, which was often the result of parents being unable to pay school fees, fell from 40 percent to almost zero. There was also an increased use of the local health clinic. All of these are clear indicators of an overall decrease of poverty, and an increase in well-being.

One of the things that struck me most when we visited the village was the near absence of a visible economy of the kind one would see in an urban area. The village was a long way from the nearest town, and the residents had no money to afford transportation. How are you supposed to build a livelihood if your local area has hardly any resources, and nothing to offer by way of opportunities, or even hope? Still, as my colleague and I traveled through Namibia over the next few days, several of the people we spoke to and who were interested in what we were studying, responded with the typical neoliberal trope: yes, we should support the poor, but only the poor who deserve it, those who are willing to work. Such reactions were so out of sync with reality for the inhabitants of Otjivero. They were not poor because they didn’t work; rather, they didn’t work because there were no jobs and they were too poor to create job opportunities themselves. Not only were they too undernourished; there was simply no economy that offered them jobs. It seems a no-brainer that only a generous injection of resources would make it possible to kick-start an economy (as we’ve seen before, when the Marshall Plan injected massive resources into Western Europe to rebuild it after the Second World War).

The introduction of a basic income enabled the residents of Otjivero to start up some small businesses—such as brick-making or dressmaking. People organized informal saving groups to which every member contributed monthly, meaning that then, in turn, they had access to a larger amount of money. One local resident, Frida Nembwaya, invested her family’s basic income in an oven, and started to bake traditional bread rolls. Soon she was baking two hundred rolls a day, seven days a week. Clearly, small businesses such as these not only help to generate a virtuous economic circle, but also gave residents more self-esteem. They were no longer poor, hungry villagers, but villagers equipped with the means they needed to improve their lives. As Ms. Nembwaya wrote on her newly built house made from sheets of zinc: “Good life after struggle.”⁵

The basic-income experiment in Otjivero was part of an increasing use of direct cash transfers by governments and NGOs. They can be either unconditional as in Otjivero, or conditional on meeting certain requirements. At the national level, Mexico launched Oportunidades (Opportunities) in 2002, and Brazil introduced Bolsa Família (Family Allowance) in 2003—both of which reached millions of people, with positive effects on the well-being of the poor. These were large-scale, government-supported transfer schemes, yet they were conditional: families received modest cash transfers if their kids would regularly attend school and if family members would pay visits to health clinics and participate in workshops on hygiene and nutrition.

Since 2008, there have been subsequent experiments in which small amounts have been given to very poor people directly and the results studied by economists. The emerging body of research makes it possible to draw firmer conclusions about the effects of unconditional cash transfers in these extremely poor settings. We now know that giving poor people unconditional cash transfers has positive effects on their savings, on their possession of consumer durables (such as an oven), and their overall quality of life. Despite the argument commonly used against unconditional cash transfers, that poor people will spend the money irresponsibly, researchers have found that these transfers do not increase the amount of money poor people spend on alcohol and tobacco.⁶

An unconditional cash transfer is also simply a very efficient way of giving; it comes with much smaller overheads than with means-tested cash transfers, which are only given to a particular group if they can prove that they meet certain conditions. The latter require much more bureaucratic oversight and testing to determine who gets what—which costs time and money. And moreover, unconditional cash transfers are much more respectful to the poor than cash transfers that can only be used for one particular goal. It affords poor people dignity and respect, acknowledging that they know best when it comes to what they need.

There is, however, an important downside to the idea of freely giving the poor small sums of money: these contributions to individuals can only go so far in addressing systemic poverty. Solid institutions are extremely important to economic prosperity—think of a stable currency, a reliable government, the eradication of corruption, and a separation of governmental powers that prevents politicians from raiding their country’s natural resources for their own benefit, among other things. All of that is true. But making the case for unconditional cash transfers for the global poor does not imply that this is all that is required. Quite the reverse.

Obviously, the political and financial elite in the Global North should stop supporting dictators and exploiting countries in the Global South for their natural resources and cheap labor. But beyond this, former European colonizers—as well as the US, a de facto colonizer—should acknowledge that they have historically exploited those countries for their own interests (in addition to other more noble goals they may have had), and should compensate them for past damages. This is, at present, not a popular proposal in Europe or the US, whose populations largely choose to ignore the role their governments have had in making it harder for people and governments in the Global South to function and thrive. It is easier to brand such analyses as “woke” or “radical,” and duck the difficult questions. But we have a responsibility that we cannot shirk. Ending extreme poverty will require a package of different types of measures, and unconditional cash grants would be a very powerful instrument in that overall package. The wealth that will be needed to fund these measures must first of all come from the super-rich, before we turn to the rich and middle classes.

Jeffrey Sachs has also argued along these lines, saying that we should use the excess wealth in the world to address hunger, specifically. Sachs is a renowned economist at Columbia University in New York, where he directs the Center for Sustainable Development. He is also the president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and holds many other leading positions across the globe.

In a powerful speech that he gave at the UN Food Systems Pre-Summit in July 2021, he addressed several of the ills of global inequality. In just seven minutes, he made clear how much damage has been done. Sachs reminded his audience that the US has a long track record of installing politicians in power in countries that are important either because the American dominant class needs natural resources or because it needs something else from the Global South—cheap labor without much regulation that protects workers, for example. He then criticized rich countries for not looking at the actual financial needs of the poor, but instead promising very modest amounts in financial support. It almost looked like rich countries were motivated to do this only because they had to tick a box to say that they’d given something. Instead, the world needed a change of attitude, and to give a sum of the right order of magnitude, adequate to meet people’s actual needs. But then where would this money come from? Here’s what Sachs had to say:

The rich individuals are increasingly hoarding everything. If the billionaires want to go to space, they could at least leave their money on Earth to solve the critical Earthbound problems. We now have an estimated 2,775 billionaires with a combined net worth of around $13.1 trillion. I have it on good authority that you don’t need more than $1 billion to live comfortably. Even if every billionaire kept $1 billion, that would leave around $10 trillion for ending hunger, poverty, and environmental destruction. We should be taxing the vast and rapidly growing billionaire wealth to help finance a civilized world.⁷

This is, exactly, the limitarian argument (although $1 billion is putting the threshold too high).

Extreme global poverty is a clear case where a huge overall gain in well-being would be achieved if we were to use the excess money of the super-rich to help the poor. But extreme global poverty is not the only unmet urgent need we are facing. There are other burning issues that require our attention.

One such problem is poverty in rich economies. According to the OECD, on average about 12 percent of people in the affluent countries live in poverty. Yet there are notable differences: at the lower end, in a country such as Finland, 6 percent of residents are impoverished, whereas in the US around 15 percent live in poverty. Moreover, 40 percent of people in rich countries are financially insecure.⁸ In all these countries, people are suffering because they have drawn an unlucky ticket from the lottery of birth, or have been struck by bad luck later in life. Or they happen to have colored skin, be a migrant, or have a disability—all factors that make deprivation more likely, given the racism, xenophobia, and ableism rife in rich societies. So, clearly, there is no silver-bullet strategy for addressing all these problems at once. But nevertheless, much of that suffering could be ameliorated if we took simple policy measures to address endemic poverty—most of which cost money. For so many of the actions and policies that are needed to make the world better, we need smart thinking, good design, and hardworking and honest individuals to implement them. But also, plainly, we need money.

There are very visible forms of poverty in rich countries, especially in the case of homelessness. But other forms of poverty can remain invisible to the public eye, as when people lack basic necessities such as food or healthcare. The shame and stigma attached to poverty is considerable, and many people who are struggling will try to hide their penury from others. Once in a while, when poor people’s attempts to hide their poverty fail, and a case is picked up by the media, it creates national outrage.

In October 2022, there was an outcry in the Netherlands. One Monday morning, a child attending a school in Rotterdam became sick. He had been experiencing severe headaches and was feeling unwell. The teacher called his mother to come and pick him up, which is how she learned that they hadn’t had any food since Saturday, simply because there was no money left in the household. This was not an isolated case. Teachers in schools across the Netherlands have been warning that children from poor households often come to school without having had breakfast. They have argued for free healthy breakfasts at schools, so that children do not have to try to concentrate on an empty stomach. We know that the problem is getting worse: more and more families are relying on food banks for part of their groceries. If there were more tax revenue available, the government could offer free meals for all students. This policy is easy to implement and, of course, a matter of political priorities: public schools in New York City already offer free breakfast and lunch to all students.⁹

How is it possible that in such affluent countries there are people who are going hungry? On the one hand, the economic rules of the game are rigged such that the profit-maximizing strategies of businesses can make it impossible for those on low incomes to meet their needs. Some items that everyone needs to spend money on, such as medication or housing, are for many too expensive. Although there are also significant differences between countries, we have seen that, increasingly, wages and benefits for the poor are no longer high enough to make ends meet; benefits for the poor, unemployed, and disabled have become much more difficult to access; and the austerity measures that have been implemented since the 2008 financial crash have made it harder for the poorest and most vulnerable to stay afloat. These developments can all be traced back to the rise of neoliberalism, the trickling-up of wealth, and the decline of the welfare state. It is a story of decline that has been sharply depicted in the 2022 documentary The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales, in which Abigail Disney and Kathleen Hughes examine what happened to workers at California’s Disneyland. While in the 1950s and 1960s workers at the theme park could still live comfortable, middle-class lives, many are now trapped in poverty, thanks to declining wages and increased living costs. At the same time, Disneyland enjoys major financial support from the local government. And Disneyland’s CEO earns 2,000 times the salary of a Disneyland “custodian,” up from 78 times in 1967.¹⁰

Often the suffering of the poor is caused, or made worse, by bad social institutions and poor government regulation. The case of health deficits in the US is a painful example. America is one of the richest countries on Earth. Yet it also has one of the most expensive and inequitable healthcare systems. Good healthcare and affordable medication depend on your insurance provider, which again depends on the generosity of your employer (or the employer of your spouse). In early 2023, the world learned that Hody Childress, a local farmer in Alabama, had given anonymous donations to his local pharmacy for more than a decade. Thanks to his donations, local residents who couldn’t pay for prescription drugs were still able to access those drugs for free. The generosity of Mr. Childress is heartwarming. At the same time, the idea that in such a rich country people should need to depend on the goodwill of an anonymous local donor to get access to prescription drugs is infuriating. Our human right to healthcare shouldn’t depend on the odds that we have a neighbor who is extraordinarily generous. A nationwide study showed that almost one in four Americans has trouble paying for their prescription. At the same time, the big players in the pharmaceutical industry have a profit margin almost double that of the big companies in other industries: 13.8 percent vs. 7.7 percent. Unsurprisingly, it is an industry that has produced a large number of billionaires on the Forbes list.¹¹

There is nothing preventing the American government from regulating the pharmaceutical industry in order to ensure companies can make a reasonable but not exorbitant profit, while the needs of citizens can still be met. The Canadian as well as most European systems are more efficient and less expensive. But the first thing solutions like this require is for us to recognize that, when it comes to profits, the sky should not be the limit. And, perhaps, that not all goods should be provided via the market mechanism.¹²

The examples of hungry schoolchildren in the Netherlands and patients who can’t pay for prescription drugs in America are only two out of a whole list of forms of deprivation in rich societies. Schools that provide education for students with disabilities and developmental disorders are under-resourced, unable to attract the most qualified teachers, and have class sizes that are too large to properly encourage the development of those vulnerable children. Organizations that help students who have had to flee their home countries are constantly looking for funds to support these bright young refugees hoping to finish their degrees. The homeless are in desperate need of permanent shelter, since without a house it is very hard to find a job and break the vicious cycle of unemployment, hunger, and instability. And so on—the list is long. Too long.

In a limitarian world we would find much less poverty, and far fewer unmet needs. And beyond this, the funds from the increase in tax revenue would allow us to tackle “collective-action problems,” too. This is a category of problem in which a group of people, rather than cooperating as they should to solve the problem effectively, are failing to do so because of conflicting personal interests. Solving a collective-action problem requires coordination, typically from the government. These are issues that require structural solutions, rather than individual acts. These are also problems that, once they are solved, benefit everyone.

The most urgent current example is, of course, climate change and the biodiversity crisis. There is no single solution, and no individual can solve this problem on their own. We may decide to avoid taking airplanes or eating animal-based products. We may decide to rewild our gardens. All of this is admirable—and valuable as a means of raising awareness and creating community among people who are working toward a better world—but it won’t solve the crisis, even if we do manage to convince all our neighbors to join us. As we saw, we need a green strategy that entails different climate and biodiversity action at the highest level: vastly increasing the production of renewable energy and getting rid of fossil fuels; developing new, greener technologies; providing poor people with off-grid electricity from renewable sources; drastically decreasing the number of livestock; buying land to protect it from excess cultivation; buying up the most environmentally damaging firms; and so forth. None of this can happen without the coordinating power of the government. And none of this can happen without money.

In addition to addressing collective-action problems, the government could also use the additional cash to set entrepreneurial goals that would have positive spill-over effects for the entire economy. Recall Mariana Mazzucato’s observation in The Entrepreneurial State that the government has historically been a very important engine of innovation. In fact, it is much more important in this regard than is often believed. There is a good reason why this kind of incentivization is a task for the government: because major inventions require smart individuals able to work to a long time scale without being pressured to contribute to short- or medium-term profits. The state is the best, perhaps even the only, institution that can fund risky, long-term research, since it can cope with failures, and is not pressured by shareholders who want a short-term return on their investments.

With the rise of neoliberalism the view spread that the government was unproductive, and that entrepreneurs were the true and only agents of innovation. Mazzucato has shown that this does not fit with the historical track record. Most crucial innovations did not stem from private sector, venture capital investments in the market but relied on government subsidies. In a more recent book, Mission Economy, she has argued that governments should aim for major innovations not only as ends in themselves, but because they can lead to unexpected additional innovations that will improve economic growth and welfare. She mentions the mission to get a man on the moon as one such ambitious government-led innovative plan, which led to the development and design of new technologies and materials in a wide range of fields such as electronics, navigation, communications, textiles, and nutrition. If the tax-raising capacity of the government were restored, it could once again engage in such “moonshot” ambitions.¹³

The bottom line is simply this: there is so much good our governments could do with the excess money of the super-rich. And taking it from them would probably not affect their welfare at all—not in any meaningful sense. If there is a slight drop in the luxury of their lifestyles, it would be massively outweighed by the gains to others, and the gains to the common good.

On reading this, some will ask: isn’t this a case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs? If we curtail individual freedom to accumulate wealth, then won’t we hurt not just the richest, but, in the end, everyone else too? Won’t the collective cake shrink; won’t more people suffer? Won’t limitarianism backfire?

This killing-the-goose objection is also known as the “incentives objection.” The idea is that if we want someone to make an extra effort, they will need to see material gain from putting in the extra effort, otherwise they will have no incentive to do so. This argument assumes that limitarianism entails a very strong disincentive for almost-rich people to contribute more to the economy by putting in more hours, working harder, innovating in smarter ways, and doing more business—though, as we saw with Peter van der Veer, the relationship between performance and pay is not as straightforward as this. Still, the consensus view among economists is that the so-called “optimal top marginal taxation rate” for income tax, which is the rate at which total tax revenues are maximized, is between 70 and 80 percent. If you increase the top marginal taxation rate much further, then total tax revenues will decrease.¹⁴

The first point we should make here is that limitarianism does not necessarily mean a top income tax rate of 100 percent. If we are able to make substantial structural changes to the economy, ensuring that the division of what we all produce together is fairer, then there will be much less need for the fiscal system to intervene and claim the excess wealth. In practical terms, this could be achieved by having minimum wages set at the level of a living wage; by breaking up corporations that have a monopoly; by protecting unions and criminalizing union-busting; and by taking other measures to ensure that there is no group in the economy that has too much power. These measures would leave us with much more modest top incomes, and hence we might not need a 100 percent tax rate. In addition, we need to focus much more on taxes on wealth, profits, inheritance, and capital gains, as these are currently very low or nonexistent. In any case, it is crucial that we think of limitarianism not just in terms of income tax, but rather as a guiding principle that can help us to structure an economy that results in less inequality in the first place.

The second point to make is that if a limitarian economy did turn out to disincentivize workers, this might weaken the case for having a hard, political limit to extreme wealth—but it certainly doesn’t affect the ethical case. After all, as the Oxford philosopher G. A. Cohen has argued, in a fair world there would be no justification for incentive-based inequalities that benefit the most productive. In a just world, the most productive citizens would accept that the moral arguments for permitting inequalities are very limited. The genuinely moral case for allowing inequality is, as we’ve seen, limited to inequalities due to compensation for differences in the burdens of work (risk, investment in learning, and levels of stress) and differences in the effort and hours people put into their jobs. But that is not what the incentives objection is pointing to: the incentives objection is about people bargaining their way out of limitarianism in order to get a better deal for themselves, rather than having a real moral reason for keeping their money or receiving more of it.¹⁵

Within the upper limit of ten million pounds, dollars, or euros, there is plenty of leeway to accommodate justified incentives. But in our unjust world, we are swamped by unjust incentives claims: these are pragmatic concessions in a bargaining game, made by people who happen to be in a strong position, which they would not have reached without at least some pivotal amount of luck and profiting from the effects of unjust societal structures that benefit the rich, but above all the super-rich.

One assumption that this objection makes is that the disincentive is real. But is it? Would very high-earning people really stop doing what they do if the highest marginal tax rate on income were, say, 90 percent, or would entrepreneurs stop selling their products if the highest tax rate on profits were 90 percent? Why would they do that? Is it not much more plausible that most people who are currently extremely high up in the economic pecking order no longer work for money, but rather for the status, networks, and power that come with that position? In their book Against Inequality, the Canadian professor Tom Malleson considers the findings of empirical studies that look into whether the rich and super-rich work less if they are taxed more, and concludes that we have no evidence that this happens. At the very top, people are motivated much more by power and prestige, and thus won’t reduce their professional involvement if they earn less after paying taxes.¹⁶

We are faced, once again, with a widespread belief based on an ideological assumption about what motivates people. The idea of human nature embedded in neoliberalism tells us that material gain is what drives people, but why should this be the case? And even if it were (to some extent) the case, then we must not forget, either, that the degree to which people need to be rewarded in order to contribute can change with the zeitgeist. Neoliberal ideology, with its “greed is good” mantra, makes some people believe that they are stupid if they do not go after the highest possible wage, or the highest possible income. But why? Why should this be the case? If we get used to being contented with fair remuneration for work or entrepreneurship, and we divide up the benefits of what we produce together more equitably, then it will become rare that one encounters zero financial reward for additional effort.

Besides, even if there were zero financial reward for putting in additional effort, it does not follow that you would get zero overall reward for putting in that effort. A lot of people put in a lot of effort all the time for zero financial reward—think of all the people who do voluntary work, or activists who fight for the common good when the government or companies have dropped the ball (as in climate action, or the generous farmer in Alabama!). Or take the work of a teacher. Teachers regularly go the extra mile for students who need more support, without receiving extra pay. Teachers across the globe work regular overtime. When we ask them why they do it, it’s rare to hear the term “reward” or “money” in their answer. They do it out of an intrinsic motivation to do their work well, following professional moral codes. They take their profession as a vocation and do what it takes to do it well—within reason, of course. Yet for those who like to use the terminology of reward, one might say what the teachers are rewarded with is the pleasure and satisfaction of seeing kids and teenagers grow and develop. They are rewarded in human flourishing.¹⁷

Bringing non-financial incentives into the discussion leads to the following question: are there non-financial rewards or incentives that could prompt highly productive people to make a greater effort such that society at large benefits? Have we taken that question sufficiently seriously? Have we properly investigated how we can introduce new forms of credit and recognition that do bestow honor and gratitude on a person without making them excessively rich? In science, most rewards work this way. Often there is no financial prize, as with honorary doctoral degrees. If there is, it is not generally meant to enrich the scientist or scholar receiving it. Instead, those funds flow back into research and education. Everyone benefits from scientific discoveries and scholarly insights; professors and researchers share them as public goods for all of humanity. Why can’t that model also be applied in other industries?

Sure, some might respond, it would be better if the fortunes of the rich were used to benefit us all. But the best way to do this is by encouraging the rich to engage in philanthropic giving. Isn’t the solution just to develop a stronger philantrophic culture, so that the rich donate more of their wealth to good causes?

8 Philanthropy Is Not the Answer

Remember Chuck Feeney, the guy who accumulated billions and then gave it all away? Feeney acquired his fortune through a combination of hard work and an astute business sense. He used the same entrepreneurial skills and energy in the process of donating it. Feeney donated his billions for laudable reasons: he felt that he didn’t need the money, and saw how much good could be done with it elsewhere. More than that: he felt that giving his money away while he was still alive was a smart way of achieving happiness. If you only start giving after you die, you can’t enjoy the giving.

Feeney was born into a working-class family in 1930s Pennsylvania. The enormous wealth that he would accumulate later in life would not change his loyalty to the values and culture of the people he grew up with. As a young man, he signed up to join the US Army knowing that this would give him free entry to college upon completion. He learned Japanese while stationed in Japan, and after he served his time, he went to Cornell University on a military scholarship to study hotel administration.

Feeney’s business model was all about finding legal ways to sell products without having to pay taxes. Feeney found clever new ways of selling, duty-free, products that were heavily taxed and thus more expensive in the US. At first he did so by selling liquor to American soldiers whose ships were embarking in European ports (he took their orders and sent the bottles direct to their homes; formally, they took them back from their trips as “unaccompanied goods”). Later he would set up duty-free shops in airports in Hawaii, which attracted many Japanese tourists. By the time he was fifty, he had built the Duty Free Shoppers (DFS) empire, and drew an annual dividend that for many years surpassed $20 million.

Later in life, Feeney became increasingly unhappy with the fortune he had amassed. Dismissive of the lifestyles of the super-rich, he decided to devote his energy and skills to improving the lives of other people. Over the span of a few decades, Chuck Feeney gave away almost his entire fortune, more than $8 billion. He gave very large amounts to Irish universities, to his alma mater Cornell University, to the Vietnamese healthcare system, as well as toward the peace process in Northern Ireland, along with many other, smaller causes. Feeney lived according to his own motto: “give while living.”¹

For a very long time, Feeney was able to donate anonymously, which led to Forbes describing him as “the James Bond of philanthropy.” At a certain point, however, due to a legal dispute with a previous business partner, he could no longer remain anonymous. Since then, he has received praise from all corners of the globe for his extremely generous giving. No one has ever given away such a large percentage of their fortune while alive. Warren Buffet has called him “my hero.” Bill Gates has gone on record saying that Feeney “sets an example for all of us.” Forbes awarded him the 2014 Lifetime Achievement for Philanthropy. In 2012, all the universities of Ireland, North and South, bestowed a doctor honoris causa on him. In 2022, the University of Queensland also gave Feeney an honorary doctorate in recognition of his generosity to Australia in general and the university in particular, as well as announcing it would open a “Feeney Way” on one of its campuses.²

In short, the admiration and gratitude for Chuck Feeney’s generosity has been overwhelming, and it has repeatedly been said that all billionaires should follow his example. It shouldn’t be a surprise that so many regard him as a hero. Imagine how things would be if all billionaires acted like him. That would be a limitarian world! Wouldn’t it?

If I were a neoliberal thinker or politician, this would indeed be where the story would end. I do feel enthusiastic about Feeney’s attitude to giving. But a proper moral analysis should go deeper, and pose questions that might be potentially uncomfortable. In the case of any millionaire or billionaire—whether they choose to give away their money or not—we need to ask a few questions. We must ask, first of all, how much of that money is dirty. In the case of the entrepreneurial super-rich, we must ask whether they and their firms have respected the human rights (including labor rights) of their employees. We must ask whether they have avoided paying taxes by manipulating or even changing the law. And we must ask whether their income-generating activities have happened at the cost of the environment. Unfortunately, Feeney’s biography suggests that, for some of these questions, the answers are troubling.

Feeney built his entire business empire on the basis of tax avoidance. He set up his first office in Liechtenstein, a fiscal paradise. He was not legally allowed to be there, so he stayed in hotel rooms, where he and his employees had to check in and out regularly to stay out of the hands of the police. Later, he listed his shares in the company under the name of his French wife, so that he didn’t have to pay tax in the US. She was in no way involved in the business. When one of the international tax differences that his businesses had been exploiting was about to end due to a change in the law, Feeney and his lawyers stayed for a while in Washington to engage in direct lobbying. So there is no doubt that Feeney’s dedication to tax avoidance has cost American (and international) tax collectors dearly—and thus, too, US citizens, who could have decided democratically what to do with that lost revenue. They might have chosen to devote those billions to something other than Feeney’s alma mater or to massively investing in Irish universities.

What lessons can we draw from Chuck Feeney’s example? The first is that our assessment of a given person’s philanthropy needs to take in the broader picture. The first rule a rich person should follow is to earn their money in a morally sound way, before even thinking about philanthropy.

Some might take offense here. Is it not wildly misplaced and even crass to start asking critical questions of someone who gave away his entire fortune, almost $8 billion? Most super-rich people give only a tiny fraction of that amount, and instead prefer to build up dynastic wealth, passing most of it on to their children. Or they spend it on things as crazy and wasteful as golden toilets. Are we expecting philanthropists to be saints?

Of course, if I were to meet Chuck Feeney, I would not start complaining about his taxes. This is not about the individual. This is about social structures, and about politics. Our analysis is meant to contribute to a forward-looking agenda. Yes, we can talk about how public–private partnerships can improve the world. We can talk about how much good philanthropy can do. But first we need to talk about the basic structures of our societies, about the social contract; about the basic agreements made in our parliaments, and our international economic treaties. We need to decide whether we should allow so much tax avoidance and evasion, and so much lobbying for the legislation that facilitates it. We need to think about whether we should press each other to live according to the spirit of the law rather than the most self-serving legal interpretation of it.

Laxness in this regard has contributed to the current state of affairs, helping Feeney to accumulate the fortune that he later gave away. This is the second lesson to draw from Feeney’s exceptional example: when it comes to philanthropy, the personal is political.

We cannot talk about philanthropy without considering its relation to government and taxation. Philanthropy is often needed because the government is failing to meet urgent unmet needs. Think of food banks: if governments had effective poverty-reduction strategies, we wouldn’t need this form of charity. On the flip side, any form of tax avoidance or evasion (upon which most large fortunes depend) has a clear negative impact on disadvantaged stakeholders: the workers or consumers who have to pay more tax in order to compensate for the decline in tax revenue, or who suffer the consequences of there being inadequate funding for essential public services.

This is not just a matter of logic. We can also map out the relation between philanthropy, unmet needs, and taxation by looking at the data. With a poverty rate of 15 percent, the US is doing worse than almost all European countries; the UK is, with a poverty rate of 11 percent, doing better than the US, but slightly worse than most Western European countries. The data for income inequality looks even worse: almost all European countries, as well as Canada, South Korea, and Japan, do better than the UK and the US. These are just two indicators of the broader picture that Western European countries have better-developed social protection and redistributive measures than the UK, and even more so than the US.³

Yet the influence and importance of big philanthropy is exactly the opposite. Of the 100 biggest philanthropic foundations, 90 are based in the US, 5 in the UK, and the remaining 5 are divided between Canada and continental Europe.⁴ In other words: the political and indeed moral discussion of philanthropy has a distinctly Anglo-American flavor. And that is because other countries, including those of Western Europe, have chosen an economic model in which only a few can earn billions and subsequently set up philanthropic foundations. And there is, at the same time, also much less need for these foundations, since these governments have the resources to meet more of their citizens’ needs. Yet there are voices in continental Europe saying that they, too, should mobilize the goodwill of very rich citizens more, in order to help governments who are said to no longer be able to provide the support that they gave in the past. But do we really want the hungry schoolboy in Rotterdam to receive his breakfast courtesy of a local philanthropist, while the richest avoid taxes on a grand scale, and various fossil industries are given annual tax cuts of up to €30 billion?⁵

I don’t think this is a path we should follow. Philanthropists are not a substitute for a properly functioning government. If philanthropists pick up the slack for the government, the government is handed a convenient excuse to continue not fulfilling its duties. And those whose needs are met by philanthropists are deprived of a say in what happens.

An appraisal of philanthropy must therefore always be part of a broader discussion of tax and the public goods and services that the government provides. And it must also form part of an even wider discussion of other possible worlds. The most fundamental question that anyone who wants to look critically at philanthropy must answer is: why do we need a government at all? After all, can’t philanthropists do what governments are doing right now—only much more efficiently?

We should start by recalling that a properly functioning government and a shared set of rules are the basis of our social contract—what is saving us from lawlessness and violence. The idea that we do not need a government is plainly absurd. The real question is what we want that government to do for us.

Most conservatives and libertarians are against “big government.” Their objection is that the government interferes too much in our lives, and unjustly takes money from one person in order to give it to another. The arguments that we’ve already encountered show that such a view starts from a mistaken understanding of the extent to which we can say that something is properly ours. The markets, which are designed and enabled by the government, are what give us our ability to earn money in a peaceful and effective way. We accrue any wealth we have by drawing on the infrastructure and knowledge imparted to us by those around us, and by those who have come before. Besides, the vast majority of people want to live in societies with greater collective well-being and much less inequality than we currently see, and the government is, simply, the best mechanism we have to accomplish this.

Those who lobby for smaller government tend not to understand this, especially if they no longer have (or never had) friends or family members who come from the bottom half of the wealth distribution. As Morris Pearl of the Patriotic Millionaires has observed, conservative politicians (he was talking specifically about Mitt Romney) live in a world of their own, where money is plentiful. Romney had told students that they should borrow money from their parents so that they didn’t have to work while studying. In Romney’s universe, every student apparently has parents with enough money to pay the steep fees of Ivy League universities. No wonder, then, that he didn’t see the need for student grants and general governmental support for students.⁶

There is a very strong case, in terms of social justice and fairness, for having a government that enables people to thrive, and supports them when they are in need or when things go wrong. Yet there are people who think that there is only one goal that matters, and that is efficiency. The purpose of government is to make the way we organize our interactions more efficient, and nothing else.

As it turns out, efficiency is a goal that is also much enhanced by having a more expansive social state. Efficiency has, for decades, been one of the two main reasons (next to solidarity or fairness) for establishing social security programs, in particular public health insurance and pension and unemployment systems. Suppose each of us had to save on our own to cover the risk of a medical emergency, or of becoming unemployed, or for income provision during old age. If we couldn’t afford to save because our wages were very low, then the lack of security would cause us a debilitating level of stress. If we did have some money to save, then we would tend to save too much. And that would then suppress our consumption—and hence our own welfare—during good times, which would have a dampening effect on the economy as a whole.

When risks are shared among an entire population—we are all at risk of ill-health, unemployment, and so on—then it is much better to pool them. And while insurance companies can facilitate this, their focus on profit-seeking means that they are unsuited to providing most of these goods. In the case of healthcare, the information asymmetry and power differences between a patient and a doctor lead to a type of care that is not the best but the most profit-maximizing, which costs lives. In the case of unemployment benefits, unregulated private insurance companies tend to develop a bias against those who are more likely to become unemployed, whereby they either charge higher rates for coverage or (if it is not illegal to do so) decline a “risky” application for insurance. There are very good reasons why the expansive social security systems in proper welfare states around the world have been strongly regulated or organized by the government. And while in monetary terms these are not the richest countries, they are the ones that score highest in terms of quality of life and happiness or the UN’s human development indicators. If you care about efficiency, don’t leave everything to the private sector—don’t just rely on the market and philanthropy.⁷

It does not follow, however, that a bigger government, measured in terms of what percentage of national income flows through its hands, will always make people’s lives better. A neoliberal government might be the same size as a generous welfare state government, but will reallocate part of its expenditure from redistribution and social support to systems of control and oversight of those needy citizens. That is what some European governments did when they took a neoliberal turn: they increased layers of regulation and monitoring across the public sector and across the welfare state, purportedly in order to eliminate “scrounging” or free-riding. There are instances where control and accountability are indeed necessary, but these measures also display an outsized distrust in the recipients of benefits, or in the professionalism of the public-sector workers.

Today, the Dutch government’s attitude toward the needy goes something like this. Since a poor person cannot be trusted with their welfare allowance, an army of public servants must be hired for checks and controls. They must keep tabs on whether the person is receiving gifts from family members (in cash or in kind). They must ensure that the person doesn’t have more than a few thousand euros in savings, which is the maximum they can have to be eligible for state support. And if they have a disability or disorder, they must go for frequent reassessments to confirm their inability to work, even if the disability or illness is lifelong and cannot improve. In his 2016 film I, Daniel Blake, Ken Loach, the unrivaled socially critical British film director, presents a portrait of how these layers of control crush people—often the most vulnerable ones. A philanthropist should distribute free copies of I, Daniel Blake among public servants—perhaps that would inspire them to pose the questions they need to ask their superiors.

So it isn’t the case that government control of wealth and resources is always better for citizens than philanthropy. That depends on whether the government uses its powers to improve the lives of its citizens, and of any living creature its policies might affect. Some big governments spend an enormous amount of taxpayer money on public well-being and for redistributive purposes; other big governments are hugely inefficient and spend a lot on mechanisms of control—or, as Noam Chomsky would remind us, on military infrastructure to maintain geopolitical dominance. It all depends on their priorities.⁸

Perhaps because of all this, some rich philanthropists are reluctant to entrust governments with the redistribution of their wealth. This point was made powerfully by Abigail Disney in a 2021 article for the Atlantic. As we have seen, Disney is an outspoken critic of growing wealth inequalities in the US, and a member of the Patriotic Millionaires. In her article, she describes “the blueprints for dynastic wealth” that are used to socialize children from rich families. There are clear rules. Never touch the “corpus” (that is, spend the capital that you have inherited), so that you can leave it to your children. Marry someone from your own economic class, since too great a difference in income and assets (and therefore power) might lead to friction. And use all the available tools that are within the law to pay as few taxes as possible, since the government cannot be trusted with that money, and will only abuse or misspend it.⁹

The philanthropic advisers and super-rich heirs that I interviewed confirmed the prevalence of these “rules”—so when I spoke to Abigail Disney, I asked her why the super-rich felt such distrust toward the government. I had already gathered part of the answer from other interviewees, who explained it as a general distrust of government inefficiency or unwise spending. And this distrust did not just emerge accidentally; rather, it is one of the most salient features of the neoliberal turn taken in the last decades of the twentieth century, which was patiently orchestrated by a coalition of libertarian ideologues and their supporters from big business.¹⁰

Abigail Disney offered an even more sinister explanation, based on what she had learned from one of her uncles. A deeply conservative man, who had served in the Reagan administration, he told her that there were many stupid people who should not be trusted with governing the country. That task should be left to people who are smart, who know what they are doing. And those are the people who have been successful—their wealth being an indicator of how successful, and therefore how smart, they are. To his mind, being poor essentially meant being stupid, and incapable of governing or leading. It was best, therefore, to keep the democratically elected government as small as possible, and as much under the control of rich people as possible, while using philanthropy as a mechanism to deal with the major societal problems that required attention.

In other words, one of the reasons why some super-rich people feel the government should stay small is a stunningly deep-seated, class-based prejudice that informs how they regard themselves, and how they regard the poor. They think of themselves as the rightful leaders, as evidenced by the fact that they are rich. Some, such as the adherents of prosperity theology, go a step further, and, backed up by a skewed interpretation of Protestant doctrine, believe that their wealth shows their high degree of moral worthiness. Most of them think that the poor are to be blamed for their own predicament, making them unfit to decide on policy. And, they believe, since governments are democratically elected and therefore run by the population rather than the smart elite, they should not be trusted with solving society’s problems. Better to leave that in the hands of the very wealthy, by giving them much of the actual power, as well as by letting them keep their money and call the philanthropic shots.¹¹

I have no idea how many tax-dodging philanthropists (knowingly or unknowingly) subscribe to this way of thinking. But I do know that it gets the prize for the worst possible reason for endorsing philanthropy over paying taxes.

It is tricky to speculate why anyone would hold this position. Three possible explanations come to mind: racism, narcissism, and a general lack of knowledge of the poor.

Why would racism explain this obnoxious view? When Abigail Disney told me the story about her uncle, I was reminded of something I had heard an American labor economist say many years before. A PhD student at Cambridge University at the time, I attended a talk from a visiting professor, who afterward went for lunch with a group of students. His research focused on the effects of a minimum wage on the economy. I asked him whether there was ever a chance of a basic income being implemented in the US. He responded that he very much doubted it, because the net beneficiaries would be the poor. And in America, the poor are overwhelmingly people of color. His view was that racism was ultimately the reason why an unconditional basic income was politically unfeasible. Given the overwhelming whiteness of the wealthy and super-rich in the USA and beyond, is the general lack of care for the poor thus also motivated by racism?

And then there is narcissism. It seems hard to deny that some of the super-rich display narcissistic behavior. It’s a vicious circle: a person’s narcissistic traits make them (usually “him”) more likely to achieve their goal of becoming successful, and therefore rich. At the same time, their narcissism will also prompt them to present this success as being of their own making. We all suffer from attribution bias, but it seems plausible that narcissists do so even more. Their success is theirs. Not due to luck, nor to society’s collective inheritance of infrastructure, knowledge, and innovation, nor to the collaboration or hard work of others, such as their teachers when they were young, or, now, their employees.

Or there is the third possible explanation: obliviousness. Most of the rich and super-rich have surrounded themselves primarily with other very rich people. So how could they know anything about who the poor are and the challenges they face? Frankly, they don’t have a clue. So they freely project cultural prejudices onto their fellow citizens, believing it to be in everyone’s best interests if successful people make the decisions. And that doesn’t mean democratically elected politicians, but those who have proven to be financially successful. The super-rich, in other words.

Let’s assume that most philanthropists don’t have such deeply anti-democratic, misanthropic, racist, and arrogant motives. Let’s also disregard the super-rich who abuse philanthropy as a wealth-defense strategy—for example, by hiring family members to do some very well-paid work for a philanthropic foundation, or by setting up a philanthropic financial structure that makes it easier to move the money to a fiscal paradise. They are effectively in the business of tax avoidance.¹²

Let’s focus instead on those who are genuinely well-meaning. Should we embrace their philanthropy as the solution to climate change, poverty, and our other pressing problems? If we want to tackle those issues urgently and effectively, is philanthropy not a better strategy than limitarianism and other forms of redistribution?¹³

Unfortunately, the answer is no. Here’s the biggest problem with philanthropy: it is deeply undemocratic. This is, of course, affected by scale. Very small donations—you and I giving a few hundred pounds, dollars, or euros to charity—don’t undermine democracy. Giving a little is a bit like going to buy a new outfit: it’s totally fine to make our own choices. The problem is that some philanthropic donations comprise huge sums, and thus come with huge power. And the people enjoying that power are not accountable to anyone. Philanthropists have no one they need to answer to. And the rest of us have no say over where they spend those vast amounts of cash.¹⁴

One of the scholars who has made the argument, in some detail, that philanthropy is undemocratic is Rob Reich, a professor in political theory at Stanford University. In his 2019 book, Just Giving, Reich argues that philanthropy is not just about charitable giving, but also about plutocratic power. Many proponents of philanthropy believe that it leads to more liberty and equality. But, as Reich argues, a closer inspection shows that it is not doing much, if anything, toward equality. One explanation for this is the fact that, in its current form, philanthropy is subsidized by tax deductions, and thus leads to a reduction in tax revenue. That lost revenue could have been spent on, say, fostering equality of opportunity. But instead it stays in the pockets of the philanthropists, until they decide to give some of it away to a cause of their choosing.¹⁵

I also worry that the undemocratic nature of philanthropy can escalate when it leads to a “crowding out” effect—the process whereby philanthropists take over tasks that should be done by the government. Take the government’s duty to reduce poverty. In most countries, the population has democratically decided that their government must fight poverty among its people, yet their government fails at this task—for example, by not imposing a proper minimum wage, or by making it bureaucratically complex for poor people to apply for the benefits for which they are eligible. Philanthropists step in and try to address the rising deprivation. This, however, takes away the urgency for the government to get its act together, since benevolent citizens have already stepped in where the government has failed in its duty. One can see similar mechanisms at work in other areas where the government retreats (in part or completely) from areas where it previously was active—say, in funding for the arts, sports, or local libraries. The cynical conclusion might then be that having a large philanthropic sector weakens the demands for a radical overhaul of the social contract, making it less urgent for the government to close tax loopholes and start taking its responsibilities seriously. The idea here is that suffering must be deep enough before political pressure builds up to a critical point, at which radical change can occur. One of the philanthropic advisers I spoke to mentioned a very rich conservative donor based in the US who had given a lot to food banks, motivated, the adviser thought, by the belief that such donations would lessen the risk of the poor taking up pitchforks.

Could there, then, never be what philosophers call a “principled justification” for allowing people to accrue wealth so that they can then donate it? (This is a justification based on some ultimate moral principle, independent of any pragmatic considerations or of what the actual effects of such philanthropic decisions might be.) Rob Reich distinguishes between two arguments that are sometimes given as principled reasons for philanthropy. The first is the “pluralism argument.” Because governments are motivated by short-termism and the interests of the average voter—they always have their eye on the next election—they are strongly inclined to opt for only very limited, and low-risk, public-goods provisioning. If public goods like, say, childcare, libraries, and nature conservation are also delivered by laypeople, this could complement the government’s typically restricted approach. Philanthropists and philanthropic foundations can broaden the type of public goods that are provided, including goods that serve future generations, as well as those of people whose interests are not in the political mainstream.

Reich is skeptical. He suggests that the pluralism argument is plausible, but that it is not strictly necessary, because individuals making relatively small charitable donations to non-profit organizations may be enough to achieve this. Moreover, the preferences of the wealthy are not representative of the preferences of the wider citizenry, so their spending will retain its plutocratic character.

The second proposed justification is the “discovery argument.” Because they are not accountable to the competitive pressures of the marketplace, nor to the pressure of electoral processes, philanthropic foundations can experiment with riskier, more radical and more long-term social policies and institutional proposals. They could, for example, heavily invest in the development of climate technologies that neither the market nor the state will provide. Bill Gates would presumably agree, as this is precisely what he has argued rich people should be doing with their money in his recent book on climate change, as we saw in Chapter 5. Reich believes the argument for democratic experimentalism is a stronger principled reason for large-scale philanthropy, since the government’s short-termism does not afflict foundations. Their lack of accountability, which is often rightly seen as a democratic problem, can thus be turned on its head and be put to the service of democracy.¹⁶

But don’t Reich’s objections to the pluralism argument also hold for the discovery argument? Couldn’t individuals, each giving a little, pool their charitable donations and thus fund risky experiments or social interventions, such as universal basic income trials, or the development of new green technologies? In fact, this kind of crowdfunding was precisely what happened with the basic income experiment in Otjivero: the money came from a coalition of donors, including ordinary people. There is a long history of economic provisioning by cooperatives. We don’t need to leave it all up to the market and the government. If they don’t finance the projects we need, we do not necessarily need to turn to wealthy philanthropists; thousands of individual citizens could come together to make them happen. The advantage of this strategy compared with leaving the discovery processes to philanthropic foundations is that it comes without the plutocratic power.

It remains difficult to find a principled argument in favor of large-scale individual philanthropy. Perhaps the best available reason for supporting it may be found by taking a critical look at the way politics works today. Our democracies are not well suited to protecting the interests of those who are not part of the electoral system, such as future generations, or animals and ecosystems like the rainforests. And some political problems are so monumental that they are extremely unlikely to be solved by our existing democratic institutions, except, perhaps, if there is enough political pressure put on those elected by means of lobbying, protests, civil disobedience, and so forth. Some of these problems, such as climate change, are time-sensitive and require urgent, far-reaching interventions that go against the short-term interests of voters. In such cases, only drastic civil disobedience—leading to political revolution—may deliver the policies we need. This brings us to a unique justification for the giving by wealthy philanthropists, since they are able to fund such political movements instantly, whereas crowdsourcing is often a slow process, as is electoral change. In short, philanthropists can use their plutocratic power to help us address an urgent and severe crisis that democratic institutions, as we currently know them, are much less likely to address. Philanthropic power can then be used to rescue one form of democracy (defending the interests of all affected parties, including future generations) from another form of democracy (policy-making by majority voting).¹⁷

Yet even with this principled reason for philanthropy, two concerns remain. One is that even if philanthropists use their excess power in a very good way—to counterbalance the lack of adequate action by the government—it is still the case that they have an excess of power. Large-scale philanthropy will always be problematic because of this power asymmetry.

The other concern lies in the assumption that philanthropists will know what is needed. This concern has often been raised in relation to the effective altruism movement, which calls upon small and large donors to donate generously, but only in ways that are proven to be most effective by impact studies. Some versions of effective altruism go even further and call upon us to earn as much as possible, by almost whatever means possible—including by working in corporations that are at the heart of neoliberal capitalism. This is an essentially technocratic approach to addressing social problems, as if all the requisite information could be deduced from impact studies. These are certainly relevant, but, like any evaluative tool, they only look at what they are programmed to measure, and what they measure is not comprehensive, neglecting, for example, to take into account whether the recipients of philanthropy should get to decide on what is important to them. Given that many very rich people think of themselves as being excellent decision-makers, the risk of hubris is real. They might assume that they know best, despite the fact that most super-rich people, especially those who grew up in the upper-middle class or who inherited wealth, generally have no idea of the lives and struggles of the poorest and most destitute. They should be humble enough to acknowledge this.

Everything we’ve discussed so far gives us strong principled objections to big philanthropy. But what does this mean for the messy world in which we live? People are suffering and dying, and climate change is getting worse and worse; and our neoliberal governments are doing little about it, continually failing to increase their revenues through properly taxing the rich. Wealthy philanthropists are flooded with requests for help. In this unjust world, what should large-scale donors do?

Let’s start with an open goal. The first thing that any wealthy donor should do is this: avoid causing further harm through wealth acquisition, and repair any harm that the creators of their fortune may have done in the past. They should ask themselves the following questions: Am I exploiting workers? Am I polluting the environment or engaging in production processes that harm the health of the local community, or my customers, or the planet? Am I bending the law to minimize the taxes I pay?

The outdoor-clothing company Patagonia, again, offers a good example of how to get this right. According to Yvon Chouinard’s memoir, Let My People Go Surfing, the company never hired anyone from the wealth-defense industry to look into ways that it could avoid paying taxes. It paid what it had to pay, no more and no less. The company investigated the environmental impact of its production processes, and changed them so as to minimize the damage. And then Chouinard gave away all future profits to environmental activism and nature conservation. There are no university libraries or wings in the Met emblazoned with his name. Nor is there a philanthropic foundation making use of fiscal paradises in Bermuda. Instead, Chouinard and his family paid $17.5 million in taxes on gifts when they transferred their stocks to the non-profit foundation.¹⁸

The second rule for philanthropists in the real world is: support structural change. What this means, practically speaking, will differ from country to country, but here are some things it might encompass: Ensuring that everyone who wants to vote can vote. Supporting organizations and political parties that fight for the basic principles of liberal democracies, such as a free press that does not spread lies and propaganda. Supporting unions and raising awareness among workers of what difference unions can make to their wages and working conditions. Funding organizations that fight for tax justice and supporting organizations that uncover major economic injustices, such as the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who published the Panama Papers.

There is no point in simply relieving the symptoms while doing nothing to address the root cause of a problem. And this is a very difficult point for many philanthropists to accept, because they are often themselves profiting from the social structures that stand in the way of a just world. The fortunes of many philanthropists exist thanks to those unjust structures. This is what we saw in Chapter 4: the economic elite speak about improving the world, but are only willing to do so on their own terms, which typically means applying inadequate market-based solutions to meeting the needs of the poor and vulnerable.

The third thing that philanthropists should do is to put the money where it’s actually needed, rather than spend it on vanity projects. Most of the money they sit on is not morally theirs. So it is not their call to funnel it into non-urgent projects, such as already-rich universities or arts collections. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made this choice. Its founders are devoting their fortune to basic health needs in the poorest countries. The contrast with the space race between Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson couldn’t be greater.

This doesn’t mean that we cannot give any money to university funds or to arts collections. We can, but only the money that we can genuinely regard as morally ours. And that is only a fraction of what most very wealthy people have.

When it comes to the question of what small donors should do, the answer is much easier. These people can do good, and don’t have disproportionate individual power to worry about. They can generate power, however, by joining with others. By acting together, people who cannot donate large sums on their own can do great things—such as countering the malign influence of abusive states and corporations. Amnesty International is a good example of a members-led organization in which none of the donors has a disproportionate say. Yet acting together, their investigations can put governments and companies under pressure to respect the human rights of all people.

Small-scale philanthropy matters. A fair economic system would not generate billionaire philanthropists at all; in a fair system, there would be no need for large-scale foundations. There would, however, remain a need for citizens to join forces to provide a counterbalance for the power of the state (and others with a disproportionate amount of power). And the world would definitely be much more pleasant if citizens who could afford to do so continued joining forces to support those activities that enrich us all culturally, socially, and intellectually—community activities, the arts and sciences, festivities and celebrations to honor those who have gone beyond the call of duty. All these nice things are still possible in a world without extremely rich people.

Philanthropy, then, is not the answer to the problems with extreme wealth. It doesn’t get rid of the need to limit wealth to a level where it can’t do any harm, a level at which rich people can plausibly claim that they deserve the money. We should still be talking about capping wealth at ten million pounds, dollars, or euros.

But what responsibilities does limitarianism imply for those who have less than ten million? Don’t the arguments we’ve encountered in this chapter apply to them, too? In fact, most of the arguments we’ve looked at apply to any well-off person—anyone who would still lead a very good life if they were to give some of their wealth away. We all have to consider how much is enough for us. And this is where the ethical threshold comes into play.

Limitarianism holds that any affluent person should allocate wealth that they do not need for their own quality of life in a way that meets unmet needs, addresses collective-action problems, and tackles the structural injustices in a society. We know from the research on the riches line, as well as from research on the declining value of money, that there is no point in hoarding more and more. The answer to the question of how much we each need will necessarily be personal and context specific. For example, if we have family members who are vulnerable or have a low standard of living, we might want to provide for them, too. If we are living in a country that doesn’t have a robust pension system, we might have to put something aside for our old age. But as a rule of thumb for anyone living in a developed economy with a reasonable healthcare, pension, and housing system, the limit of one million pounds, dollars, or euros per person seems a good starting point.

This idea is already guiding the philanthropic thinking of some super-rich people as they decide what to keep and what to give away. It is central, for example, to the mission of a British organization called the Good Ancestor Movement. This is the UK’s first firm advising wealthy individuals and foundations about radical wealth distribution. Their work starts with the question: what does it mean for us to be good ancestors? How do we want to be remembered when we are no longer alive? I spoke with Jake Hayman, the organization’s co-founder, and asked him what role the riches line plays in their work. Hayman told me that it differs from person to person; they are led by the values of their clients: what those values say about the process in which they acquired their wealth; what they say about how much money a person should keep; and what they say about how that person should go about giving the excess away. But what, then, I asked him, if people set their threshold extremely high? What if they want to hold on to, say, £100 million? On this point, Jake was clear: the organization does not work with clients who want to hold on to more than £25 million.¹⁹

What about those of us who don’t have millions in the bank—don’t we need to do something too? I was asked this question by an elderly man after I had given a talk one evening to a group of people in a local community college in Eindhoven, in the south of the Netherlands. The man presented me with the following thoughts. He started by saying that he could easily agree with all of these arguments for limiting wealth. But wasn’t this argument also dangerous, since it gave an excuse for those of us who were well-off to do nothing? After all, we weren’t multimillionaires, most of us were not even millionaires, so we could point a finger at very rich people. But we’d profited a lot—for example, from the steep rise in housing prices. A house bought in the 1970s, for instance, would have increased by a few hundred thousand euros in value. We weren’t super-rich, but we did have more than we needed. Shouldn’t we also contribute by making donations to the worse-off?

That is a very good question. Luckily, the answer isn’t difficult. Limitarianism tells us about the duties of those above the riches line, and why they have those duties. It doesn’t tell us about the duties of those below the riches line. But, of course, many of the non-rich also have a moral obligation to give away any excess money they may have. Given the appeal made to us by those who suffer, and given the fact that our financial situation is to a significant extent undeserved, we should all try to contribute to alleviating the suffering of others, to the extent that our resources allow.

How far should we go? One way of answering this would be that we should seek to maximize the total well-being of all human beings, no matter where they live. This is the utilitarian approach, and this principle is also often extended to other sentient beings. Given the declining marginal value (or “utility”) of money, the less unequal a distribution is, the higher the total well-being. At the level of what we can do individually, utilitarianism would imply that we should give away our money as long as giving away another pound, dollar, or euro would make someone else better off to a greater extent than it would make us worse off. In other words, as long as the cost to yourself of giving another pound/dollar/euro is less than the good you do with it, you should keep on giving.²⁰

This is a very clear position. But it is also rather extreme. There are very few philosophers who endorse it, and even fewer who live up to it in practice. One reason to reject this version of utilitarianism is that it would turn us into utility robots—no longer complete human beings with fears, desires, individual attributes, and ideas of what we might want to do with our lives, but rather creatures whose choices are driven solely by the overall well-being of society. Another problem is that this form of utilitarianism is overdemanding: it is simply too much for us to carry all the misery of the world on our shoulders.²¹

There are a range of possible answers to the question: how much should I give? The organization Giving What We Can has a helpful website outlining the different options.²² The two extremes are easy to describe. On the one hand, you could give nothing at all. There are circumstances in which this can be justified—for example, if you are poor yourself, or a student on a shoestring, or if you are having to spend all the money you can spare on caring for a disabled child. The other extreme would be to give away all that you have, thereby neglecting your own needs. Or, one might say, neglecting the needs of those to whom you have what philosophers call “special obligations”—obligations that arise from your relationship with them. Giving should not lead to self-neglect or self-harm, and shouldn’t lead to the neglect or harm of those to whom we have special obligations: our parents, partners, children, and so on. But in between those two extremes there are many other options. We could, for example, donate just 2 to 6 percent of our income, as many donors do.

Giving What We Can advocates a pledge to give away 10 percent of our income. The 10 percent pledge has some clear advantages—it is low enough to be accessible yet high enough to be meaningful; it is more than what people tend to give; and it is not overly demanding and thereby off-putting. The co-founders of the organization have further clarified that they believe this to be a moral principle that should apply to those in the top half of the income distribution. That is an important qualification.

The costs of giving are much smaller, and the benefits of donating to others much larger, than we tend to think. These benefits are various. To the donor, it is likely that they will feel a warm glow, happy about what they did. But if they spend their money wisely, and choose a charity that can be effective in reaching its goals, their donations can save lives, reduce poverty, or support political activism that will help us reach a fairer world.²³

Is this 10 percent principle morally adequate? One striking feature is that it is not progressive: it doesn’t ask the rich and the super-rich to contribute a larger share than the middle classes. Wouldn’t it be better to ask those in the middle of the income distribution to contribute 5 percent, and the highest-earning 20 percent? After all, in the past they would have paid 70 to 80 percent marginal income tax, and this has now dropped to below 50 percent in many countries. So history has shown us that they can afford it.

One limitation of this alternative scheme is the loss of simplicity. The 10 percent rule is extremely straightforward, and that makes it powerful. But the 10 percent rule also focuses on income, not on wealth, which is where the surplus lies. For wealth holders, the 10 percent rule is not enough. There is no way around it: wealth holders should use a riches line, and decide on a personal limit. This ethical limit could then be combined with the 10 percent principle or a progressive donation schedule below the riches line.

The limitarian ethos, in the end, is this: we should not want to hold on to more money than we need to lead a secure and good life, and beyond that we should heed the moral call to share what we have with the least fortunate. Many people living in the Global North, as well as the well-off in the Global South, can live very good lives with less, sometimes much less, than we currently have. And the rich might even see their lives improve.

9 The Rich Will Benefit, Too

A world that accepted that the sky is not the limit—that there is only so much any one person should have—would be a world transformed. Democratic values would be restored and a fair economic settlement would be achieved; people would receive what they actually deserve for their work. We would no longer endure the disastrous impact of inequality on people’s social lives and their mental and physical health. Massive funds would be freed up, allowing us to combat poverty, halt global warming, and shore up the hospitals, schools, and libraries that have been sorely neglected by fifty years of neoliberal governance.

But how would it affect the super-rich? Obviously, they would end up with less material wealth compared to what they have now. And that means fewer privileges and less of the power that comes with it. Thus far, I’ve argued that this would represent a huge moral gain. Many philosophical traditions believe that acting morally is what makes us human, and thus you could even argue that the rich and super-rich would benefit in terms of regained humanity. But might they perhaps also have something to gain, beyond becoming more fully human?

I believe that, as well as becoming better people, the super-rich do have something very important to win from the shift to a limitarian world. In fact, I believe that it is in their own best interests. In other words, there are also self-serving reasons why the super-rich should endorse limitarianism. How could that be? While it might seem implausible at first sight, digging a bit deeper reveals three main reasons why limitarianism is, on balance, better for the super-rich too.

*

In January 2020, a letter was sent to the participants at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. It was signed by 121 millionaires and billionaires. They argued that there are two kinds of wealthy people, “those who prefer taxes and those who prefer pitchforks.” They warned that escalating economic inequality would have negative consequences. It would increase tensions between different groups in society. It would lessen social trust and spread a sense of unfairness, which would diminish social cohesion. And it would make the global community unable to properly address the climate crisis. The letter signatories called on their fellow millionaires and billionaires to acknowledge that the solution would be higher taxation.¹

These super-rich signatories drew on a range of arguments in their call for changes to the system. Yet most central was their argument that inequality was now getting so out of hand, if nothing happened, the super-rich could expect increased political instability, and possibly an uprising before too long.

Since then, the Patriotic Millionaires have continued writing open letters to those attending Davos. They keep stressing the societal instability caused by inequality. In January 2023, they asked: “Extremes are unsustainable, often dangerous, and rarely tolerated for long. So why, in this age of multiple crises, do you continue to tolerate extreme wealth?”²

Other multimillionaires have likewise been stressing the looming threat. In 2014, American venture capitalist Nick Hanauer (whose fortune is estimated to be around half a billion dollars) published an article with the unambiguous title “The Pitchforks Are Coming … for Us Plutocrats.” Hanauer called upon his fellow “zillionaires” to open their eyes to the dangers of rising inequality. Hanauer’s argument was deliberately not based on moral grounds, but appealed purely to the self-interest of the rich themselves. He argued that the super-rich have two important self-serving reasons to endorse strategies that reduce inequality. First:

If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.

The other reason why Hanauer thinks the super-rich should fight inequality is economic growth: if we take measures to reduce inequality, the total pie will grow and everyone will be better off. Hanauer dismisses trickle-down economics and argues for strengthening the middle classes by raising their wages. The rich will become richer if the middle classes can prosper. How can businesses prosper when workers have no money to spend on buying flowers or new clothes, or going out for dinner? A strong middle class that earns decent wages would be in the interest of the rich, since the demand for their goods would go up, and the rich could make more profits.³

The concern that if inequality becomes too great, violence and political instability will follow, is an old one. In The Laws, Plato argues that the property of those who have the most should be limited to, at most, four times that of those who have the least, in order to maintain stability in political communities.⁴ Four times! Imagine where that upper limit would lie. In fact, that ratio would be impossibly small today, since at present in all countries at least 10 percent of the population have virtually nothing—not even enough in savings to replace a broken washing machine or to cover three months of income loss. If we implemented Plato’s recommended standards for wealth differences today, we would achieve a massive reduction in inequality. It would actually imply a much more radical distribution of wealth than most citizens currently support.

With Plato’s argument in mind, the big question to ask is: how large can economic inequality become before it triggers political upheaval? The contemporary political landscape gives us ample cause for concern. The destabilizing consequences of rising wealth inequality are not just a concern for very unequal countries such as the US, Brazil, or South Africa, although the blows those democracies have received in recent years are very good reason to be extremely worried. Even in countries with a smaller and less wealthy class of super-rich, and a still better (though also weakening) welfare state, commentators warn of growing unrest among those who are losing out. The Dutch journalist and entrepreneur Sander Schimmelpennick, himself of wealthy descent, has similarly raised the “threat of the pitchforks” as one of the reasons to do something about growing inequality in the Netherlands. He also believes there are other reasons, in particular the decline of equal opportunities, but the threat of a revolt by the less well-off stands out among them. We should indeed be concerned by the effects that the rise in insecurity, precariousness, and economic inequality will have on right-wing populist parties that will channel this resentment into various forms of violence—xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and hatred of sexual minorities, especially transgender people.⁵

But support for right-wing populist parties is not the only way that voters have shown their increasing dissatisfaction. In some countries, we are also seeing a rise of groups at the exact opposite end of the political spectrum, such as the Green parties. So far, they are proving to be a much weaker threat to the super-rich. Given their respect for the rule of law, they have only legal means at their disposal—and with the limited political power that they wield, their influence has been modest. And, much more critically, as some would argue, a number of the leaders of those progressive parties have either already been indoctrinated by neoliberal thinking, or become captive to it as soon as they enter a coalition with neoliberal parties.

There are, of course, many centrist voters who are also losing out from the recent rise of the super-rich, if you consider what lives those voters could lead in the best available alternative world. Why, then, have they not protested more vocally? My hunch is that some voters do not believe that political action (whether through voting or organizing) will make a difference, while many more are simply unaware of how large the inequalities are, and how self-serving the capitalist class has been in influencing the rules of the game. Not enough people know what CEOs earn, or the size of inheritances that will be passed down over the next decades to lucky heirs, while their own children will get next to nothing. And because they want to protect that small sum they saved to pass on to their loved ones, they oppose inheritance tax, without understanding that it would be a great equalizer, allowing us all to start out on a playing field that has been genuinely leveled.

It might also have to do with how dominant neoliberal ideas have become. Most people currently alive have grown up in a predominantly neoliberal political and economic environment. And, just as fish can’t see the water in which they swim, it is difficult for us to recognize neoliberal ideas and values if we have never known anything else. Thanks to the spread of neoliberal ideology, people in many countries no longer regard themselves as citizens who have a civic duty in jointly governing the political community, but rather see themselves as consumers, as people with professional identities, and as private individuals with families and friends. Too many of us have become depoliticized. Too many of us have no experience of activism and organizing, and hence do not know what enormous potential there is in acting together to fight for justice or to defend a common interest.

Yet if there is, as many suspect, a fuse waiting to be lit, it might only need a spark. We saw this during the Arab Spring. In January 2011, the Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire when he could no longer stand his repeated humiliation and harassment by a municipal officer, which had culminated in the confiscation of his wares. His heartbreaking act triggered a series of protests that would ultimately bring down several regimes across the Middle East, in Libya, Egypt, and Yemen. Individual tragedy once again sparked international uprising following the death of George Floyd, an African-American man who was killed by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer, in Minneapolis in 2020. This horrible, racist murder sparked massive protests and saw the Black Lives Matter movement take root in countries all around the world. The movement has turned into such a political force that discussions about a society’s social contract are much more attuned to the question of racial justice. One of the people I interviewed, who advises US-based philanthropists, mentioned that the death of George Floyd and the rise of Black Lives Matter protests also opened the eyes of some philanthropists, who had not given much thought until then to the pronounced racial nature of wealth inequalities. Thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement, these American philanthropists now understand that, as part of addressing such inequality, empowering Black communities is also urgent and necessary.

When there is a slumbering discontent with the way things are, an incident can very quickly escalate into protests, riots, and even regime change. The only way to avoid this kind of dramatic upheaval is to revise the social contract to ensure that everyone benefits fairly.

Beyond the looming threat of an uprising against the wealthy, there are other, more constructive personal reasons for the super-rich to part with their wealth. When speaking with Jake Hayman, co-founder of the Good Ancestor Movement, I asked how his multimillionaire clients who had given up their fortunes felt about it. Did any of them regret what they’d done? He didn’t have to think long about his response. “I have never met anyone with an ounce of regret. Everyone I’ve spoken to who has given up extreme wealth has called it a freeing.” When I asked why, he said:

Because money takes up so much of your life, when you’re rich. You have to meet with these people whom you do not want to meet, you have to live with guilt, you’re in a constant position of power over other people, because you could help change their lives and you don’t. So it becomes a choice for you, and it feels wrong. And it is exhausting. And you row with your family over money, but money is not important really, because there is more than you need.

Jake’s assessment resonated with what some of the wealth holders had told me. They felt the excess money was a burden, and a barrier to the ordinary world—a world that they wanted to be part of. Thirty years after having given away his inheritance, Chuck Collins came to this conclusion: “I have no regrets. If anything, I feel liberated. My decision enabled me to live my life more aligned to my values. It opened up a source of energy.”⁶

There are many ways in which having too much money can be a curse in disguise. For Abigail Disney, a fundamental concern was what becoming rich does to a person’s psychological makeup. She spoke to me about the mental burdens of the power a rich person has over other people. “For each homeless person you walk by, you know that you could take them out of that situation,” she said. Moreover, everywhere she goes, she is seen as a potential donor. It is exhausting. Everyone wants her to make donations to their cause. One of the consequences of this, she said, is that, as you acquire more money, you narrow your social circle to people who are more like you—who do not ask you for money. Yet this also changes you as a person. You risk losing touch with the real world.

“For me the problems are also soul-related,” Disney explained. “There is a corrosive quality to the presence of wealth, and especially the presence of deep inequity, that every person faces as a deep challenge to their moral well-being.” She went on to talk about the constant daily choices you have to make as a very rich person, each of which could transform another person’s life. That constant calculus, which other wealth holders that I interviewed also mentioned, changes you, too. It is, Disney said,

itself an exercise that takes something out of me, and wears me out, and leaves me emotionally exhausted—which people do I help, and which people do I not help. And if you do not engage with this calculus, you have no choice but then to take that person on the sidewalk and reduce him to something that is not human, and in doing so you develop a habit in seeing people that need something from you as less than human. It is hard to convey, just how constant the asking is. It is almost impossible to walk into a room and not encounter somebody who wants me to know what they need from me, and wishes I could transform what is creating that need.

As a means of emotional self-defense, the wealth holder will create a barrier between themselves and the people who want something from them.

This reaction, though predictable, isn’t very healthy, mentally speaking. “Once you have constructed your safe room, and the safe people, and the safe environment, you are a star in that room, and you develop a need to be worthy of your stardom, so it feels a little performative,” Disney went on. “It feels like ‘I had better be the person who is worthy of these advantages.’ ” All this has an impact, changing the rich person both psychologically and morally—and Abigail Disney thinks not for the better, especially not for white men for whom codes of gender and race intersect with this mindset in an unhealthy way. As she explains,

There is that risk, when everyone is telling you that you are right all the time, and everything is telling you that you are that great, and you’ve constructed a whole world in which you are the center, you can mistake yourself for the sun that rises and sets. And the rooms you are not in have no light in them because you are the sun. And so when you leave the room, those people cease to exist. There is this kind of godlike quality that you take on that is difficult to fend off.

Disney says you can see clearly how ultra-rich people like Jeff Bezos have changed over time. She also saw it in her father’s life. “I saw him one by one lose his friends [and] … replaced by people who were in some paid capacity.” And ultimately, those men were the only people he trusted.⁷

One particularly acute cause for concern is the psychologically corrosive effect of extreme wealth on the children of the super-rich. Jessie O’Neill has described the dark side of growing up in a very wealthy environment in her 1997 book, The Golden Ghetto. As the granddaughter of a former president of General Motors, O’Neill is herself from the third generation of a wealthy family, and has also worked as a therapist. She coined the term “affluenza” to denote the harmful psychological effects of extreme wealth, especially on children. They are often raised by nannies, which sends the message that they aren’t important enough for their parents to spend time with them. This leads to attachment problems, not least because nannies and au pairs change frequently. In general, the children of the super-rich receive a lot of material things but very little attention. Showering children with material goods prevents them from understanding the value of delayed gratification and means they are never given the opportunity to learn to be patient and tolerate frustration. To make matters worse, because they receive so much money, they are prevented from ever knowing whether they could have “made it” on their own—a worry Abigail Disney also expressed to me, and one that she believes explains why so many women who inherited fortunes end up studying for a PhD. After all, it is not possible to buy a doctorate from a reputable university. If you want to be able to put “Dr.” before your name, you’ll have to earn it with your own sweat and toil. O’Neill also writes at length about how affluenza in a super-rich person often leads to addiction, causing dysfunction in the family, which in turn triggers addiction among their children when they grow up.⁸

Few have portrayed the emptiness of the world of super-rich kids as vividly as American photographer Lauren Greenfield. She had been interviewing and photographing the super-rich in Los Angeles for twenty-five years, resulting in the impressive photo book Generation Wealth, published in 2017 at the same time as a museum exhibition and a documentary film. In addition to exposing appallingly wasteful luxury spending, the interviews and photos also show mostly unhappy children. The extravagance around them does not bring them any joy: they are habituated to it. When you grow up in luxury, especially if you are living in the bubble of other very rich people, then an extravagant consumption pattern becomes normalized. One of Greenfield’s respondents, Wendy, was surrounded by opulence growing up, and recounted how difficult it was for her when she turned eighteen and was told by her father that, from that day onward, she would have to pay her own bills. Wendy said that it was very hard, having grown up with so much, to then have it all taken away. From then on, she couldn’t enjoy anything, given what she had taken for granted throughout her childhood. Even eating out at an expensive restaurant didn’t seem like a treat, because in her youth this had just been a normal thing to do.⁹

These mechanisms of psychological adaptation are borne out in the scientific work of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He discovered that rich people are not happier than everyone else. For those with little money, acquiring greater material wealth leads to greater happiness, but those who are very rich no longer experience this. On the contrary: because time is the ultimate scarce resource for us all, it becomes extremely expensive for very rich people who are still focused on making money to have any quality time with others—to spend an afternoon playing games with their children or going to a family gathering. In that time frame, they could otherwise be earning a lot of money. So, after a while, they lose their sensitivity to the experience of happiness in slow pursuits—like taking a walk in the woods, or having a cup of tea while chatting with a parent or friend. Busy, rich people become desensitized to the value of idleness and activities that do not revolve around material goods and status.¹⁰

If, as the evidence seems to suggest, growing up in the wealthy classes is not something that guarantees a balanced, happy childhood, then this gives us another reason to oppose extreme wealth. And in fact, more specifically, to limit it. Because the psychological mechanism underlying the unhappiness of the very rich is their continuous quest to grow their fortunes. That, as a class, they are driven to keep accumulating more and more, is beyond doubt, backed up by material from wide-ranging sources—from autobiographical accounts by those born to wealth, through qualitative sociological research on multimillionaires, to the evidence afforded by the massive growth in the wealth-defense industry.

In The Psychology of Money, his bestselling book from 2020, Morgan Housel argues that never having enough is a dangerous mindset. He describes how Rajat Gupta and Bernie Madoff, both highly successful and holders of more than $100 million, were eventually lured into committing crimes—simply because they had no sense of having enough. The problem, Housel explains, is that the goalposts keep moving. We are motivated by social comparison—we always look upward and compare ourselves with those who have much more. We’ve seen this mechanism at work in CEO compensation. It is also at work in what heirs of fortunes are taught: let the money “work” so that it can grow. Housel advises his readers to develop the skill of stopping the goalposts from moving. Since there will always be someone richer (literally, for all but one single person), trying to overtake the person who is above you in the wealth line is a battle that can never be won. “The only way to win is to not fight to begin with—to accept that you might have enough, even if it’s less than those around you.”¹¹

A cynic might object that if the rich want to destroy their own souls by hoarding money, we should not feel sorry for them, as they are choosing to live that way. People are free to make themselves as unhappy as they like. But that doesn’t take away our societal responsibility toward their children. After all, if from the perspective of mental well-being the children of very rich parents are just as disadvantaged as poor children, why would we think that we have a moral duty to care for the poor kids, but not for the super-rich ones? The cynic might then ask us to focus only on the adults: is the moral and psychological distress of the very rich really something we really need to worry about? If the rich feel that their lives are taking a turn for the worse, they can afford to get professional aid from therapists. It’s a problem for the individual, which only they need address.

I think this is too easy a response. I don’t see why we should care less about the well-being of the super-rich than the well-being of any other social class, simply because the super-rich have much more money and power. They are just as vulnerable, psychologically, as the rest of us, and if we care about the vulnerability of other people in general, then we should also care about how excessive wealth can destroy the lives of the super-rich. Most moral theories endorse the claim that societies should be organized to protect the autonomy of all individuals. Yet, as philosopher Danielle Zwarthoed points out, psychological mechanisms such as the ones just described undermine the moral autonomy of those who have excess wealth. A society that wants to enable, nurture and protect the autonomy of all should therefore limit how wealthy we can become.¹²

The number of very wealthy people who talk about how easy it was for them or their family members to fall into drug abuse, makes it clear that, from a psychological point of view, they are deserving of our empathy as much as anyone else (politically, I agree, it is another matter; it should be clear by now that I have zero sympathy for their pivotal role in the social and economic changes over the last half century). Yet the theme of addiction rears its head twice. On the one hand, addiction is widespread among the super-rich, which is a clear indication of a lack of well-being. On the other hand, wealth accumulation itself is addictive. In The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel doesn’t use the term “addiction,” but in essence identifies it as such. As he puts it, “ ‘Enough’ is realising that the opposite—an insatiable appetite for more—will push you to the point of regret.”¹³

Others have embraced the language of addiction when describing the psychological effects of accumulating wealth. In 2014, Sam Polk, who had quit his job as a Wall Street trader three years earlier, wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times that began:

In my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million—and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was addicted.

Polk, who had previously abused alcohol and drugs, diagnoses the business culture on Wall Street as a form of “wealth addiction.” Moreover, the belief of Wall Street traders that they truly deserve those enormous salaries and bonuses are, he argues, simply the rationalizations of addicts.¹⁴

But there is still another compelling reason to care about the super-rich, which was well put by Abigail Disney when we spoke: “I think it is important to pay attention to the personal part. Because the very wealthy people are also public people. And as the inner corrosion occurs, they take that faulty and damaged sense into the public arena, and use this moral compass that has been really corroded and changed by who they are, to make decisions to how the world should be.” She considered Elon Musk to be a perfect example of this problem, concluding, “Someone shaped by having too much money is precisely the last person you want in a position of power.” Moreover, given that large sections of society still are in awe of multimillionaires, they almost automatically become role models for young people. The creation of a parallel online world via social media—a fake reality, in effect—only makes things worse. The 99 percent shouldn’t want psychologically damaged super-rich people to be role models for their children (or for themselves, for that matter).

We should be alive to the danger that the psychological mechanisms that are negatively affecting the rich may end up affecting us, too. A range of studies have shown that lower-class and less affluent people tend to be more empathic and compassionate than rich people. Empathy is crucial for a well-functioning society—indeed, even the quality of the state’s bureaucracy and of the judiciary can be said to depend on its office holders having sufficient empathic skills. Those who lack empathy are more likely to bully or harass others in the workplace or in social interactions, poisoning the environment around them. In short, the negative psychological effects of extreme wealth are not just affecting the super-rich themselves. They hurt all of us, too.¹⁵

A final reason for arguing that the rich would be better off in a limitarian world relates to the underlying insecurity that characterizes affluent societies today. One striking finding from sociologist Rachel Sherman’s research into the lives of very wealthy New Yorkers is that, despite having multiple millions in assets, these wealth holders still express the view that they must hold on to that money because it is their insurance policy to ensure security, for themselves and for their families. If bad luck strikes, they might need it. Some of these families have only one earner, and if that person were to lose their job and a family member were subsequently to become ill, they would not have health insurance to get them the treatment they needed. There is certainly some truth to this: household wealth can indeed function as a private insurance mechanism in the face of divorce, disability, or unemployment, as research has shown.¹⁶ The research team from London who organized focus groups on extreme wealth likewise found that vast wealth accumulation was seen as justifiable because of its role as a private safety net. The fact that many people accept this logic might help explain the paradox that, on the one hand, inequality has increased while, on the other, popular concern about levels of inequality has not. A large proportion of the population might well accept wealth hoarding because they agree that the rich and super-rich need this money as a strategy for dealing with strokes of bad luck in the future.¹⁷

What should we make of this? Perhaps for some wealth holders invoking the need for security is simply an excuse. Yet it is not implausible that some of them genuinely experience fear. Still, this is a chimera. Real security requires a society with a protected minimum living standard for all. Hoarding money might give us a safety net in a world of isolated individuals, the atomized beings that neoliberalism wants us to believe that we are. But we are strongly interdependent. In the world in which we live, the best way to gain security is to pool risks. This is, simply, the best way forward, both ethically and economically speaking. Rather than stockpiling cash in case they find themselves in the (highly improbable) scenario of suddenly being without any income at the exact moment that one of their children becomes terribly ill and needs very expensive treatment, a super-rich person would do better to advocate for high-quality healthcare for all, independent of employment status. Interestingly, this pretty much sums up the choice Chuck Collins made. When Collins decided to give away his inheritance at the tender age of twenty-six, his father (heir to the Oscar Mayer meat-processing company) tried to talk him out of it with the argument that he might become sick or disabled. To which Collins responded that this was the situation millions of his compatriots were living in, and he would deal with the problem if it arose, just like everyone else did.¹⁸

Even though it does make sense to accumulate some degree of family wealth as a buffer for hard times, given the stripped-back welfare state in many countries today, there are still clear limits to how much we should accumulate for that purpose. Beyond that point, it’s hard to see what benefit the additional cash could possibly bring.

What is the point of accumulating money endlessly if it doesn’t serve the good life? If it doesn’t make you happy or fulfilled? As the philosopher Edward Skidelsky and his father the economist Robert Skidelsky have rightly pointed out, this is a question we have ceased to ask under capitalism—but it was an important question in earlier eras. Thinkers from Aristotle to Aquinas have argued that a good life is one that acknowledges clear limits; one that admits the satiability of our wants and needs. There have been plenty of proto-limitarian thinkers throughout the history of philosophy who have considered it natural for there to be limits on the material goods we can accrue.¹⁹

We have erased these insights from our collective memory, because they go against our modern self-perception: today, we like to believe that we are the authors of our own destiny and should be held responsible for how much—or how little—we can win for ourselves. But this is foolish. It’s not just that luck plays a major role in our lives, or that we owe our ability to make money in the first place to our fellow humans, both past and present. It’s that our very character and wants are to a large extent shaped by the society we live in. Today’s society uses all manner of neoliberal capitalist tricks to turn us into self-centered consumers with limitless desires; creatures whose sole goal is to fulfill those desires; who can live happily while others around us languish in misery. But it doesn’t have to be like this. There are much better lives available to all of us, including the rich and super-rich, if we can liberate ourselves and our imaginations from the neoliberal capitalist spell.

10 The Road Ahead

We’ve arrived at a point where the arguments against extreme wealth—and for limitarianism—are piling up, one on top of the other. There are many different reasons why you might endorse a limitarian worldview. There is the principled objection against inequality. Or there’s the fact that so much excess wealth is tainted. Society’s richest have appropriated an unfairly large part of the economic gains of the past century, and they need to redistribute that surplus. Or you might support limitarianism because it would do a huge amount to address existing power imbalances and protect political equality—to halt the erosion of democracy, and prevent the domination of politics by the wealthy few. Or it might be the fact that limitarianism can take us a long way toward saving our planet, given that the lifestyles, business strategies, tax avoidance or evasion, and lobbying of the super-rich have led to civilization-threatening ecological harm. A world on fire needs a lot of money to extinguish the flames, and the super-rich are holding on to money they don’t need. It makes much more sense to take the money for dousing the fire from the super-rich than from the middle classes, let alone the poor. The same point also holds for meeting other needs beyond protecting the livability of the planet, such as fighting poverty and other forms of deprivation. Collectively acknowledging that at some point enough is enough would also make the rich themselves better off. Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally: no one can claim that they deserve to be a millionaire.

In short, a limitarian society would be a better society. And, even if the idea of imposing a limit on wealth is not politically feasible in the short run, drastically reducing economic inequalities from the top down would make the world a much better place.

To what extent are ordinary people aware of today’s immense economic inequality? Do they know that this inequality is not “natural,” by any means? Do they know that the dominant classes have quietly established a set of global economic rules that favor their own interests, that they have influenced national decisions on taxes and spending, and that, while they have thrown a few breadcrumbs to the poor and vulnerable, they have largely sought to improve their own financial position?

I’d venture that many people have no idea how deep the problem goes. Such ignorance applies to everyone—the rich, the poor, and the middle classes. As we saw at the beginning of this book, many studies have found that when people are asked where they situate themselves in the income distribution, they routinely get it wrong. The poor tend to think they are richer than they are in reality. The rich tend to think they are less affluent than they are. Other studies have asked people direct questions about what they think the income and wealth distribution looks like, and here, too, research shows that people have only limited knowledge of the actual distribution of income and wealth. Studies tend to find a consensus around the idea of reducing income inequality through redistribution, although in a few countries those who would have less money after such redistribution did not favor it.¹

One striking study was published in 2011 by Michael Norton from Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely from Duke University. They wanted to find out what Americans believed about the distribution of wealth in their country, and what they would like the distribution to be. The study divided the population into quintiles—groups that each represented one-fifth of the population. In the first part of the study, respondents could choose between three ways of distributing wealth. The perfectly equal distribution gave each of the five groups exactly 20 percent of all wealth. A somewhat less equal distribution gave each of the quintiles a different share of the total wealth. They received, respectively, 36 percent, 21 percent, 18 percent, 15 percent, and 11 percent of all wealth. The last option was the actual wealth distribution in America in 2005, with the five groups holding 84 percent, 11 percent, 4 percent, and virtually nothing for the last two groups. A whopping 92 percent of respondents choose the second option.

Americans clearly do not want the very unequal distribution of wealth that they currently have. So why, then, do they not vote for more redistribution? There are many possible explanations. One is that they believe in the existence of social mobility—in the American Dream—despite the evidence showing that social mobility is not just very limited but also declining. Another possible explanation was offered in the second part of the study, which asked the same participants to venture what they thought the actual distribution of wealth was, as well as to state what they would ideally want that distribution to be. The participants dramatically underestimated how unequal the distribution of wealth in their country was. The top 20 percent of the population at the time of the study had 84.4 percent of wealth, but respondents thought it was 58 percent. They wanted it to be even smaller, namely 31 percent. The bottom 20 percent had almost no wealth (0.1 percent, to be precise), yet participants in the study thought they had 3 percent, and would want them to have about 11 percent.²

Studies from other countries have confirmed the same pattern: people drastically underestimate wealth inequality. And they want the distribution of wealth to be even less unequal than what they think it is. The same holds for wage inequality. Here, too, people think that inequality is smaller than it is in reality, yet they would wish income to be even less unequal. Their underestimations are very large. In an international study, respondents thought that a CEO earned on average 10 times the pay of an unskilled worker, and believed this should be reined back to 4.6 times. However, in reality, in most countries for which the study had data, the ratio of CEO to unskilled worker pay was much larger than 10, with CEOs earning many times more than what their unskilled workers earned: 30 times more in the US, 40 times in Australia, and almost 42 times more in South Korea. Interestingly, the ideal pay ratio that people hoped to see implemented didn’t differ across the political spectrum: whether people positioned themselves politically on the left, center, or right, they all thought that the ideal was a much more limited pay gap than what it was at the time of the study.³

Why does this matter? Well, if people perceive or believe that inequalities are high, they might well make stronger demands for redistribution. If, as is the case, they are mistaken in believing that inequalities are smaller than they really are, their demands for redistribution will be more timid. But whatever the size of the inequalities, and whatever the demands, we want people to form views based on facts; whether citizens demand change or not, they ought to have easy access to accurate information.

Perhaps it is against this background that we should understand the reluctance of the rich to talk about money, and especially about exactly how much the very wealthy and super-rich have. That refusal to do so is insidious. Having a more open debate on economic inequalities, one grounded in fact, might strengthen political support for redistribution—and, I expect, for a hard upper limit on how much money any one person can have.

It is not only the rich who do not want to talk about inequalities, however. There are many from the working and middle classes who also resist reducing inequality, and especially dislike talking about a limit on wealth. As I mentioned earlier, no matter where limitarianism has been debated, there have always been people telling me via social media that this would wind up as communism. On several occasions journalists have asked me outright whether limitarianism is communism in disguise. And when journalists or ordinary people ask about communism, they are not thinking of a theoretical and utopian world where a government is no longer necessary because all decisions are taken collectively and with the common good in mind. Instead, they mean USSR-style communism: the despotic central planning of the economy by the government.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the subsequent crumbling of the Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe and the USSR, the dominant view has been that the communist experiment failed. Some citizens had spent years trying to escape these countries, but by that point the majority had decided they had had enough of living in repressive regimes while across the border people were living much better lives. In those planned economies, material living standards were much lower. There was severe political repression that infiltrated all levels of society; you could not be sure that your aunt or friend wasn’t a spy for the state. In several countries, the state made important personal decisions for its citizens, such as who could study and what subject. Technological innovation lagged much behind that of advanced capitalist societies. There were very few who felt that the economic experiment that had taken place in Eastern Europe and the USSR between 1945 and 1990 could be rescued by some minor modifications to its social and economic structures.

We’ve thus ended up in an era in which very few people will defend communism, understood as the central planning of the entire economy. To me, that is not surprising. I reject it too. Thinking that an entire economy can be planned from above, including who needs which consumer goods, who will do what kind of work, where to buy groceries and at what prices, and so on, seems an incredible act of hubris. And it is not difficult to see that, on a national scale, such a massive planning exercise could only be done in a non-democratic system, since many people would prefer to be entrepreneurial.

The claim that limitarianism is essentially communism—defined in this manner—is at once hilarious and deeply sad. It is hilarious because you really don’t need an economics degree to see that there is no need for USSR-style communism if we want to live in a world without extreme wealth concentration. The claim entails a confusion of categories: communism is an economic system with political implications, whereas limitarianism is a moral principle that should, first of all, guide the design of our economic and social institutions, and, secondly, our own personal decision-making. So those who want to play the communism card against limitarianism should, at the very least, ask a question that spells out the relationship between the two: would economic limitarianism lead us to a centrally planned economy? Clearly, there is no reason why this would be the case. We can move in the direction of limitarianism without having to adopt a command economy. Yes, we would have to implement a package of economic measures. But none of these measures would entail the introduction of central planning, or the abolition of markets, private companies, or private property.

But the suggestion that limitarianism is akin to communism is also very sad, perhaps even maddening, since it indicates that, all too often, the opponents of progressive ideas are not really interested in having a genuine discussion about these proposals. Instead, they want to caricature them in a way that they know will put many people off the discussion entirely. They are in effect trolling as part of a rhetorical strategy to attempt to end a serious conversation about whether limitarianism would be a good thing for society, and what it would require in terms of changes to our social and economic institutions.

The current mainstream debate on economic systems has been ruined by dichotomous thinking. The collapse of the Soviet Bloc was seized by defenders of capitalism to declare victory. Capitalism was, to their minds, the only desirable and feasible option that remained. Any subsequent criticism of capitalism has all too often been painted as an implicit defense of communism, or, more recently, some poorly understood notion of “socialism.” This way of framing the different economic systems from which we, as citizens, could choose is extremely simplistic. And given the widespread consensus that communism is not a desirable option, it compels most of us to conclude that capitalism is the only available one. As Margaret Thatcher famously put it, “There is no alternative”—meaning that the only defensible system is capitalism.

Such dichotomous thinking is unhelpful and misleading. So let’s get the basics straight. An economy is a social system that humans use for their provisioning—to deliver goods and services to those who need or want them. A modern, large-scale economy must necessarily have a state run by a government, at the very least to protect the constitution and the legal order, and to provide a set of public goods, such as physical security and infrastructure. There are a range of economic actors that can produce goods or services: the state, individual professionals, profit-seeking entrepreneurs, and non-profit-seeking entrepreneurs and organizations. Property can be held privately, publicly (when the state holds it), or collectively (when a group of people share it). Markets can be regulated on a scale from completely unregulated to very strongly regulated. The same holds for the enforcement of those regulations. These regulations can concern a wide range of aspects, such as the safety and quality of goods for sale, the terms of a legal contract between buyer and seller, and the setting of minimum and maximum prices. Regulation also means that some goods and services are rendered illegal and that some companies are deemed too large to allow the market to function properly so that the consumers’ interests are properly protected.

All of these things currently exist in our economies. We call them “capitalist systems” but in reality any capitalist system operating today still has various elements of the mixed economy that was the dominant model in the Global North between 1945 and the 1970s. We have property held by the government and cooperatives, regulation of various sorts, goods still being delivered by the state, or whose production is paid for by the state, and regulation on markets.

But while Western economies still are mixed economies, the composition of the mix has changed enormously. Since the 1970s, a larger part of the provisioning of goods has shifted from the public to the private sector, and a lot of public property has been transferred to the private sector, too; regulation of the private markets has weakened; while regulation and bureaucratic control of the public and semi-public sector (such as schools, welfare, and healthcare systems) has intensified. Some well-known examples of this process include the privatization of the railways in many countries; the privatization of the postal and telecom services and the sale of state-owned banks; and the sale of social housing (previously owned by local governments or by non-profit cooperatives) to private owners.⁴

Deregulation has shifted the economy’s center of gravity toward private owners and in particular the owners of capital (wealth or businesses). Wealth holders have profited enormously from the deregulation of the financial sector, which has enabled them to accumulate more and more. Even so, as the massive bailout of financial institutions after the 2008 financial crisis showed, when they fail, the government is there to pick them up. In large part, this has been a case of socializing the risks and privatizing the rewards.

Deregulation has, meanwhile, been decidedly disadvantageous for most workers whose jobs were “reinvented” after their companies were restructured, whether by private equity firms or by internal processes focusing on cost-cutting and efficiency. Workers who previously had decent jobs with financial security and social protections saw them recrafted into “flexible” jobs—where the downsides of flexibility fell on the workers, and the employers or shareholders reaped the benefits. The clearest example of this is the emergence and growth of the platform economy, whereby workers are required to be available to deliver food or do other work if and when they are called upon by consumers via the platform. This is heralded as allowing people to work as and when they want, but would more accurately be termed a contemporary form of day labor. It might be a good way for a young person to earn some extra cash while they are studying and living with their parents, but it does not provide the basis for an adult to raise a family in decent living conditions. In the meantime, the owners of these new platforms, as well as the owners of the companies with employees-turned-flex-workers, have become multimillionaires and billionaires.

The changing nature of our mixed economies has led to a decrease in public wealth in comparison with privately held wealth, and a shift of power from the state to the private sector. It has also generated a sharp increase in inequality, through the massive enrichment of the wealthy, and, in many countries, an increase in poverty. Still, it is important to remember that governments and collectives all continue to own property too. That is the case today and has always been the case, and in that sense we will always be somewhere on a continuum with many different types of mixed economy. Take the national parks, so beloved by Americans and Canadians. They belong to the federal and local governments and visits are run as a public service. Most citizens would be horrified at the thought of selling them to the highest bidder. Across the world, there are also many collectives of individuals, in the form of non-profit organizations, who buy up and restore land, in order to increase biodiversity and protect it from being destroyed. They are creating a public good, by restoring biodiversity for all and by opening some of these natural spaces for visitors, without relying on the government or profit-seeking individuals.

Governments also continue to intervene in the economy in many different ways. They fund public goods such as schools, and (in most countries) higher education and research institutes, too. Many countries have a minimum wage, which is nothing more than a minimum price for one hour of labor. In the winter of 2022, when the Russian war in Ukraine jeopardized gas and oil supplies to the rest of Europe, European countries set a maximum price for gas and electricity.

I doubt that any economy operating today is a form of pure capitalism. Companies and citizens alike are supported by subsidies, benefits, regulations, and so forth. The question we should be asking is not whether we should have capitalism or socialism. It is, rather, which specific mix of markets, regulation, distribution, government ownership, private ownership, and collective ownership should we have?

There are very few questions as important as the question of which economic system we need for the future. Yet I cannot answer that question using the arguments for limitarianism alone. Making the decision to move toward a new economic system means choosing a new set of rules and institutions. It is essentially a political decision. Choosing these rules and institutions can only be done once we have determined what our collective wants and needs will be. This raises questions that go beyond the limitarian view, and include, for example, questions about the future of work and the future of the financial sector. The limitarian project contributes one clear demand to our quest for a new economic system: we must design an economy that keeps inequality within bounds, and that uses the excess money of the rich to meet urgent needs and address collective-action problems. Let us not forget, either, that the limitarian project is a moral one with a personal ethical component. Yes, we need a different economic system, and structural changes should take precedence. But in the meantime, as human beings who are capable of acting morally, we should not be hoarding or wasting resources that could make a real difference to the lives of vulnerable people and to the world.

This ethical dimension is important, because the precise form that an economy takes changes over time and according to society’s priorities. We don’t just need institutional design and fiscal choices; we also need to develop a set of public values that are culturally embedded, where material gain is not the leading incentive—where people may also choose to work hard because of personal commitment, challenges they have set themselves, or for intrinsic pleasure, esteem, and honor. That is perhaps the biggest task that we need to undertake: we must rebalance our view of society, and our view of ourselves as human beings. If we can make that shift in perspective, limitarianism becomes very natural. So while this change in how we view ourselves might seem fuzzy and remote from concerns about money and wealth, it is perhaps the most profound first step toward limitarianism.

It is a cliché, but a true one nonetheless: we need each other—in order to survive, and in order to thrive. Moreover, we are all vulnerable, in the best case only for periods at the beginning and at the end of our lives and when we are sick or injured, but some of us are less lucky and need support throughout our time on Earth. It is fodder for psychologists why so many people have such a great urge to believe that they are strong, capable of life on their own. We are not. None of us can survive very long without other human beings.

Accepting this fundamental vulnerability would have drastic consequences for how we organize society. Care and community-building would become central to our collective decision-making. That would mean making reasoned, balanced decisions about when it is appropriate to prioritize our own commitments, and when we must prioritize caring for others. Does this sound like the world Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are giving us? I don’t think so.⁵

Over the last few years, there have been many proposals for a more considerate, values-based economic system. Some have argued that we should stick to capitalism but implement a universal basic income. Others have proposed what they call a “property-owning democracy,” in which the distribution of the ownership of the means of production would be widely shared. Some believe that democratizing the workplace is essential if we want to make our economies more humane. Still others have argued that it is more important to correct the inequalities created by the market by revitalizing the welfare state, such that an essential range of goods and services is not provided via the market but by the government. Some proposals focus directly on the value created by firms, and the role that governments (should) play in the regulation of firms and corporations. Austrian economist Christian Felber has proposed “the economy of the common good,” which rejects the notion that satisfying people’s cravings and enabling the accumulation of material comforts are the goals of the economy, and posits instead that we should be concerned with fulfilling needs, for both present and future generations, and taking ecological considerations into account.⁶

Still other proposals for a new economic system argue that we should start by replacing our obsession with GDP growth with an ambition for sustainable prosperity, sometimes known as “degrowth.” One of the most well known is the “doughnut economy” proposed by English economist Kate Raworth, whereby a ring doughnut is a metaphor for the space between the “social foundation”—where all basic human needs are met—and the “ecological ceiling,” where our activities must stay within planetary boundaries. Raworth argues that moving to a doughnut economy would require us to reduce inequality and pay more attention to the non-market economy (which puts household production and care center stage). Another proposal in this area is the “well-being economy,” which is a group of proposals from different thinkers and policy makers, brought together by the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. A well-being economy is an economic system in which current and future human well-being (rather than GDP) is the cornerstone of government policy. Wales, Scotland, and New Zealand have signed up to the well-being economy framework, and are currently developing the policy guidelines to work out and implement these ideas.⁷

This long (yet still very incomplete) list of proposals for alternative economic systems is, in my view, extremely encouraging, as it shows that many people—from politicians and scholars to ordinary people—are working to move us in the direction of a better economy. Yet the list also makes it clear that there are many different alternatives that could be endorsed by limitarians. Evaluating these proposals in their entirety is impossible to do here. But what I can and should do is to ask the question: what would limitarianism imply in practice? What is needed to make limitarianism a reality? What changes are needed to create a world in which no one is super-rich?

Before answering that question, three points need to be stressed. The first is to remind ourselves that limitarianism is a regulative ideal—something to strive for but which will be very difficult to definitively achieve—and thus will involve us taking a lot of different steps as we move forward. We will find ourselves having to agree to compromises in the short term, without giving up on moving closer to the ideal in the long run. We will need to rally together to make these changes happen. And this will always mean building coalitions with those who might not go as far as we would wish toward the ideal, but who nevertheless could help us to get closer to it. It is important to note, of course, when endorsing such a pragmatic strategy that we should not stop pursuing our ultimate goals after an initial win. Suppose tax havens were to be closed. That would be a huge victory—reason enough to throw a party! And while it should be celebrated, limitarians shouldn’t rest on their laurels but continue fighting for the other changes that are needed to attain the goal of a world without extreme wealth.

The second point is that there is no silver-bullet solution for abolishing extreme wealth (or, indeed, abolishing poverty and disadvantage). For most people advocating for less inequality, this is obvious, and most activists and organizations recommend a range of policy proposals. Yet those who oppose limitarianism, or who oppose any kind of progress toward equality, will caricature this point of view by simplistically reducing it to a single proposal, such as a 100 percent highest marginal tax rate on income, to be implemented in full tomorrow. This is silly, and should be seen as no more than a (rather poor) attempt to discredit limitarians. Rather, we need a patchwork of measures, none of which will be perfect on its own, but which, taken together, will help us reach our goal.

The third point is that, ultimately, the public must decide what needs to be done. There is not one single person who can claim to know exactly what is needed. So we must now have a major public debate on whether we should endorse limitarianism, and if so, how it could be implemented. My role here is not to come up with the answer but rather to lay out a number of general principles that I hope can inform this debate, and lead to further ideas, undoubtedly better ones. Together we know more. So, with all this in mind: what changes would limitarianism require in order to be put into practice?⁸

The first and perhaps most important action limitarianism requires is one that we’ve already touched on: to dismantle neoliberal ideology, because it is at the heart of the problems we are facing. This ideology has changed the way we look at ourselves, how we regard society, which norms and values we take to be important, the politicians we vote for, the way companies operate, and the structure of our basic societal institutions. In other words, over the last century neoliberalism has gradually taken material form, evolving into the neoliberal societies that we inhabit today. Limitarianism and neoliberalism are fundamentally at odds. As long as neoliberalism is our dominant ideology, fighting its consequences will be insufficient. We must therefore attack the root cause and replace neoliberalism with something more humane, something based on a range of values that recognizes fundamental human rights as non-negotiable and makes fairness pivotal, rather than an ideology focused only on a narrow concept of economic efficiency.

Neoliberalism propagates the view that we should implement “technocratic” solutions to problems, rather than solutions that emerge from democratic deliberation. For every problem there is a technocratic solution that it considers beyond democratic debate. Neoliberalism’s view on human nature has made us see ourselves as investors in our “human capital,” or as consumers, or as workers offering our services on the labor market—but not as activists, organizers, debaters, engaged as neighbors or members of political book clubs, and so on. So we need to find a different way of looking at ourselves, at other people, other sentient beings, the Earth, and all the practices we engage in. This requires us to be more engaged as participants in communal practices, as those who shape democratic processes, as political animals. We need to reclaim politics, and we need to reclaim democracy.

We have seen that neoliberal ideology did not just fall out of the sky. It was the result of a concerted effort by intellectuals, businesspeople, and politicians to make us believe that governments are incompetent and corrupt, that public sector workers are self-serving, and that free markets are absolutely superior to anything else. These efforts have changed the mainstream media narrative, what children learn at school and in society, and the professional discourse that businesspeople and public servants use. Concrete social and economic reforms have changed our world into one where competition and greed rule. Neoliberalism has manifested itself in different ways across different countries, but everywhere it is real people who have chosen to implement and strengthen this ideology.⁹

The good news: this means that we can also change it. We need people to advance alternatives to neoliberalism—to its values and norms, to the way it has shaped our thinking and our self-understanding, to our policies and the design of our institutions. We need changes at all these different levels—in the stories we tell ourselves, in the culture of schools, businesses, and organizations, in the way we cooperate in society and internationally.

We cannot do any of this without first coming to understand what the neoliberal system is doing to us all. Until now, the critique of neoliberalism has been developed at the margins, among people with heightened political and economic awareness. We must share this critique with everyone. We can do this through politics, through education, and through the arts—this is precisely the aim of films such as Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake or Abigail Disney and Kathleen Hughes’s The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales or Ruben Östlund’s biting satire on the super-rich, Triangle of Sadness, from 2022.

Once the workings of neoliberalism are laid bare, it will be obvious that there must be winners and losers under this model. And thus, it will also become much easier to show why we need to change it, and why some alternatives are far preferable.

The second thing limitarianism requires is that we reduce class segregation. We must do so because it will directly help to restore and nurture democracy, in particular democratic citizenship. Class integration creates a culture of empathy for people from different walks of life and generates more opportunities for cross-class friendship. It is easy to vote for a neoliberal government that will impose austerity measures on the most vulnerable if you don’t know any poor or vulnerable people, and believe that they are poor because they are lazy, or that they have somehow blown the opportunities that society may have given them. Right now, too many middle-class and rich people, not to mention the super-rich, simply know nothing of the lives of the working class, and this has serious consequences for the economic and political decisions that they make. Creating more understanding among the rich for the realities faced by those in the working class would almost certainly help us to abolish the institutions and policies that have done so much to increase inequality, such as the dismantling of social housing, or the labyrinthine systems of control and humiliation that have been imposed upon those who need state support. This isn’t just because it would clarify the role of luck in determining who is rich and who is poor: reducing class segregation would also illuminate just how bad inequalities are. Right now, the political demand to limit inequality is not very strong, but this would change if we saw the problem at first hand. It is absolutely no coincidence that Chuck Feeney and Yvon Chouinard opted for modest lifestyles and ultimately to give away their fortunes, given their own working-class backgrounds. Having experience of what it means to be poor does matter.

Should it be left to individuals to reduce class segregation? After all, anyone can join a club or sports team that is socially mixed. You might think that there is nothing that the government needs to do; that it is up to us to make choices that will widen our social circles. Alas, relying on voluntary action will not do the trick. If class desegregation is made voluntary, then we can expect that many very rich and privileged people will not join in. They will remain firmly shielded in their bubble, in their parallel society. Many wealthy people are “upward looking” in the sense that they look to those who are even richer as their benchmark. Research predicts that this group will resist attempts to desegregate: as we’ve seen, limiting their social circles to similarly well-situated people is one of their strategies for avoiding feeling bad about their wealth. They simply don’t want to be confronted with the gap between themselves and the less well-off.¹⁰

We need to make structural changes so that class interactions happen more naturally. We need public policy in areas such as housing and education that will foster social integration. For example, governments should be building neighborhoods with mixed types of housing (owned and rented, commercial and social). When governments need to decide about the future purpose of public spaces that are no longer used, such as old public buildings or open areas, they should not just sell them to the highest bidder, but rather think about the importance of having enough contact between all citizens.

We also should take very seriously the idea of a national civil service requirement for all. Debra Satz, a professor of philosophy at Stanford University, has recently defended a proposal to establish a mandatory year of national public service for all US citizens between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, with an exemption for those doing military service or with underlying conditions that make it impossible. The participants would maintain public land, work with the elderly or in education, or on other kinds of public projects. Satz argues that democratic citizenship not only requires citizens to have the right to vote and the duty to pay taxes and obey the law, but also the willingness to comply with democratic processes. Yet that willingness requires public-mindedness, which has weakened considerably over recent decades. Because there are very few compulsory collective activities where all socio-economic groups mix, different groups in society increasingly lack a basic understanding of each other. Jury duty is one such institution (and in the US it is the only example), but most will never be asked to serve on a jury, and the experience is time-limited and might only come later in life. A universal service requirement would go a long way toward addressing today’s partitioning between social groups.¹¹

The third action limitarianism requires is for us to establish a balance of economic power. It is interesting to observe that, when it comes to political power, liberal democracies embed the notion that some core civic rights are beyond the realm of governance, as well as the idea that it is important to have a separation of political powers—that the three principal branches of the state (the executive, legislature and judiciary) should be clearly divided. This is necessary to prevent power abuse, safeguarding citizens’ liberties and protecting us from tyranny. We all agree that we need a system of checks and balances; if we delegate political power to one institution, then we need countervailing power in others.

Why then, don’t we have such a balance of economic power? That economics is a domain of power was first recognized by thinkers centuries ago. Adam Smith pointed out in The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, that there was a great power imbalance between the owner of the pin-making workshop and his workers. If the workers felt that the wage they were getting for their work was too low, they could in theory refuse to do the work. Yet they had mouths to feed and no savings, so, in essence, they had no choice, or bargaining power: they had to simply accept the paltry wage that the workshop owner was offering. The owner was not subject to the same time pressure, and hence he was much more powerful, and could abuse the vulnerability of the poor.¹²

Contemporary political philosophers would describe such a situation as one of domination or exploitation, as the workers didn’t have any other reasonable options. That’s why labor unions were invented: to resist the domination of workers. This is also why union-busting, which is currently occurring in the US, is such a blow to workers, as it makes them much more vulnerable to exploitation.¹³

The late British economist Anthony Atkinson, who dedicated his entire, very distinguished career to questions of poverty, inequality, and public policy, made an agenda of fifteen proposals and five ideas for improving the social contract in his 2015 book, Inequality: What Can Be Done? His second proposal focuses on the importance of bolstering countervailing economic power. This would entail giving workers some decision-making power within firms; protecting the trade unions; and, finally, setting up a “Social and Economic Council” involving “social partners and other nongovernmental bodies” to discuss these matters at the policy level. Such countervailing power would restrict inequality at the bottom, by improving and protecting wages and working conditions, but also at the top, by restricting exorbitant levels of CEO compensation.

If we want to restore the balance of economic power today, there are clear strategies that we should pursue. One, as Atkinson points out, is to protect and strengthen unions, and criminalize union-busting activities. Another is to educate workers about the importance of collective organizing. Some scholars and activists have proposed that work should be democratized, either in a modest way by more widely adopting the German codetermination system in companies, where half of the seats on company boards are taken by employers and the other half by employees, or else more radically by implementing workplace democracy, whereby companies are run on a democratic basis by all who work there.¹⁴

Work is not the only economic domain in which there are large power inequalities, though; there are also important questions about the balance between, for example, shareholders and the interests of society at large, as we saw in Chapter 5. There is thus a question about what wider package of measures would be required to avoid a concentration of economic power. Such power concentration—which we see in companies, in entire industries, in financial institutions—is what has led to such extreme wealth concentration, with multimillion CEO compensation packages and shareholder primacy taking precedence over the interests of workers, consumers, and the environment.

Limitarianism also demands that we restore the government’s fiscal agency. A country’s tax system is the heart of its social contract. How much tax should be paid, and what benefits residents are entitled to, are essential aspects of the division of benefits and burdens in a society. Without a well-functioning fiscal system, economic justice is jeopardized. Whether people want to strive for limitarianism, or for progressive taxation, or for any other form of taxation scheme, they cannot do so if others can simply avoid or evade taxes. It is therefore essential that we restore the ability of the state to raise the taxes that the citizens decide should be raised, and to clamp down on tax avoidance and evasion.

During the neoliberal era, the state’s fiscal power has weakened dramatically. The number of tax loopholes has multiplied. The state departments charged with checking tax returns and other fiscal business are understaffed and underfunded. Fiscal paradises are thriving. The international capacity to combat cross-border tax fraud is weak.

As long as this is the case, the state’s abilities for increasing the highest tax rates, especially on wealth and capital income, are too weak. Even with our lax tax arrangements today, which in most countries favor business owners and the rich, we still witness massive tax avoidance and evasion. Increasing the taxes on profit and investment revenues, or increasing the highest marginal taxes on overall income, might well make this worse. I don’t think it’s sensible to count on a sense of civic responsibility inspiring the richest to pay their taxes according to the spirit of the law, rather than on the basis of the most self-serving legal interpretation. Past experience has not given us any reason to do so. Neoliberal culture has made endemic the view that it is foolish to pay more tax than you can get away with paying.

Is it possible to restore a country’s fiscal agency? As long as we have international tax competition and the corresponding capital flight—that is, the wealthy moving their money to the countries where it will be taxed the least—individual states will be limited to making their own fiscal choices. But capital mobility is not like gravity: it can be regulated, if governments are willing to cooperate with each other. Peter Dietsch, a German-Canadian economist and political philosopher, has developed a detailed analysis of how to address this problem. The idea at its heart is simple: governments should agree to tax people in the country where they live—where they benefit from the state infrastructure. Additionally, tax policies that are unjust and strategically motivated should be forbidden—there should, in other words, be no tax havens; no places with a zero percent tax rate like Bermuda’s. An international tax organization should be established to monitor compliance and settle disputes. These measures would minimize profit-shifting and capital flight, yet would still allow each country to decide on their own fiscal policies. This is just one proposal of many: political scientists, economists, and philosophers have developed schemes for restoring a country’s fiscal agency and stopping the international fiscal race to the bottom. It’s up to us to ensure such policies are implemented.¹⁵

The fifth change that limitarianism requires is the confiscation of dirty money and the payment of reparations for past harms. The confiscation of criminal money shouldn’t provoke much resistance. Yet I have argued that there are many shades of grey where it concerns how dirty some fortunes are. And several of the examples we’ve come across have also indicated that liberal democracies often tolerate a lot of kleptocratic activity.

There is a clear relationship between this and the previous point—of restoring a country’s fiscal agency. That goal requires the closure of tax havens. It cannot be overstated how important this is. Perhaps journalists should ask all candidates running for political office two basic questions: do you have, or have you ever had, wealth (in any form) in a tax haven? And what would be your policy regarding tax havens if you were to assume office?

The payment of reparations for past harms will be much less likely to command broad consensus than clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion. It is already being resisted in many countries where the population has benefited from economic activities that have harmed the human rights of others. We are often unwilling to look at these matters in a calm, rational way. The multimillionaire class is not any different. But there are also reasons to be cautiously optimistic. As we saw in Chapter 3, there are several recent examples of families, firms, universities, and even governments choosing to investigate their historical relationship with slavery and embark on restorative-justice projects. Change may be slow, but those who set an example make it much harder for others to keep looking away.

Limitarianism calls for an even wider form of economic justice, too: we should make the international economic architecture fair. There is no point in scattering a few crumbs in development aid if we do not also ask questions of fairness at the level of international trade. We don’t just need a reasonable balance of economic power in each country; we need this balance to apply to the global economy and to international trade relations. In 2022 a citizens’ initiative was launched in the European Union to ask for legislation that forces fashion companies to pay their own workers, and those in their global supply chain, fairly. As the campaigners write, if garment workers were paid a living wage (that is, a wage that allows each worker to lead a decent life), the final cost of a piece of clothing would increase by a mere 1 percent—a price increase that could, of course, equally be taken from the vast profits enjoyed by the billionaire owners of fashion multinationals. The very low wages of the working poor and the wealth hoarding of billionaires are intimately connected. A significant increase in human welfare is possible if the shareholders or owners of a company contented themselves with moderate, rather than limitless, profits.¹⁶

Which brings us to another of the key actions that limitarianism requires: to limit executive pay. As one longtime business leader told me, there has been an upward spiral in executive salaries because the norms around compensation have changed, and corporate culture with them. In the past, my interviewee said, you would feel ashamed if you earned a hundred or a thousand times more than the lowest-paid person in your company. Now, that shame is gone.

Many experts have recommended limiting pay inequality not just by raising the bottom level of pay but also by lowering the top. We should not just ensure that we have a decent mandatory minimum wage; we should also have a maximum wage. This could be achieved either by introducing legislation or by companies taking the initiative themselves. We can also change social norms concerning executive pay. As the political theorist Fergus Green has shown, moral norms have evolved globally to censure and thus change practices that were once widespread, such as slavery, and they are currently beginning to encompass fossil fuel–related activities. They could evolve to include extreme salaries, too. What it requires is that influential people lead by example (and don’t give up): we need celebrity CEOs to limit their payouts and talk about their reasons for doing so; we need social movements to keep arguing against excessive compensation; and we need prominent journalists, writers, and moral leaders to keep calling for a limit on top earnings.¹⁷

Perhaps this process has already begun. In his 2018 book, The Case for a Maximum Wage, labor reporter Sam Pizzigati lists a whole range of people—journalists, activists, academics, and politicians—who have all called for a cap. In Switzerland—where referenda are a widely used instrument in democratic decision-making—citizens voted in 2013 on a limit to the wage ratio. The proposal was that executives could not make more in a month than the company’s lowest-paid worker makes in a year, thus limiting the wage ratio to 12:1. A poll released prior to the referendum indicated 44 percent support for the proposal. This was followed by a huge advertising campaign against the proposal, funded by businesses. On election day, the proposal gained 34 percent of the vote and therefore lost, but something very important was won: a discussion about reasons to consider limiting pay.¹⁸

While a maximum wage would avoid turning business executives into multimillionaires, it doesn’t help us to limit income from capital. This is sorely needed, since generally income from labor is taxed at a higher rate than income from capital (profits, dividends). There are some positive developments on this front. As of 2023, 136 countries who together hold more than 90 percent of the world economy have agreed to impose a 15 percent minimum corporate tax rate. This proposal isn’t perfect: one issue is that it applies only to corporations with a turnover of at least $750 million, and hence does not apply to about 85 percent of multinational businesses. Clearly, it does not solve everything, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.¹⁹

At the national level, it seems a no-brainer that fairness requires that income from labor should not be subject to higher tax rates than income from capital. Yet this is precisely what happens in many countries. In the Netherlands, the last major tax overhaul in 2001 saw the same tax rates applied to both income from labor and from capital, but over the years a series of smaller changes, including several exceptions provided to income from capital, have led to a tax rate on income from labor that was 11 percent higher than the tax rate on income from capital. This is not only unjustified in itself, but also turns the Dutch tax system into a regressive one, since capital is concentrated at the top of the wealth distribution. This information only became public in 2022, after the government commissioned a study to which all relevant agencies and parties contributed and the best available data was analyzed. Countries that do not have this information would be wise to conduct a similar report of their own. They, too, might discover that even in a country that has an egalitarian reputation, the fiscal system favors capital over labor.²⁰

In addition to re-examining the difference between the tax rates on income from labor versus income from capital, there should also be a re-examination of tax rates overall. In the 1960s and 1970s, tax rates in the OECD countries were much more progressive, with top marginal tax rates between 60 and 80 percent not being exceptional. These rates have plummeted: in many countries the highest marginal tax rate on income is now well below 50 percent.²¹

The final policy change that I believe limitarianism requires is perhaps the most urgent of all: to halt the intergenerational transmission of wealth. That is, to radically cap lifetime inheritances and gifts. Some philosophers have argued that the right to bequeath should be fully abolished: once you die, all your wealth should be put back into the society from which it originated. Several scholars, including the political philosopher Stuart White and the economists Anthony Atkinson and Thomas Piketty, have made the case for drastically raising inheritance tax; they also argue for a stake for young adults that would be funded from a variety of sources, including a wealth tax and inheritance tax. Recall that in Chapter 3 we saw that properly taxing the rich in the US would allow a savings account to be opened in each child’s name with $6,350 deposited in it each year until they turn eighteen.²²

I would suggest a variant on these proposals, which takes into account the moral considerations that apply to the inheritor (who doesn’t, morally speaking, deserve any inheritance at all) and the freedom of the donor (whose preference to save and bequeath, rather than to consume, should also carry moral weight). The idea would be to impose a cap on how much a person could receive in terms of inheritances and gifts over their lifetime, and then to return all of the collected tax revenues to the citizens of that country.²³

The state could collect this inheritance money and just add it to their coffers, using it to fund roads or schools or for other public expenditure. But there is another, much better alternative. The money could be redistributed to all young citizens, so that everyone receives a slice of the wealth of previous generations.

There are three major reasons for doing this. First, having a modest amount of wealth has important beneficial effects for the owner, as defenders of a citizens’ stake have argued at length.²⁴ This is not just the case in communities that are extremely poor, as we saw in Otjivero. In richer countries, too, it allows young people to start up a business, to go to university, or to give their own children a good start in life. A relatively small amount of money can give everybody some degree of security. It takes away worries and stress. Why would we grant this only to those who happen to be born to rich parents?

The second reason is that redistributing inheritance tax revenues to younger citizens will address the huge inequality between the old and the young today; many scholars are worried that the young are being badly short-changed. Often, inheritances are given by those who die in their eighties to their children who are in their fifties. These heirs have a considerable advantage before they actually receive the inheritance: for example, they can take out student loans or mortgages with the knowledge that some money will eventually come their way. And they are likely to have already received significant gifts from their parents earlier on in life. By redistributing the tax revenue from inheritances to those in their mid-twenties, much more good will be done for the prosperity of the entire population. Every young person will be able to start their adult life without worrying unduly about how they will get by.²⁵

The third reason to choose to redistribute the money in this way is the fact that there is very deep resistance to inheritance tax: it has often been called the most despised of all taxes. That is not surprising, because it is surely the most emotionally charged. It comes right at the point when people are mourning their loss. Their loved one has been taken from them, and now the state wants to take their money? But while such feelings are understandable, the widespread opposition is irrational. After all, most people inherit next to nothing. It is only the wealthy and the super-rich that inherit very large amounts. If we were to fully redistribute all the revenue from inheritance tax, it would very quickly become obvious that the vast majority of the population had only something to gain by it.²⁶

This proposal raises an obvious question: at what level should the inheritance cap be set? It should not be higher than what, in a just society, you could save by living frugally, aiming to save for future generations. Needless to say, it is notoriously difficult to put a number on this, since people have such different lifestyles. One possibility would be to base this calculation on an “average” person taken from the middle of the middle class: two-thirds of the population would have an income that was lower than this person’s, and one-third would have an income that was higher. Economists and sociologists can certainly make an estimate of what difference it would make for such a person to live frugally compared with being more spendthrift. Suppose that difference is estimated to be $400,000 for a two-adult household with two children, over their lifetime. Then each person could inherit, or receive as gifts, $200,000 in their lives, and the rest would go to the tax collector, and thus provide for all. But other benchmarks are possible, such as the median market value of a house in a country. As with the political limit on wealth as a whole, this is ultimately a question for the people to debate and decide on together: we might rely on citizens’ panels to discuss these questions, and develop concrete proposals for lawmakers.

This raft of proposals should get us a long way toward making our economies and our societies limitarian. Obviously, much more than this is needed to tackle some of the world’s most pressing issues. For example, ask any expert what needs to be done to address climate change or the biodiversity crisis and they will suggest many measures not discussed here. The same can be said about the housing crisis, or the mental-health crisis, or the ongoing tragedy that billions of people live in poverty worldwide. The actions listed above will not magically solve all our problems. But they will help.

In the end, the most important change is to abandon the mantras that “greed is good” and “the sky is the limit.” They are wreaking so much havoc. That we have come to believe and enact them is shameful and, as we have seen, destructive.

Some readers might wonder what they should do next. In the many dozens of public talks I’ve given on limitarianism, there has often been someone in the audience who despairs, wondering how we are going to make all these urgent changes. It can feel overwhelming to consider how many problems need to be fixed.

But here’s the good news. Those who will gain from a new limitarian economic system vastly outnumber those who will lose from the transition. Once we recognize this and commit ourselves to changing the status quo, we simply have to divide up the work—and suddenly, what looks overwhelming in the aggregate becomes much more manageable. We can each pick an action point that interests us most, and devote ourselves to it. We all have different skills, interests, and social networks, and for each of us there are different ways in which we can contribute to making society more humane. And what we will discover, as we work toward that better world, is how much energy and joy collective action generates, and how many lasting friendships emerge from it.

There is huge untapped potential in the actions of the 99 percent. The promise of a better future lies with us.

Acknowledgments

For a long time, bookshops have been to me what candy stores are to toddlers. I love the enormous riches of all those stories, arguments, and pockets of knowledge. I love to look at all the different covers and admire the creativity of their designers. I love to talk to the shop-owners when I need a recommendation or two. This feeling hasn’t ever changed: I still love browsing in bookstores; inhaling air filled with words and sentences. But having now written a few books of my own, I increasingly find myself looking at the shelves and thinking of the enormous efforts that have gone into making all those books. The bouts of despair and sleepless nights of their writers! And while there is generally only one person’s name on the cover, all books are the result of the efforts of many people. The same is true of this one: many people have contributed to making this book possible, and I would like to close it by thanking them.

I started to develop my research on the political philosophy of wealth concentration and the idea of limitarianism sometime in early 2012. I thank the universities and academic associations where I presented the first results of that research, in particular as an invited keynote speaker at the conference of the Society for Applied Philosophy (Oxford, July 2012) and the NOMOS conference on Wealth (Washington, August 2014). I had particularly interesting discussions with those who attended talks organized by the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at Stanford University in February 2014, and the Victoria colloquium on political, social, and legal theory at the University of Victoria in March 2014. I thank Debra Satz and Colin MacLeod for the invitations, for great conversations, and for their encouragement to dig deeper. Many talks at other places (in person or online) would follow, and I thank all my local and international colleagues for their interest in limitarianism, and for offering me opportunities to try out arguments and ideas. I especially want to mention Kalle Grill and Jan-Willem van der Rijt from the philosophy department at Umeå University, where I gave the 2019 Burman Lectures on limitarianism. In 2017, the European Research Council awarded me a Consolidator Grant (#726153) which allowed me to put together the Fair Limits team that would analyze whether we need an upper limit to wealth and its relationship to ecological resources. I thank the members of the Fair Limits team for co-creating a setting that allowed me to learn a lot as well as pursue this agenda: Fergus Green, Colin Hickey, Tim Meijers, Bart Mijland, Petra van der Kooij, Dick Timmers, as well as a larger group of colleagues and students who joined our meetings and writing. Yet the arguments in this book go far beyond the scholarship that I did before and during the Fair Limits project, and I am grateful to the FLAX foundation who gave me an Emma Goldman Award in 2021, which has supported me to continue working on this book.

I tried out some first ideas for writing a trade book on limitarianism at the June 2018 meeting of the Economic Ethics Network, an informal gathering of political philosophers working on economic questions that has been meeting annually for ten years now. After George Monbiot wrote an op-ed in the Guardian in September 2019 endorsing limitarianism on grounds of climate justice, his editor at Penguin, Chloe Currens, reached out to me to ask whether I had any interest in writing a book. And so the vague plan took wing. Alas, as I unexpectedly had to serve as interim director of my institute, writing it had to be put on hold, until time would allow me to do so. Nevertheless, the encouragement of George Monbiot and Chloe Currens at that early stage made it clear that this book had to be written, and I thank them for playing this pivotal role.

I have tried out several ideas, including strategies for bridging the gap between academia and the public, at the group blog Crooked Timber. This blog, where I have had the privilege of being a contributor for the last eighteen years, has been a great source of debate, and I thank my fellow bloggers for co-creating this fully independent space, entirely free of external interference and influence. Many thanks, also, to our remarkably smart and good-spirited (pseudonymous) commentators—I don’t know who you are, folks, but that doesn’t make me any less appreciative for your willingness to discuss limitarianism (and many other topics) over the years. I have also learned a lot from people who have attended talks, debates, and most recently an interactive theatre performance on the subject, as well as from conversations on social media and discussions with the journalists and podcasters who have interviewed me over the last ten years. Many of them have asked questions that got me thinking on yet another aspect of this topic, and as such have unwittingly contributed to this book.

In May 2022, Chapter 5 was discussed at a workshop at the Leibniz University in Hannover, and I thank the participants for a fruitful discussion, in particular Simon Caney, Lisa Herzog, Mathias Frisch, and Andrew Crabtree. In July 2022, the same chapter was discussed at the Montreal Political Theory workshop, and I thank all the participants, especially Alexandre Gajevic Sayegh, Colin Macleod, Pablo Gilabert, Daniel Weinstock, and Sylvie Loriaux for their comments. In December 2022, a group of colleagues came together in Utrecht to discuss a draft manuscript of this book. Not only did that work as a very effective carrot (or stick?) for me to get things done, but it also helped me to see which parts of the manuscript required most development. Thanks to Yara Al Salman, Constanze Binder, Huub Brouwer, Rutger Claassen, Josette Daemen, Willem van der Deijl, Liesbeth Feikema, Dorothea Gädeke, Colin Hickey, Maurits de Jongh, Jos Philips, Hanno Sauer, Naomi van Steenbergen, Dick Timmer, and to my Dutch publisher Haye Koningsveld for that memorable day, and in particular to Naomi, Jos, Huub, Dick, Colin, and Josette for also sending written comments. Others read parts or the entire manuscript at various stages of the writing process, and I want to mention in particular the very useful comments I received from Tania Burchardt, Chris Neuhäuser, John Quiggin, and, especially, Tom Malleson.

Many friends, colleagues, and even strangers sent me links to research findings, interesting interviews, new books on the topic, or the latest wealth-related societal issue while I was writing this book. Others have responded to specific queries I had. Since I didn’t keep track I will no doubt forget to name some, but despite this list being incomplete, let me thank Joel Anderson, Christoph Baumgartner, Constanze Binder, Huub Brouwer, Annelien De Dijn, Peter Dietsch, Jonas Franzen, Dorothea Gädeke, Rebecca Gowland, Eelke Heemskerk, Colin Hickey, Annemarie Korte, Matthias Kramm, Chris Neuhäuser, Enrica Chiappero-Martinetti, Tim Meijers, Jennifer Olmsted, Sam Pizzigati, Roland Pierik, and Dick Timmer.

I also am grateful for the conversations about economic inequalities and wealth concentration that I have had over many years with sociologists, political scientists, economists, historians, and philosophers. While the number of people from whom I have learned is much longer than I can give here, I want to thank in particular David Axelsen, Bas van Bavel, Tania Burchardt, Vincent Buskens, Rutger Claassen, Enrica Chiappero Martinetti, Abigail Davis, Ian Gough, Tammy Harel Ben Sahar, Katharina Hecht, Lisa Herzog, Elena Icardi, Chris Neuhäuser, Lasse Nielsen, Amartya Sen, Rachel Sherman, Liam Shields, Zosia Stemplowska, Simon Toussaint, Tanja van der Lippe, Martin van Hees, Bruno Verbeek, Alex Volacu, Lea Ypi, and the members of the Fair Limits team.

In refining my ideas and “testing” my arguments, I was lucky to be able to talk to and learn from people who stand much closer to the world of the super-rich than I do. Most of them had never met me before we spoke, and I thank them for trusting me and being so frank about their views and experiences, and in a number of cases for agreeing to be quoted in the book: Abigail Disney, Rebecca Gowland, Morris Pearl, Judi Powell, Elisa Van Waeyenberge, Jake Hayman, Yahya Alazrak, Marlene Engelhorn, and several others, who have chosen to stay anonymous. I also thank those who are cited by name for approving the quotes in this book, as well as Ina Conradi and Dirk and Claudia Haarmann for checking my memory of our encounter in Otjivero.

Special thanks also to the people who kept me going at a time when the task of writing this book seemed overwhelming or when the lures of procrastination were very strong, in particular my husband, Roland, and our children, and my sister Charlot, who lent me her house so that I could, free from distraction, finish another set of revisions. Thanks also to Dominic Roser, who offered to team up as writing buddies in the fall of 2022.

Finally, I thank the wonderful teams at Penguin and Astra House for their hard work on this book. In particular, Chloe Currens, my editor at Penguin, and Alessandra Bastagli at Astra House, who commented on all aspects of the book—from structure to the choice of examples—and who helped me to translate academic ideas and findings for a broad audience. I also thank the team at United Agents, especially my agent Sophie Scard, who helped me navigate the world of trade publishing.

I have dedicated this book to all activists who are fighting against injustice. I use “activists” here in a broad sense, referring not only to those who are on the barricades, but also to those writing pieces for newspapers, setting up organizations, and trying in other ways to mobilize people and power for the good. There are parts of academia, politics and even the population at large that don’t fully appreciate the work that activists do, or, worse, look down on them. Although this book is not about activism or activists, I trust that its arguments have made clear how mistaken such a position is. While there are some activists pursuing misguided goals or using inappropriate means, there are many, many more who are, against the odds and often at great personal cost, fighting for a better world. They are pivotal in changing all of our lives for the better. To all those brave people: this is for you.

Notes

Introduction

  1.  The Sunday Times rich list is published in mid May each year. The annual Forbes list is published around early April each year, using data obtained in March. For the latest list, see forbes.com/billionaires/. In addition, Forbes publishes daily updates of the estimated wealth of the world’s billionaires in their “real-time billionaires” list—see forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/. All information and data on billionaires in this book are taken from the Forbes list unless other references have been provided.

  2.  See also the influential column by the Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who emphasized the importance of focusing on the super-rich, “Of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent,” Vanity Fair, March 31, 2011, vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105.

  3.  For some key contributions from economics, see Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012); Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); and Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What Can be Done? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). For philosophical contributions, see Elizabeth Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109:2 (1999), pp. 287–337; G. A. Cohen, If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Christian Neuhäuser, Reichtum als Moralisches Problem (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2018); and T. M. Scanlon, Why Does Inequality Matter? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). An influential contribution from social epidemology is Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (London: Allen Lane: 2009). For a sociological study based on in-depth interviews with the very rich, see Rachel Sherman, Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). For contributions from political economy and policy analysis, see Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism (London: Allen Lane, 2010), and Robert Reich, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015). Two important recent contributions are Mike Savage, The Return of Inequality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021), whose main perspectives are sociological and historical, and Tom Malleson, Against Inequality. The Practical and Ethical Case of Abolishing the Superrich (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023), who provides an analysis and critique of inequality based primarily on insights from political theory and related empirical disciplines.

  4.  Ingrid Robeyns, “Having Too Much,” in Wealth: Yearbook of the American Society of Legal and Political Philosophy, ed. Jack Knight and Melissa Schwartzberg (New York: NYU Press, 2017), pp. 1–44, and idem, “What, If Anything, Is Wrong with Extreme Wealth?,” Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 20:3 (2019), pp. 251–66. For two recent collections of academic papers on limitarianism, see Dick Timmer and Christian Neuhäuser (eds), “Limitarianism: Extreme Wealth as a Moral Problem,” special issue of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25:5 (2022), and Ingrid Robeyns (ed.), Having Too Much: Philosophical Essays on Limitarianism (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2023).

  5.  On the importance of an ethos for questions of distributive justice, see G. A. Cohen, “Where the Action is: On the Site of Distributive Justice,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 26:1 (1997), pp. 3–30, and Jonathan Wolff, “Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 27:2 (1998), pp. 97–122. The argument that public rules and policy require an egalitarian ethos to generate a just society was a central claim of feminist philosophers in their analyses of economic gender inequalities. See, for example, Susan Okin, Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books, 1989).

  6.  On the widespread accusation of “envy” in American tax-policy debates, see Joseph J. Thorndike, “Envy Doesn’t Explain ‘Soak the Rich’ Taxation,” taxnotes, August 9, 2021, taxnotes.com/featured-analysis/envy-doesnt-explain-soak-rich-taxation/2021/08/06/76zp6. For the debate in Germany in 2019, see, for example, “CDU wirft SPD ‘billige Neiddebatte’ vor,” Zeit Online, August 23, 2019, zeit.de/wirtschaft/2019-08/vermoegenssteuer-spd-cdu-paul-ziemiak-finanzen, or Marcel Fratzscher, “Bloß keine Neiddebatte!,” Spiegel Wirtschaft, August 26, 2019, spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/vermoegensteuer-wir-brauchen-keine-neiddebatte-a-1283634.html. For the critique on Clegg, see Nicholas Watt and Shiv Malik, “Nick Clegg Wealth Tax ‘the Politics of Envy,’ Says Senior Tory,” Guardian, August 29, 2012, theguardian.com/politics/2012/aug/29/nick-clegg-wealth-tax-envy. For the use of the term “envy tax” by Dutch right-wing politicians, see, for example, “Wiegel: vermogensbelasting is jaloeziebelasting,” RTL Nieuws, September 13, 2015, rtlnieuws.nl/geld-en-werk/artikel/324451/wiegel-vermogensbelasting-jaloeziebelasting.

  7.  Simon Johnson, “Obama Still Doesn’t Get It,” Common Dreams, February 10, 2010, commondreams.org/views/2010/02/10/obama-still-doesnt-get-it, and Victoria McGrane, “Left Rips Obama Bonus Comments,” Politico, October 2, 2010, politico.com/story/2010/02/left-rips-obama-bonus-comments-032795.

  8.  For the letter sent to politicians attending the 2023 Davos meeting, see costofextremewealth.com/. For interviews with Bill Gates, see cnbc.com/2019/02/13/bill-gates-suggests-higher-taxes-on-those-with-great-wealth.html and forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/01/03/bill-gates-urges-lawmakers-to-raise-taxes-on-americas-ultra-rich/?sh=4ce7b3d2f3f5. For the letter sent to the 2020 US presidential candidates, see medium.com/@letterforawealthtax/an-open-letter-to-the-2020-presidential-candidates-its-time-to-tax-us-more-6eb3a548b2fe.

  9.  Lasse Nielsen and David Axelsen, “Envy, Levelling-Down, and Harrison Bergeron: Defending Limitarianism from Three Common Objections,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 25 (2022), pp. 737–53.

10.  T. M. Scanlon, Why Does Inequality Matter? (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 3–7.

11.  Conor O’Clery, The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune (New York: Public Affairs, 2013), and Steven Bertoni, “The Billionaire Who Wanted to Die Broke … Is Now Officially Broke,” Forbes, September 15, 2020, forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2020/09/15/exclusive-the-billionaire-who-wanted-to-die-broke-is-now-officially-broke/.

12.  David Gelles, “Billionaire No More: Patagonia Founder Gives Away the Company,” New York Times, September 15, 2022, nytimes.com/2022/09/14/climate/patagonia-climate-philanthropy-chouinard.html. See also Yvon Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman (New York: Penguin Books, 2016). However, we should be careful not to be swept away by Patagonia’s story, since we do not know what independent investigations into the labor conditions and environmental impact of Patagonia might show. For example, according to the reporting by the Dutch investigative platform Follow the Money, some of the Patagonia products are made by garment workers in a factory in the free-trade zone of Katunayake in Sri Lanka. This factory produces clothing not just for Patagonia but also for fifteen other international brands, such as H&M and Zara. The workers are reportedly forced to work excessively long days and are paid much less than a living wage. See Yara van Heugten, “Duurzaam kledingmerk Patagonia produceert in dezelfde fabrieken als fast-fashion, textielmedewerkers uitgebuit,” June 10, 2023, ftm.nl/artikelen/patagonia-heeft-grote-moeite-met-deugen.

13.  That most of the very wealthy do not want to talk about inequalities and wealth concentration is confirmed by all of my interviewees, and by several different strands of research and sources. See, for example, Sherman, Uneasy Street; Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2018); and Marlene Engelhorn, Geld (Vienna: Kremayr & Scheriau, 2022).

14.  Anand Giridharadas, The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022).

1. How Much Is Too Much?

  1.  There had been scholarly analyses of rising inequality before Piketty’s Capital came out, but none had the same impact on the public debate.

  2.  Oxfam briefing paper, Survival of the Richest: How We Must Tax the Super-Rich Now to Fight Inequality (2023), oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621477/bp-survival-of-the-richest-160123-en.pdf.

  3.  There are exceptions. For example, Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America (New York and London: Crown and Allen Lane, 2023), examines the pervasiveness of poverty in the US, and argues that we must look at the better-off, who have arranged fiscal and other policies in a way that makes them benefit much more from such policies than do the poor.

  4.  See patrioticmillionaires.org/; patrioticmillionaires.uk/; taxmenow.eu/; and millionairesforhumanity.org/.

  5.  shell.com/about-us/leadership/executive-committee/ben-van-beurden/_jcr_content/par/textimage.stream/1663219934406/b5668f8ff2c6b5c89158e54cce6d7b3959dce3ba/shell-career-experience-cebb.pdf. For reporting on Ben van Beurden’s salary in 2018, see rtlnieuws.nl/economie/bedrijven/artikel/4642021/shell-ceo-krijgt-twee-keer-zoveel-salaris-20-miljoen-vanbeurden.

  6.  Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe, “CEO Compensation Has Grown 940 percent Since 1978” (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2018), epi.org/publication/ceo-compensation-2018/.

  7.  Laura Elston, “Prince William Inherits £23 Million-Per-Year-Income from Dutchy Estate,” Bloomberg, September 14, 2022, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-15/william-s-duchy-finance-team-meeting-after-inheriting-23m-per-year-income.

  8.  William H. Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins, Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002); Chuck Collins, 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality Is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2012); idem, Born on Third Base (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2016); and idem, Is Inequality in America Irreversible? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018). The account of Collins’s early life choices and the estimate of what his inheritance would have been worth in 2016 can be found in Born on Third Base, Chapter 1.

  9.  Emma Bubola, “She’s Inheriting Millions: She Wants Her Wealth Taxed Away,” New York Times, October 21, 2022, nytimes.com/2022/10/21/world/europe/marlene-engelhorn-wealth-tax.html. See also Engelhorn, Geld.

10.  See resourcegeneration.org/. The sister organization in the UK is called Resource Justice—see resourcejustice.co.uk/; in Canada, it is called Resource Movement—see resourcemovement.org/.

11.  Putin is not included on the Forbes list, since that list explicitly excludes royals and heads of state. See Rachel Makinson, “How Rich is Vladimir Putin?,” CEO Today, March 9, 2022, ceotodaymagazine.com/2022/03/how-rich-is-vladimir-putin/; see also Karen Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015).

12.  Abigail Davis, Katharina Hecht, Tania Burchardt, Ian Gough, Donald Hirsch, Karen Rowlingson, and Kate Summers, Living on Different Incomes in London: Can Public Consensus Identify a ‘Riches Line’? (London: Trust for London, 2020). The details in the next two paragraphs of the main text are also drawn from this study.

13.  Ingrid Robeyns, Vincent Buskens, Arnout van de Rijt, Nina Vergeldt, and Tanja van der Lippe, “How Rich Is Too Rich? Measuring the Riches Line,” Social Indicators Research 154 (2021), pp. 115–43.

14.  Morris Pearl, Erica Payne, and the Patriotic Millionaires, Tax the Rich! How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich even Richer (New York: The New Press, 2021), pp. 1–11. See also patrioticmillionaires.org/our-values/.

15.  The Dutch entrepreneur and journalist Sander Schimmelpenninck proposed a limit of €25 million, as he holds that this would allow rich people to still be able to aspire to something. The Dutch historian and journalist Sander Heijne proposed to put the limit at the lower boundary of the wealth of the 0.1 percent of the population, which in 2021 was €10 million.

16.  The Canadian political philosopher Joseph Heath has argued that, while we often justify social security and welfare state institutions on the basis of justice, solidarity, or making sure all basic needs are met, they can also be justified on the basis of efficiency, and thus on self-serving grounds. Joseph Heath, “The Benefits of Cooperation,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 34:4 (2006), pp. 313–51.

17.  Dick Timmer, “Thresholds in Distributive Justice,” Utilitas 33:4 (2021), pp. 422–41, and Ingrid Robeyns, “Why Limitarianism?,” Journal of Political Philosophy 30:2 (2022), pp. 249–70.

2. It’s Keeping the Poor in Poverty While Inequality Grows

  1.  Oxfam, Survival of the Richest. Cited statistics can be found on pp. 15–16; see also the accompanying methodological notes, pp. 4–7. All documents are available online at oxfam.org/en/research/survival-richest.

  2.  For the academic literature on the conceptualization and measurement of economic inequality, see, for example, Anthony B. Atkinson, “On the Measurement of Inequality,” Journal of Economic Theory 2 (1970), pp. 244–63; Amartya Sen, On Economic Inequality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973); idem, Inequality Re-examined (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, “Income Inequality in the United States, 1913–1998,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 119:1 (2003), pp. 1–41; Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez, “Top Incomes in the Long Run of History,” Journal of Economic Literature 49:1 (2011), pp. 3–71; Piketty, Capital; and Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman (eds), World Inequality Report 2022 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022).

  3.  ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts.

  4.  World Bank, Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2022: Correcting Course (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2022).

  5.  See ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts?linkId=62571595 for the data, and twitter.com/BillGates/status/1086662632587907072 for Bill Gates’s tweet.

  6.  Jason Hickel, “Bill Gates Says Poverty Is Decreasing. He Couldn’t Be More Wrong,” Guardian, January 29, 2019, theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/29/bill-gates-davos-global-poverty-infographic-neoliberal; idem, “A Letter to Steven Pinker (and Bill Gates for That Matter) about Global Poverty,” February 4, 2019, jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/2/3/pinker-and-global-poverty; and idem, “Extreme Poverty Isn’t Natural, It’s Created,” March 28, 2021, jasonhickel.org/blog/2021/3/28/extreme-poverty-isnt-natural-it-is-created.

  7.  Robert C. Allen, “Poverty and the Labor Market: Today and Yesterday,” Annual Review of Economics 12 (2020), pp. 107–34.

  8.  Amartya Sen, Commodities and Capabilities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); idem, Development as Freedom (New York: Anchor House, 1999); Jean Drèze and idem, India: Development and Participation, second edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Chang, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism; and Thomas Piketty, A Brief History of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), pp. 48–94, quotation on p. 48.

  9.  Christopher Lakner and Branko Milanovic, “Global Income Distribution: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Great Recession,” World Bank Economic Review 30:2 (2016), pp. 203–32. For the “elephant graph,” see figure 1(a) on p. 216.

10.  Jason Hickel, “How Bad Is Global Inequality Really?,” March 9, 2019, jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/3/1/global-inequality-from-1980-to-2016.

11.  Jason Hickel, Dylan Sullivan, and Huzaifa Zoomkawala, “Plunder in the Post-Colonial Era: Quantifying Drain from the Global South Through Unequal Exchange, 1960–2018,” New Political Economy 26:6 (2021), pp. 1030–47, quotation on p. 1031.

12.  Noam Chomsky, Profit over People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999). One example of such strategies is the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of the Congo; both Belgium and the USA had plotted his assassination, as they were worried that he would establish geopolitical relations with the USSR. Another example is the US involvement in the coup against the democratically elected socialist president of Chile Salvador Allende by General Augusto Pinochet, which ended in a right-wing dictatorship that became infamous for its cruel torturing and murdering of left-wing activists and politicians.

13.  Hickel, Sullivan, and Zoomkawala, “Plunder in the Post-Colonial Era.”

14.  Credit Suisse, Global Wealth Report 2022, table 1, p. 10.

15.  The exact numbers are: Canada (5,510), India (4,980), Japan (4,870), France (4,640), Australia (4,630), the UK (4,180) and Italy (3,930). Credit Suisse, Global Wealth Report 2022, pp. 27–8. It is interesting to observe that, despite all the talk in the media about Russian oligarchs, Global Wealth Report 2022 doesn’t list them in the ranking of countries that have a sizable number of millionaires, but they do appear in the ranking of individuals with more than $50 million. Given that Russia ranks second on the global ranking of wealth inequality based on the Gini-coefficient, and first in the global ranking of the share of wealth held by the top 1 percent (with a whopping 58.6 percent), a statistical picture emerges of an extremely unequal wealth distribution, with some concentration at the very top, but less below that top level of ultra-rich. See Global Wealth Report 2022, table 5, p. 31.

16.  Katharina Hecht and Kate Summers, “The Long and the Short of It: The Temporal Significance of Wealth and Income,” Social Policy and Administration 55 (2021), pp. 732–46.

17.  Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, “Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households,” August 22, 2022, federalreserve.gov/publications/2022-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2021-dealing-with-unexpected-expenses.htm, and John Creamer, Emily A. Shrider, Kalle Burns, and Frances Chen, “Poverty in the United States: 2021,” September 13, 2022, census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-277.html. For data from the USA Federal Reserve, see federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/chart/#quarter:131;series:Net%20worth;demographic:networth;population:1,3,5,7,9;units:shares;range:2007.2,2022.2.

18.  Credit Suisse, Global Wealth Report 2022, table 5, p. 31.

19.  For the data on France, see Piketty, A Brief History of Equality, p. 32.

20.  Data of the US Federal Reserve (see note 17), for the third quarter of 1990 and 2022, and Matt Bruenig, “Top 1 percent Up $21 Trillion. Bottom 50 percent Down $900 Billion,” June 14, 2019, peoplespolicyproject.org/2019/06/14/top-1-up-21-trillion-bottom-50-down-900-billion/.

21.  See the data in World Income Database, wid.world/, or Piketty, A Brief History of Equality, Chapter 2.

22.  The exact figures for US inhabitants are: 18.9 percent are Latino or Hispanic and have 2.7 percent of all wealth; 13.6 percent are Black or African-American and have 4.5 percent of all wealth; white Americans make up 59.3 percent of the population and have 83.2 percent of all wealth—see census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045221. On the racial effects of tax deductions, see US Treasury, Office of Tax Analysis, “Tax Expenditures by Race and Hispanic Ethnicity,” Working Paper 122, January 2023.

23.  These poverty statistics refer to the $6.85 per day poverty rate—see pip.worldbank.org/home.

24.  The term “social contract” is a metaphor that refers to the basic rules and expectations, or moral and political principles, that govern a society—or what some would define as “what we owe to each other.” Some philosophers regard the social contract as problematic due to the associations with political (intellectual) traditions that were responsible for the genocide of first nations/indigenous people, as well as widespread racism and sexism. Others prefer to avoid the term “social contract” because it suggests a focus on market transactions or legal rules. However, the term is also widely used by scholars, such as Noam Chomsky and Matthew Desmond, who want to radically change the basic rules that govern our societies. I am using the term here as a self-standing metaphor in line with how it is used by academics, writers, and activists who want to fundamentally change our societies to become more inclusive and more egalitarian, and thus removed from any harmful connotations for which its philosophical roots are criticized. For those critiques, see Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (London: Polity Press, 1988), and Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997).

25.  When I was writing this book, Abigail Disney at some point had “class traitor” in her twitter bio; Resource Generation had an image that included the words “class traitor” on their LinkedIn page; their British sister association, Resource Justice, had it as a visualization on one of the pages of their website (at resourcejustice.co.uk/what-we-do).

26.  Reich, Saving Capitalism, pp. xvi–xvii.

27.  Data taken from Claus Schnabel, “Union Membership and Collective Bargaining: Trends and Determinants,” Working Paper, table 4, econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/222500/1/1724719793.pdf.

28.  On the tax cuts, see David Mervin, “Reagan’s Place in History,” Journal of American Studies 23:2 (1989), pp. 269–86, specifically at p. 277. On the firing of the air traffic controllers, see Jon Schwarz, “The Murder of the U.S. Middle Class Began 40 Years Ago This Week,” The Intercept, August 6, 2021, theintercept.com/2021/08/06/middle-class-reagan-patco-strike/, and Julia Simon and Kenny Malone, “Looking Back on When President Reagan Fired the Air Traffic Controllers,” NPR Planet Money, August 5, 2021, npr.org/2021/08/05/1025018833/looking-back-on-when-president-reagan-fired-air-traffic-controllers.

29.  Academics have different understandings about how neoliberalism can best be described, with some focusing more on the cultural and relational aspects, and others more on economic and social institutions and policies. The account here is extremely short and therefore unavoidably somewhat simplified, but in later chapters we will encounter more details of several policies that have been grounded in neoliberal thinking.

30.  On the history of ideas in neoliberalism, see Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets Since the Depression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2012), and Daniel Stedman Jones, Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).

31.  In his book 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism, Ha-Joon Chang shows that many of the basic claims of neoliberalism are wrong or misleading. Naomi Oreskes and David Conway have made a fascinating historical reconstruction, focusing on the US, in their book The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market (New York: Bloomsbury, 2023). Note that, in the US, the term “free-market fundamentalism” is more widely used than “neoliberalism,” but we are in essence looking at the same set of doctrines. For a history of the development of neoliberalism in the Netherlands, see Bram Mellink and Merijn Oudenampsen, Neoliberalisme: Een Nederlandse Geschiedenis (Amsterdam: Boom, 2022).

32.  Willem Buiter in his contribution to “Economists Forum,” Financial Times, February 14, 2007, cited in Robert Wade, “Why Has Income Inequality Remained on the Sidelines of Public Policy for So Long?,” Challenge, 55:3 (2012), pp. 21–50, quotation on p. 35.

33.  For the academic literature on the different notions of poverty and deprivation, see Amartya Sen, “Poor, Relatively Speaking,” Oxford Economic Papers 35:2 (1983), pp. 153–69; Anthony B. Atkinson, “On the Measurement of Poverty,” Econometrica 55:4 (1987), pp. 749–64; Polly Vizzard, Poverty and Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Jonathan Wolff and Avner De-Shalit, Disadvantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Savage, The Return of Inequality, pp. 34–42.

34.  There is a vast literature in contemporary political philosophy arguing why inequality is morally and politically very important. See, for example, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); Amartya Sen Inequality Reexamined (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1992); Elizabeth Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109:2 (1999), pp. 287–337; Anne Philips, Which Inequalities Matter? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999); G. A. Cohen, If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Brian Barry, Why Social Justice Matters (Oxford: Polity Press, 2005); Stuart White, Equality (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007); Martin O’Neill, “What Should Egalitarians Believe?” Philosophy & Public Affairs, 36 (2008), pp. 119–56; and T. M. Scanlon Why Does Inequality Matter? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

35.  Desmond, Poverty, by America, quotation on p. 101.

36.  Newsnight, BBC One, June 5, 2011, quoted in Stewart Lansley, The Richer, The Poorer: How Britain Enriched the Few and Failed the Poor (Bristol: Policy Press, 2022), on p. 2.

37.  Elizabeth Warren, during a discussion with Thomas Piketty, organized by the Huffington Post (Boston, June 2014), available at youtube.com/watch?v=uEYAS5U5Wuk (the quotation occurs at around 1′58″). For a concise debunking of trickle-down economics, see Chang, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You about Capitalism, pp. 137–47.

38.  John Quiggin, Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Era Dabla-Norris, Kalpana Kochhar, Nujin Suphaphaiphat, Franto Ricka, and Evridiki Tsounta, “Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality: A Global Perspective,” IMF Staff Discussion Notes 013 (June 15, 2015), imf.org/en/Publications/Staff-Discussion-Notes/Issues/2016/12/31/Causes-and-Consequences-of-Income-Inequality-A-Global-Perspective-42986; and David Hope and Julian Limberg, “The Economic Consequences of Major Tax Cuts for the Rich,” Socio-Economic Review 20:2 (2022), pp. 539–59.

39.  Heather Boushey, Unbound: How Inequality Constricts our Economy and What We Can Do About It (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019).

40.  Phillip Inman and Richard Partington, “IMF Urges UK Government to Reconsider Tax-Cutting Plans,” Guardian, September 28, 2022, theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/27/kwasi-kwartengs-tax-cuts-likely-to-increase-inequality-imf-says; Fergus Finlay, “Trussonomics Failings Could Signal the End of Trickle-Down Economics,” Irish Examiner, October 8, 2022, irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/arid-40985438.html; and Roger Partington, “The Mini-Budget that Broke Britain—and Liz Truss,” Guardian, October 20, 2022, theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/20/the-mini-budget-that-broke-britain-and-liz-truss.

41.  Adam Bychawski, “Will Think Tanks Be Kicked Out of Downing Street After the Truss Disaster?,” Open Democracy, October 27, 2022, opendemocracy.net/en/think-tanks-institute-economic-affairs-liz-truss-economy-crash/, and Quiggin, Zombie Economics, pp. 149–50.

3. It’s Dirty Money

  1.  Davis, Hecht, Burchardt, Gough, Hirsch, Rowlingson, and Summers, Living on Different Incomes in London, especially pp. 33–4.

  2.  Of course, there are always exceptions. In political philosophy, an example is Leif Wenar’s Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence, and the Rules that Run the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), which will be discussed later.

  3.  Giridharadas, Winners Take All, and Peter S. Goodman, Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World (New York: HarperCollins, 2022).

  4.  auschwitz.org/en/history/auschwitz-iii/ig-farben/.

  5.  Andreas Wirsching, “Nazi Legacies? New Research on the Question of Continuities,” German Yearbook of Contemporary History 5 (2021), pp. 215–31, quotations on p. 216, and David de Jong, Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties (Boston, MA: Harper Collins Publishing, 2022).

  6.  bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-18/pay-check-podcast-episode-2-how-much-did-slavery-in-u-s-cost-black-wealth. Data on the racial composition of the American population is taken from the US Census website, census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/RHI625221. For a brief historical account of the ‘40 acres and a mule’ proposal that would give every freed former slave a plot of land, and all Black people a protected area without White people, see Henry Louis Gates Jr., “The Truth Behind ‘40 Acres and a Mule’ ” (undated), pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/the-truth-behind-40-acres-and-a-mule/.

  7.  gla.ac.uk/news/archiveofnews/2018/september/headline_607154_en.html.

  8.  For Otele’s arguments, see Olivette Otele, “The Logic of Slavery Reparations,” Guardian, March 31, 2023, theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2023/mar/31/more-than-money-the-logic-of-slavery-reparations. On the case of Haiti and France, see Piketty, A Brief History of Equality, pp. 68–75.

  9.  On the reparations by the Trevelyan family, see Laura Trevelyan, “My Family Owned 1,000 Slaves and Profited from the Trade: This Is How I Am Trying to Make Amends,” Guardian, March 24, 2023, theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/25/slaves-trade-amends-grenada-laura-trevelyan, and Joshua Nevett, “Laura Trevelyan: My Slavery Link to MP Shows Reality of Reparations,” BBC News, April 2, 2023, bbc.com/news/uk-politics-65125332.

10.  J. C. Sharman, The Despot Guide to Wealth Management: On the International Campaign against Grand Corruption (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017); Patrick Jackson, “Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue and His Love of Bugattis and Michael Jackson,” BBC News, July 28, 2021, bbc.com/news/world-africa-58001750; “Equatorial Guinea Vice President Threatens to Expel French Ambassador,” Africanews, June 10, 2022, africanews.com/2022/06/10/equatorial-guinea-vice-president-threatens-to-expel-french-ambassador-over-corruption-case/; and Cecilia Macaulay, “Equatorial Guinea’s Obiang: World’s Longest-Serving President Eyes Re-election,” BBC News, November 20, 2022, bbc.com/news/world-africa-63674539.

11.  Wenar, Blood Oil.

12.  Tom Burgis, Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World (London: William Collins, 2020).

13.  Sharman, Despot Guide to Wealth Management, p. 26.

14.  Anna Politkovskaia, A Russian Diary: A Journalist’s Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin’s Russia (London: Random House, 2007); Karen Dawisha, Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014); Miriam Lanskoy and Dylan Myles-Primakoff, “Power and Plunder in Putin’s Russia,” Journal of Democracy 29:1 (2018), pp. 67–85; and Bastian Obermayer and Frederik Obermaier, The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money (London: Oneworld, 2016), especially Chapter 11.

15.  On the Russian influence in Italy, see “The Corruption of Italian Democracy: Russian Influence over Italy’s League,” GAB: The Global Anticorruption Blog, April 8, 2022, globalanticorruptionblog.com/2022/04/08/russian-influence-over-italys-league/#more-20054. On the suspicion that the Kremlin funds Forum voor Democratie, see “Russische connecties rond Baudet: geen geheim meer, toch een zorg,” NOS Nieuws, February 24, 2022, nos.nl/artikel/2465140-russische-connecties-rond-baudet-geen-geheim-meer-toch-een-zorg. See also Obermayer and Obermaier, The Panama Papers, on the legal possibilities of shifting very large sums of money completely anonymously.

16.  Brian Solomon, “The Rise and Fall of Silvio Berlusconi’s Fortune,” Forbes, November 10, 2011, forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2011/11/10/the-rise-and-fall-of-silvio-berlusconis-fortune/?sh=172165452906. For a discussion of the corruption-enhancing measures, see Alberto Vannucci, “The Controversial Legacy of ‘Mani Pulite’: A Critical Analysis of Italian Corruption and Anti-Corruption Policies,” Bulletin of Italian Politics 1:2 (2009), pp. 233–64.

17.  Barry Meier, “In Guilty Plea, OxyContin Maker to Pay $600 Million,” New York Times, May 10, 2007, nytimes.com/2007/05/10/business/worldbusiness/10iht-10oxy.5653543.html.

18.  Alex Morrell, “The OxyContin Clan: The $14 Billion Newcomer to Forbes 2015 List of richest U.S. Families,” Forbes, July 1, 2015, forbes.com/sites/alexmorrell/2015/07/01/the-oxycontin-clan-the-14-billion-newcomer-to-forbes-2015-list-of-richest-u-s-families/?sh=7ba5e2f875e0.

19.  “Profile: Sackler Family,” Forbes, December 16, 2020, forbes.com/profile/sackler/?sh=405aaa825d63, and Jan Hoffman, “Sackler and Purdue Pharma Reach New Deal with States over Opioids,” New York Times, March 3, 2022, nytimes.com/2022/03/03/health/sacklers-purdue-oxycontin-settlement.html.

20.  In the USA, the total cost of the bailout has been estimated to be in the order of $500 billion—see Tom Harbert, “Here’s How Much the 2008 Bailouts Really Cost,” February 21, 2019, mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/heres-how-much-2008-bailouts-really-cost. For an accessible explanation to what caused the 2008 financial crisis, see the 2010 documentary Inside Job, directed by Charles Ferguson. For the ethical discussion, see Loren E. Lomasky, “Liberty after Lehman Brothers,” Social Philosophy & Policy 28:1, (2011), pp. 135–65; Rutger Claassen, “Financial Crisis and the Ethics of Moral Hazard,” Social Theory and Practice 41:3 (2015), pp. 527–51; and Lisa Herzog (ed.), Just Financial Markets? Finance in a Just Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

21.  Edward Broughton, “The Bhopal Disaster and its Aftermath: A Review,” Environmental Health 4:6 (2005), pp 1–6, data on p. 3.

22.  Sanjoy Hazarika, “Bhopal Payments by Union Carbide Set at $470 Million,” New York Times, February 15, 1989, nytimes.com/1989/02/15/business/bhopal-payments-by-union-carbide-set-at-470-million.html.

23.  Here’s the full list of brands: Benetton (Italy), Bonmarché (UK), Cato Fashions (USA), the Children’s Place (USA), El Corte Inglés (Spain), Joe Fresh (Loblaw, Canada), Kik (Germany), Mango (Spain), Matalan (UK), Primark (UK/Ireland), and Texman (Denmark).

24.  On the fund, see cleanclothes.org/news/2015/04/17/ccc-believes-benettons-1-1-million-usd-contribution-insufficient. On the garment industry ten years after the Rana Plaza disaster, see Olivia Rockeman, “A Decade After the Rana Plaza Collapse, Garment Workers Are Still Exploited,” Bloomberg, April 19, 2023, bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-19/rana-plaza-collapse-a-decade-on-garment-workers-still-exploited.

25.  On Amazon becoming the largest public company in 2019, see James Dean, “Amazon Takes Title of World’s Biggest Company for First Time,” The Times, January 8, 2019, thetimes.co.uk/article/amazon-takes-title-of-world-s-biggest-company-for-first-time-6k3dhlwz3. In the following years, Amazon lost that position but has remained among one of the largest public companies in the world. For an account of the dismissal of half a dozen senior managers after workers at the Staten Island Amazon warehouse voted to form the first union at Amazon in the United States, see Karen Weise and Noam Scheiber, “Amazon Abruptly Fires Senior Managers Tied to Unionized Warehouse,” nytimes.com/2022/05/06/technology/amazon-fires-managers-union-staten-island.html. Obviously, all companies are subject to local labor laws, and in some countries, such as those belonging to the EU, there is a fundamental right to unionize. Yet that still doesn’t guarantee fair treatment. In late December 2022, workers at six Amazon warehouses in Germany went on strike to reiterate once again their demand for the same labor conditions as those enjoyed by colleagues who work according to the sector-wide collective labor agreement—something the union had been demanding for the previous ten years.

26.  James Bloodworth, Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain (London: Atlantic, 2018); see also Jodi Kantor, Karen Weise, and Grace Ashford, “Inside Amazon’s Worst Human Resources Problem,” New York Times, October 24, 2021, nytimes.com/2021/10/24/technology/amazon-employee-leave-errors.html. An undercover reporter in a Dutch warehouse sketched a similar picture of unpleasant and soul-destroying work, but also with slightly less rigid levels of control—Jeroen van Bergeijk, “Vijf weken undercover in het distributiecentrum van Bol.com,” De Volksrant, December 29, 2018, volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/vijf-weken-undercover-in-het-distributiecentrum-van-bol-com~b18a9510/.

27.  Heather Stewart, “ ‘I Just Want to Live’: How UK Amazon Workers Came to Brink of Strike,” Guardian, October 11, 2022, theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/11/i-just-want-to-live-how-uk-amazon-workers-came-to-brink-of-strike. On the human right for workers to organize, see ilo.org/global/standards/subjects-covered-by-international-labor-standards/freedom-of-association/lang–en/index.htm. On the first Amazon union in the US, see Michael Sainato, “Amazon Workers in New York Make History by Voting to Form Union,” Guardian, April 1, 2022, theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/01/amazon-union-groups-see-hope-workers-vote-alabama-new-york.

28.  For the interview when Bezos returned from space, see youtu.be/NvvVm375daA. For reporting on the European sales and profits in 2021, see Rupert Neate, “Amazon had Sales Income of €44bn in Europe in 2020 but Paid No Corporation Tax,” Guardian, May 4, 2021, theguardian.com/technology/2021/may/04/amazon-sales-income-europe-corporation-tax-luxembourg.

29.  irs.gov/newsroom/the-tax-gap.

30.  The IRS reports on its website (last accessed June 10, 2023): “Based on the projections for 2017–2019, the estimated average gross tax gap is projected to be $540 billion per year. The associated voluntary compliance rate is projected to be 85.1 percent. The projection of enforced and other late payments is $70 billion, which yields a net tax gap projection of $470 billion,” irs.gov/newsroom/the-tax-gap. For the number of children in the US, see childstats.gov/americaschildren/tables/pop1.asp (data for 2023). At a rate of return of 4 percent, that would give a child $162,848 on the day they turned eighteen.

31.  Gabriel Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).

32.  Data from Annette Alstadsæter, Niels Johannesen, and Gabriel Zucman, “Tax Evasion and Inequality,” American Economic Review 109:6 (2019), pp. 2073–103. See also idem, “Who Owns the Wealth in Tax Havens? Macro Evidence and Implications for Global Inequality,” Journal of Public Economics 163 (2018), pp. 89–100, and Zucman, The Hidden Wealth of Nations.

33.  The key source of information on the Panama Papers is ICIJ, “Giant Leak of Offshore Financial Records Exposes Global Array of Crime and Corruption,” April 3, 2016, icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/20160403-panama-papers-global-overview/.

34.  Malleson, Against Inequality, pp. 27–9.

35.  See Tobias Steinmaurer, “Anzeigen wegen Sozialbetrugs 2022 stark zurückgegangen,” Der Standard, March 20, 2022, derstandard.at/story/2000144671199/anzeigen-im-sozialbetrug-2022-stark-zurueckgegangen, for the reporting on social fraud, and Christian Domke Seidel, “Steuerlücke: Österreich wird um 15 Milliarden betrogen,” Arbeit & Wirtschaft, October 8, 2022, arbeit-wirtschaft.at/steuerluecke-oesterreich-wird-um-15-milliarden-betrogen/, for the reporting on tax fraud.

36.  On profit shifting, see Peter Dietsch, Catching Capital: The Ethics of Tax Competition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), and Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay (New York: W. W. Norton, 2019).

37.  Saez and Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice, pp. 75 and 77.

38.  On the wealth-defense industry, see Jeffrey Winters, Oligarchy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Brooke Harrington, Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Jeffrey Winters, “Wealth Defense and the Complicity of Liberal Democracy,” in Jack Knight and Melissa Schwartzberg (eds), Wealth, Yearbook of the American Society of Legal and Political Philosophy (New York: NYU Press, 2017), pp. 158–225; and Chuck Collins, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millionaires to Hide Trillions (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021).

39.  Chuck Collins, “The Wealth-Defense Industry,” Nation, October 9, 2018, thenation.com/article/archive/the-wealth-defense-industry/.

40.  Payne, Pearl et al., Tax the Rich!; Saez and Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice, pp. 13–15.

41.  Payne, Pearl et al., Tax the Rich!, pp. 55–6.

4. It’s Undermining Democracy

  1.  ohchr.org/en/human-rights/universal-declaration/translations/english.

  2.  On the US being an oligarchy, see Jeffrey A. Winters and Benjamin I. Page, “Oligarchy in the United States?,” Perspectives on Politics 7:4 (2009), pp. 731–51. On Hungary under Victor Orbán, see András L. Pap, Democratic Decline in Hungary. Law and Society in an Illiberal Democracy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), and Zsuzsanna Szelényi, “How Viktor Orbán Built His Illiberal State,” New Republic, April 5, 2022, newrepublic.com/article/165953/viktor-orban-built-illiberal-state.

  3.  See, for example, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (London: Viking, 2018), and Yascha Mounk, The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and How to Save It (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). On analyses and critiques by indigenous scholars, see, for example, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Dancing on Our Turtle’s Back (Winnipeg: ARP Books, 2011), and Glen Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014).

  4.  Alternatives to electoral voting are sortition (election by lot) and citizens’ assemblies. While a debate about these proposals is important and needs to be conducted, my focus in this chapter is on the erosion of currently existing democratic systems. For arguments defending sortition and citizens’ assemblies, see David Van Reybrouck, Against Elections (London: Bodley Head, 2016), and John Gastil and Erik Olin Wright (eds), Legislature by Lot (London and New York: Verso Books, 2018).

  5.  Charles Beitz, Political Equality: An Essay in Democratic Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989); Harry Brighouse, “Egalitarianism and Equal Availability of Political Influence,” Journal of Political Philosophy 4:2 (1996), pp. 118–41; and Jack Knight and James Johnson, “What Sort of Political Equality Does Deliberative Democracy Require?,” in James Bohman and William Rehg (eds), Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), pp. 279–319.

  6.  Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017).

  7.  Mark O’Connell, “Why Silicon Valley Billionaires are Prepping for the Apocalypse in New Zealand,” Guardian, February 15, 2018, theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-valley-billionaires-are-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-in-new-zealand.

  8.  The situation described is as of early 2023. Note that these rules are currently under review in several countries, precisely because the practice of golden visa and golden passports is so contested—see visaguide.world/golden-visa/ and goldenvisas.com/.

  9.  Andrew Rettman, “Russian Elite Flocks to Buy Maltese Passports,” euobserver, January 11, 2018, euobserver.com/rule-of-law/140512, and Geraldine Scott, “£2 Million ‘Golden Visa’ Review Is Long Overdue, Ministers Told,” The Times, November 7, 2022, thetimes.co.uk/article/2-million-golden-visa-review-is-long-overdue-ministers-told-32xclcvq2.

10.  Rettman, “Russian Elite Flocks to Buy Maltese Passports.” For the recommendation by the European Commission, see home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/recommendation-limit-access-individuals-connected-russian-belarusian-government-citizenship_en and ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_22_1731.

11.  Judith Sunderland, “Endless Tragedies in the Mediterranean Sea,” Human Rights Watch, September 13, 2022, hrw.org/news/2022/09/13/endless-tragedies-mediterranean-sea. On Malta’s neglect of its duty to rescue those in danger at sea, see ecre.org/14680-2/. For the situation in London, see Mark Townsend, “Shared Rooms, Rancid Food, No Clothes: New Report Lays Bare Shocking Conditions of Those Seeking Refuge in UK,” Observer, April 22, 2023, theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/22/shared-rooms-rancid-food-no-clothes-new-report-lays-bare-shocking-conditions-of-those-seeking-refuge-in-uk. For US policies, see Ari Sawyer, “Biden ‘Asylum Ban’ Rule Would Send Thousands in Danger,” Human Rights Watch, February 28, 2023, hrw.org/news/2023/02/28/biden-asylum-ban-rule-would-send-thousands-danger.

12.  Thomas Christiano, “Money in Politics,” in David Estlund (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 241–58; see also Thomas Christiano, “The Uneasy Relationship between Democracy and Capital,” Social Philosophy & Policy 27:1 (2010), pp. 195–217.

13.  Andrew Prokop, “Donald Trump Made One Shockingly Insightful Comment During the First GP Debate,” VOX, August 6, 2015, vox.com/2015/8/6/9114565/donald-trump-debate-money.

14.  Tom-Jan Meeus, “Eén man als fondsenwerver, adviseur, donateur, lobbyist: is dit integer, CDA?,” NRC Handelsblad, June 26, 2021, nrc.nl/nieuws/2021/06/26/een-man-als-fondsenwerver-adviseur-donateur-lobbyist-is-dit-integer-cda-a4048866. For the government reports on the Dutch taxation system, see tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/brieven_regering/detail?id=2020Z08891&did=2020D19038.

15.  Christiano, “Money in Politics,” p. 250.

16.  Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12:3 (2014), pp. 564–81; Wouter Schakel, “Unequal Policy Responsiveness in the Netherlands,” Socio-Economic Review 19:1 (2021), pp. 37–57; and Ruben B. Mathisen, “Affluence and Influence in a Social Democracy,” American Political Science Review 117:2 (2023), pp. 751–8.

17.  ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/public/homePage.do?redir=false&locale=en.

18.  “Rupert Murdoch,” Britannica Online, britannica.com/biography/Rupert-Murdoch; Toby Helm and James Robinson, “Phone Hacking: Rupert Murdoch ‘Urged Gordon Brown’ to Halt Labor Attacks,” Guardian, April 9, 2011, theguardian.com/uk/2011/apr/09/phone-hacking-rupert-murdoch-gordon-brown; and Jim Waterson, “News of the World: 10 Years Since Phone-Hacking Scandal Brought Down Tabloid,” Guardian, July 10, 2021, theguardian.com/media/2021/jul/10/news-of-the-world-10-years-since-phone-hacking-scandal-brought-down-tabloid. For the commentary by Henry Porter from the Observer, see Henry Porter, “Murdoch’s Hunger for Power Is a Looming Threat to Democracy,” Guardian, February 28, 2010, theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/feb/28/henry-porter-news-international-murdoch. See also Peter Hägel, Billionaires in World Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 170–84.

19.  Michael Heseltine, “Even the Murdoch Press is Now Waking Up to the Truth: Brexit Was an Act of Self-Harm,” Guardian, June 10, 2022, theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/10/rupert-murdoch-press-brexit-eu.

20.  On the attribution of the racist shooting incident to watching Fox News 24/7, see the video interview at edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2023/04/20/klint-ludwig-ralph-yarl-andrew-lester-kansas-city-shooting-cnntm-vpx.cnn. For Barack Obama on Murdoch’s business model, see Elias Visontay, “Rupert Murdoch Has Fuelled Polarisation of Society, Barack Obama Says,” Guardian, March 28, 2023, theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/29/rupert-murdoch-has-fuelled-polarisation-of-society-barack-obama-says.

21.  For an overview of all the wrongs done by Fox and Murdoch’s businesses more generally, see Manuele López Restrepo, “Rupert Murdoch Is under Scrutiny for His Media Empire. It’s Far from the First Time,” NPR, February 28, 2023, npr.org/2023/02/28/1160137620/rupert-murdoch-fox-news-dominion-lawsuit-defamation-jan6-riot-trump-election. On Fox’s profound influence on the Trump White House, see Jane Mayer, “Trump TV,” New Yorker, March 11, 2019, newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/11/the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house. On the Dominion settlement, see Dominic Folkenflik and Mary Yang, “Fox News Settles Blockbuster Defamation Lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems,” NPR, April 18, 2023, npr.org/2023/04/18/1170339114/fox-news-settles-blockbuster-defamation-lawsuit-with-dominion-voting-systems, and Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos for commentary: newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/with-the-fox-dominion-settlement-were-still-at-the-mercy-of-a-billionaire-dynasty.

22.  Umberto Eco, “Ur-Fascism,” New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995, nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/. See also Jason Stanley, How Propaganda Works (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).

23.  Jane Mayer, “Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who Are Waging a War against Obama,” New Yorker, August 30, 2010; Theda Skocpol and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, “The Koch Network and Republican Party Extremism,” Perspectives on Politics 14:3 (2016), pp. 681–99; and Hägel, Billionaires in World Politics, pp. 155–70.

24.  On how basic democratic principles are trampled by the Republicans, see Zack Beauchamps, “The Republican Revolt against Democracy, Explained in 13 Charts,” VOX, March 1, 2021, vox.com/policy-and-politics/22274429/republicans-anti-democracy-13-charts. On why the Republicans won’t change their stance on guns, see Carl Hulse, “Why Republicans Won’t Budge on Guns,” New York Times, May 26, 2022, nytimes.com/2022/05/26/us/republicans-gun-control.html. On the victims of gun violence, see Kiara Alfonseca, “More than 13,900 People Killed in Gun Violence So Far in 2023,” ABC News, May 2, 2023, abcnews.go.com/US/116-people-died-gun-violence-day-us-year/story?id=97382759.

25.  Giridharadas, Winners Take All, and Goodman, Davos Man.

26.  Ibid.

27.  Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist Class (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000); William K. Carroll, The Making of the Transnationalist Capitalist Class (London: Zed Books, 2010); and Peter Philips, Giants: The Global Power Elite (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018).

28.  The central goal of wealth holders to make their capital accumulate further is evident from various sources, including sociological research and accounts of those who are part of, or grew up, in that world. See also the following autobiographical accounts: Collins, The Wealth Hoarders, pp. 1–15; Abigail Disney, “I Was Taught from a Young Age to Protect My Dynastic Wealth,” Atlantic, June 17, 2021, theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/abigail-disney-rich-protect-dynastic-wealth-propublica-tax/619212/; and Engelhorn, Geld.

29.  Dean J. Machin, “Political Inequality and the ‘Super-Rich’: Their Money or (Some of) Their Political Rights,” Res Publica 19 (2013), pp. 121–39.

5. It’s Setting the World on Fire

  1.  For the profit statements, see Hanna Ziady, “Big Oil Faces Scrutiny After Huge Jump in Profits,” CNN Business, February 8, 2023, edition.cnn.com/2023/02/08/energy/big-oil-profits/index.html. For President Biden’s remarks, see whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/10/31/remarks-by-president-biden-on-recent-reports-of-major-oil-companies-making-record-setting-profits/. For the statement by Greenpeace, see twitter.com/GreenpeaceUK/status/1623346811002884101?lang=en. For other relevant reporting, see also Sam Meredith, “Big Oil Poised to Smash Annual Profit Records—Sparking Outcry from Campaigners and Activists,” CNBC Energy, January 27, 2023, cnbc.com/2023/01/27/big-oil-earnings-preview-energy-giants-to-smash-annual-profit-records.html.

  2.  Changes in the average global level of greenhouse gases emissions are reported by the World Meterological Organization in its Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. See public.wmo.int/en/greenhouse-gas-bulletin.

  3.  A 2022 study that came out earlier that year showed that the big fossil-fuel companies spend only a tiny fraction (12 percent) of their long-term investments (so-called “capital expenditures”) on low-carbon activities. Ironically, most of their communications material contains at least one green claim, and they spend $750 million per year on climate-related communications. See “Big Oil’s Real Agenda on Climate Change 2022,” Influencemap, September 2022, influencemap.org/report/Big-Oil-s-Agenda-on-Climate-Change-2022-19585. For Marc van Baal’s comments on the lack of adequate climate commitments from the oil industry, see Andrew Ross Sorkin et al., “Following Setbacks, Climate Activists Rethink Their Approach,” New York Times, May 30, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/05/30/business/dealbook/climate-shareholder-activists-oil.html.

  4.  George Monbiot, “For the Sake of Life on Earth, We Must Put a Limit on Wealth,” Guardian, September 19, 2019, theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/19/life-earth-wealth-megarich-spending-power-environmental-damage, and Thomas Piketty, “Redistributing Wealth to Save the Planet,” Le Monde, November 8, 2022, lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2022/11/08/redistributing-wealth-to-save-the-planet/.

  5.  These greenhouse gases have different chemical properties. For example, methane lingers in the atmosphere for much less time than carbon dioxide, which can stay there for more than a hundred years. But methane is much more potent as a greenhouse gas, and hence more harmful for the period that it is in the atmosphere. For most of the discussions in this book, these distinctions do not matter much, and I will sometimes use “carbon” as a shorthand for all greenhouse gases. The IPCC and other climate scientists use “carbon dioxide equivalent” when they need one metric to discuss the effects of all the different greenhouse gases. For a state-of-the-art overview on climate change, as well as discussion of possible solutions, see Greta Thunberg (ed.), The Climate Book (London: Allen Lane, 2022).

  6.  Neela Banjeree, Lisa Song, and David Hasemyer, “Exxon’s Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuel’s Role in Global Warming Decades Ago,” Inside Climate News, September 16, 2015, insideclimatenews.org/news/16092015/exxons-own-research-confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming/, and G. Supran, S. Rahmstorf, and N. Orekes, “Assessing ExxonMobil’s Global Warming Projections,” Science 379 (2023), article no. eabk0063.

  7.  Piers Forster, Debbie Rosen, Robin Lamboll, and Joeri Rogelj, “What the Tiny Remaining 1.5C Carbon Budget Means for Climate Policy,” Carbon Brief, November 11, 2022, carbonbrief.org/guest-post-what-the-tiny-remaining-1-5c-carbon-budget-means-for-climate-policy/.

  8.  The most detailed overview of all the effects can be found in the IPCC reports, such as IPCC, Global Warming of 1.5°C (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), ipcc.ch/sr15/. See also IPCC, Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022). All reports published by the IPCC can be downloaded from ipcc.ch/reports/. For accessible introductions to the climate and biodiversity crises, see Mike Berners-Lee, There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), or David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth. Life After Warming (New York: Penguin Random House, 2020). See also the film A Life on Our Planet, in which David Attenborough describes how he has, over the span of his lifetime, witnessed the health of the planet deteriorate. For water shortage in South Africa, see “Likelihood of Cape Town Water Crisis Tripled by Climate Change,” World Weather Attribution, July 13, 2018, worldweatherattribution.org/the-role-of-climate-change-in-the-2015-2017-drought-in-the-western-cape-of-south-africa/.

  9.  “Heavy Rainfall Which Led to Severe Flooding in Western Europe Made More Likely by Climate Change,” World Weather Attribution, August 23, 2021, worldweatherattribution.org/heavy-rainfall-which-led-to-severe-flooding-in-western-europe-made-more-likely-by-climate-change/.

10.  On the massive number of deaths of animals during wildfires, see Walfrido Moraes Tomas et al., “Distance Sampling Surveys Reveal 17 Million Vertebrates Directly Killed by 2020’s Wildfires in the Pantanal, Brazil,” Nature Scientific Reports 11 (2021), article no. 23547. On the islands in the Pacific becoming uninhabitable due to climate change, see Curt Storlazzi et al., “Most Atolls Will Be Uninhabitable by the Mid-21st Century Because of Sea-Level Rise Exacerbating Wave-Driven Flooding,” Science Advances 4:4 (2018), article no. eaap9741.

11.  Lucas Chancel, “Global Carbon Inequality over 1990–2019,” Nature Sustainability 5 (2022), pp. 931–8; data on p. 932.

12.  Ibid., pp. 931–2.

13.  Ibid.

14.  For an example of an organization selling high-quality carbon offset credits, see atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight/. Among economists and others, this is the debate on “the social cost of carbon.” For how that notion can be used for thinking about climate duties of individuals, see Colin Hickey, “The Social Cost of Carbon, Abatement Costs, and Individual Climate Duties,” Ethics, Policy & Environment (2022), doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2022.2133939.

15.  vu.nl/nl/nieuws/2021/rechtenstudenten-tonen-misleidende-reclame-shell-aan.

16.  Ingrid Robeyns, “For a EU-Wide Tax on Air Travel to Fight Climate Change,” in Twelve Stars Initiative, Bertelsmann Stiftung (eds), Twelve Stars: Philosophers Chart a Course for Europe (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann Stiftung, 2019), pp. 109–16.

17.  “Private Jets: Can the Superrich Supercharge Zero-Emissions Aviation?,” Transport & Environment, May 27, 2021, transportenvironment.org/discover/private-jets-can-the-super-rich-supercharge-zero-emission-aviation/, and Jasper Faber and Sander Raphaël, “CO₂ Emissions from Private Flights to the World Economic Forum,” CE Delft, February 2023, cedelft.eu/publications/co2-emissions-from-private-flights-to-the-world-economic-forum/.

18.  The political philosopher Catriona McKinnon argues that those behind climate denialism, and those not acting on climate change, should be taken to the international criminal courts. See her argument in “Climate Crimes Must Be Brought to Justice,” UNESCO Courier, July–September 2019, pp. 10–12, un-ilibrary.org/content/journals/22202293/2019/3/2/read.

19.  If the alleged imperatives of shareholder-driven companies stand in the way of making these required changes, then perhaps we should consider nationalizing the fossil-fuel industry. For an analysis of this scenario, see Fergus Green and Ingrid Robeyns, “On the Merits and Limits of Nationalising the Fossil Fuel Industry,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 91 (2022), pp. 53–80. For further arguments that the fossil-fuel industry should be nationalized, see Kate Aronoff, “The Death of the Fossil Fuel Industry Could Be Disastrous for Workers. Now’s the Time to Nationalise It,” Novara Media, December 8, 2020, novaramedia.com/2020/12/08/; Johanna Bozuwa and Olúfémi O. Táíwò, “It’s Time to Nationalize Shell. Private Oil Companies Are No Longer Fit for Purpose,” Guardian, June 7, 2021, theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/07/its-time-to-nationalize-shell-private-oil-companies-are-no-longer-fit-for-purpose; and Robert Pollin, “Nationalize the U.S. Fossil Fuel Industry to Save the Planet,” The American Prospect, April 8, 2022, prospect.org/environment/nationalize-us-fossil-fuel-industry-to-save-the-planet/.

20.  Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010). For the 2014 study, see Robert J. Brulle, “Institutionalizing Delay: Founding Funding and the Creation of U.S. Climate Change Counter-Movement Organizations,” Climatic Change 122 (2014), pp. 681–94.

21.  The carbon budget is determined by a range of factors, and its precise size is thus subject to debate. But that debate makes little difference to the conclusion that very little time is left and that it is crucially important to cut down emissions radically and very fast. Also, the carbon budget does not include other greenhouse gases, such as methane, for which the bioindustry is primarily responsible. On the carbon budget, see Forster et al., “What the Tiny Remaining 1.5C Carbon Budget Means for Climate Policy.”

22.  On private firefighters for the super-rich, see Ethan Varian, “While California Fires Rage, the Rich Hire Private Firefighters,” New York Times, October 26, 2019, nytimes.com/2019/10/26/style/private-firefighters-california.html, and Alexandra Ulmer, “Insight: Private Firefighers Fuel Tensions While Saving California Vineyards and Mansions,” Reuters, May 14, 2021, reuters.com/world/us/private-firefighters-fuel-tensions-while-saving-california-vineyards-mansions-2021-05-14/. On the billionaires buying bunkers, see Douglas Rushkoff, “The Super-Rich ‘Preppers’ Planning to Save Themselves from the Apocalypse,” Observer, September 4, 2022, theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff, and idem, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires (New York: W. W. Norton 2022).

23.  My thinking about these questions has benefited a great deal from the insights of political theorists and political philosophers who are specialists in moral questions related to climate change. For some key references in this “climate ethics” literature, see, for example, Steve Vanderheiden, Atmospheric Justice: A Political Theory of Climate Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); Simon Caney, “Climate Change and the Duties of the Advantaged,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 13:1 (2010), pp. 203–28; Stephen Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Elizabeth Cripps, Climate Change and the Moral Agent: Individual Duties in an Interdependent World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Henry Shue, Climate Justice: Vulnerability and Protection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Simon Caney, “Two Kinds of Climate Justice: Avoiding Harm and Sharing Burdens,” Journal of Political Philosophy 22:2 (2014), pp. 125–49; Clare Heyward and Dominic Roser (eds), Climate Justice in a Non-Ideal World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Dominic Roser and Christian Seidl, Climate Justice: An Introduction (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017); and Simon Caney, “Climate Justice,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive (Winter 2021), plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/justice-climate. Ecological economists also put distributive questions center stage, and often provide scenarios for what needs to be done. See, among others, Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet, second edition (London: Routledge, 2016); Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics (London: Penguin Random House, 2017); and Ian Gough, Heat, Greed and Human Need (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2017).

24.  Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty, “Carbon and Inequality: From Kyoto to Paris,” WID (World Inequality Database), Working Paper 2015/7 (November 2015), p. 28, and Lucas Chancel, Philipp Bothe, and Tancrède Voituriez, Climate Inequality Report 2023 (Paris: World Inequality Lab, 2023), p. 19. For Atmosfair’s personal carbon budget, see atmosfair.de/en/green_travel/annual_climate_budget/.

25.  Elke Stahfest, Lex Bouwman, Detlef P. van Vuren, Michel G. J. den Elzen, Bas Eickhout, and Pavel Kabat, “Climate Benefits of Changing Diet,” Climate Change 95 (2009), pp. 83–102; Peter Scarborough, Paul N. Appleby, Anja Mizdrak, Adam D. M. Briggs, Ruth C. Travis, Kathryn E. Bradbury, and Timothy J. Key, “Dietary Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Meat-Eaters, Fish-Eaters, Vegetarians and Vegans in the UK,” Climate Change 125 (2014), pp. 179–92; and George Monbiot, Regenesis: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet (London: Allen Lane, 2022).

26.  Ingrid Robeyns, “Freedom and Responsibility—Sustainable Prosperity through a Capabilities Lens,” CUSP Essay Series on the Morality of Sustainable Prosperity, no. 4 (2017), pp. 1–17, cusp.ac.uk/themes/m/m1-4/.

27.  Emrys Westacott, The Wisdom of Frugality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).

28.  Keith Hyams, “A Just Response to Climate Change: Personal Carbon Allowances and the Normal-Functioning Approach,” Journal of Social Philosophy 40:2 (2009), pp. 237–56.

29.  Martin L. Weitzman, “Is the Price System or Rationing More Effective in Getting a Commodity to Those Who Need it Most?,” Bell Journal of Economics 8 (1977), pp. 517–24.

30.  Bill Gates, How to Avoid Climate Disaster (London: Allen Lane, 2022), and Mark Jacobson, No Miracles Needed: How Today’s Technology Can Save our Climate and Clean Our Air (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023). See also Damian Carrington, “ ‘No Miracles Needed’: Prof Mark Jacobson on How Wind, Sun and Water Can Power the World,” Guardian, January 23, 2023, theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/23/no-miracles-needed-prof-mark-jacobson-on-how-wind-sun-and-water-can-power-the-world. For a study with a concrete set of scenarios on how to move to net-zero emissions in the US, see Eric Larson et al., Net-Zero America: Potential Pathways, Infrastructure, and Impacts, final report (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2021), netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/the-report. This report lists as one of the risks the up-front capital that needs to be mobilized—at least $2.5 trillion of additional capital.

31.  Project Drawdown has developed an extensive list of strategies to halt and possibly even reverse climate change—see drawdown.org/solutions.

32.  Andreas Malm, How to Blow Up a Pipeline (London: Verso Books, 2021). For arguments that we should at the very least vote for a party that has a viable plan to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental challenges, see Aaron Maltais, “Radically Non-Ideal Climate Politics and the Obligation to at Least Vote Green,” Environmental Values 22:5 (2013), pp. 589–608.

6. Nobody Deserves to Be a Multimillionaire

  1.  Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996; first published in 1651), p. 89.

  2.  Clearly, it hasn’t always worked out this way. Many people have been excluded from the social contract: they have suffered from settler or colonial oppression, or they have been treated as second-class citizens, even within ostensibly democratic societies. All these oppressed and marginalized groups could rightly argue that the current social contract is not one of their own making, and demand a contract with fairer terms—one in which a democratic government truly fulfils its promise. In a certain sense, this is what John Rawls, the most influential American political philosopher of the twentieth century, believed. He argued that we should decide about the rules of society from behind a “veil of ignorance”—not knowing who we would turn out to be. This thinking device would ideally prompt us to design rules that are fair and impartial. Rawls argued that citizens would choose principles of justice that would protect the fair value of our political liberties, provide fair equal opportunities for all, and ensure that socio-economic institutions were arranged so that inequalities would only be permitted if they would benefit the worst-off. Several political philosophers have argued that Rawlsian justice would entail limitarianism. If we were to make hypothetical choices for the rules and norms of the world in which we will live, putting fairness and impartiality first would prompt us to endorse limits to what we can accumulate. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, revised edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), and idem, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). On the claim that Rawlsian liberal egalitarianism would prompt us to endorse limitarianism, see Christian Neuhäuser, “The Self-Respect Argument for Limitarianism,” in Ingrid Robeyns (ed.), Having Too Much: Philosophical Essays on Limitarianism (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2023), pp. 271–96, and Lisa Herzog, “Liberal Egalitarianism Beyond Methodological Atomism,” in Ingrid Robeyns (ed.), Pluralizing Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024).

  3.  Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, The Myth of Ownership: Taxes and Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022). For other philosophical works that reject the claim that whatever we can reap in the market is morally ours, see John Christman, The Myth of Property (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), and Serena Olsaretti, Liberty, Desert, and the Market: A Philosophical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

  4.  Facundo Alvaredo, Bertrand Garbinti, and Thomas Piketty, “On the Share of Inheritance in Aggregate Wealth: Europe and the USA, 1900–2010,” Economica 84 (2017), pp. 239–60.

  5.  cerulli.com/reports/us-high-net-worth-and-ultra-high-net-worth-markets-2021.

  6.  D. W. Haslett, “Is Inheritance Justified?,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 15:2 (1986), pp. 122–55; David G. Duff, “Taxing Inherited Wealth: A Philosophical Argument,” Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 6:1 (1993), pp. 3–62; Daniel Halliday, The Inheritance of Wealth. Justice, Equality, and the Right to Bequeath (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Jørgen Pedersen, “Just Inheritance Taxation,” Philosophy Compass 13 (2018), article no. e12491; and Stefan Gosepath, “What, If Anything, Is Wrong with Bequest? A Preliminary Sketch,” in Hans-Christoph Schmidt am Busch, Daniel Halliday and Thomas Gutmann (eds), Inheritance and the Right to Bequeath (London: Routledge, 2023), pp. 15–35.

  7.  D. W. Haslett, “Inheritance,” in H. Lafollette (ed.), International Encyclopedia of Ethics (Wiley Online Library, 2013), onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee004.

  8.  Sem de Maagt and Ingrid Robeyns, “Inheritance and Inheritance Tax: An Ethical Analysis,” Ethical Annotation #3 (Utrecht: Utrecht University, Ethics Institute, 2017), uu.nl/sites/default/files/Ethical-Annotation-3-Inheritance-and-inheritance-tax.pdf, and Jens Beckert, “Why Is the Estate Tax So Controversial?,” Sociology 45 (2008), pp. 521–8.

  9.  Andrew Carnegie, “The Advantages of Poverty,” Nineteenth Century 29:169 (1891), pp. 367–85, quotation on p. 371.

10.  Philippe Van Parijs, “Nothing Wrong with Unearned Wealth?,” in Guido Erreygers and Toon Vandevelde (eds), Is Inheritance Legitimate? (Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1997), pp. 202–9.

11.  Various proposals to either abolish inheritance or else drastically increase inheritance taxation have been proposed in the scholarly literature. See, for example, John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, Volume III, Book V, ed. John M. Robson (Abingdon: Routledge, 1965; first published in 1848), pp. 799–912; Atkinson, Inequality, pp. 192–6; and Cornelius Cappelen and Jørgen Pedersen, “Just Wealth Transfer Taxation: Defending John Stuart Mill’s Scheme,” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 17:3 (2018), pp. 317–35.

12.  For earnings discrimination based on looks, see Daniel Hamermesh and Jeff Biddle, “Beauty and the Labor Market,” American Economic Review 84:5 (1994), pp. 1174–94.

13.  Jos Bivens and Jori Kandra, CEO Pay Has Skyrocketed 1,460 percent Since 1978 (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2022), epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2021/. See also Josh Bivens and Lawrence Mishel, “The Pay of Corporate Executives and Financial Professionals as Evidence of Rents in Top 1 Percent Incomes,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 27:3 (2013), pp. 57–77.

14.  On Mbappé’s pay in 2023, see Antonio Losada, “PSG Players, Kylian Mbappe Earn the Highest Ligue 1 Salaries,” PSG Post, March 30, 2023, psgpost.com/posts/psg-players-kylian-mbappe-earn-the-highest-ligue-1-salaries-01gwp5ss6hke. On Ronaldo’s pay in 2023, see Joshua Thomas, “Cristiano Ronaldo Salary in Saudi Arabia: How Much CR7 Is Paid by Al Nassr Contract, Earnings and Net Worth,” Sporting News, September 3, 2023, sportingnews.com/us/soccer/news/cristiano-ronaldo-salary-saudi-arabia-contract-net-worth/acb5hk0gkqdl1yxwfmhrupfx. On pay in the entertainment sector, see Lisette Voytko, “The Highest-Paid Entertainers 2022,” Forbes, February 9, 2022, forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2022/02/09/the-highest-paid-entertainers-2022/.

15.  Morris Pearl, “Foreword,” in Collins, Born on Third Base, p. ix. For an overview of different ways of looking at wage inequality, which all conclude that CEOs get paid too much, see Jeffrey Moriarty, “Do CEOs Get Paid Too Much?,” Business Ethics Quarterly 15:2 (2005), pp. 257–81.

16.  Data sources: bls.gov/oes/current/oes399011.htm for the USA; nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/job-profiles/nursery-worker for the UK; and nationaleberoepengids.nl/salaris/pedagogisch-medewerker-kinderopvang for the Netherlands.

17.  Carola Hoyos and Michael Steen, “Departing Shell Chief Calls for Pay Shake-up,” Financial Times, June 9, 2009, p. 15.

18.  Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook, The Winner-Takes-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us (New York: Free Press, 1995); and Robert H. Frank, Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).

19.  On the huge importance of the first 1,000 days of a person’s life, see, for example, James J. Heckman, “The Economics of Inequality: The Value of Early Childhood Education,” American Educator (Spring 2011), pp. 31–47, and Frances Campbell, Gabriella Contin, James J. Heckman, Seong Hyeok Moon, Rodrigo Pinto, Elizabeth Pungello, and Yi Pan, “Early Childhood Investments Substantially Boost Adult Health,” Science 343 (March 28, 2014), pp. 1478–85.

20.  Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 103.

21.  Huub Brouwer and Willem van der Deijl, “More Onerous Work Deserves Higher Pay,” in Anders Örtenblad (ed.), Debating Equal Pay (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), pp. 55–69.

22.  Daniel Hausman, “When Jack and Jill Make a Deal,” Social Philosophy and Policy 9:1 (1992), pp. 95–113, and Rutger Claassen, “Externalities as a Basis for Regulation: A Philosophical View,” Journal of Institutional Economics 12:3 (2016), pp. 541–63.

23.  Jason Hickel, Dylan Sullivan, and Huzaifa Zoomkawala, “Plunder.”

24.  MacKenzie Scott, “116 Organizations Driving Change,” Medium, July 28, 2020, mackenzie-scott.medium.com/116-organizations-driving-change-67354c6d733d.

25.  Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State (London: Anthem Press, 2013), and idem, The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (London: Penguin Books, 2018).

26.  On polio, see the information on the website of the World Health Organization, who.int/news-room/spotlight/history-of-vaccination/history-of-polio-vaccination.

27.  Herbert A. Simon, “UBI and the Flat Tax,” Boston Review, July 17, 2000, bostonreview.net/forum_response/herbert-simon-ubi-and-flat-tax/.

28.  For the UK, see Andrew Eyles, Lee Elliot Major, and Stephen Machin, Social Mobility: Past, Present and Future (London: Sutton Trust, 2022). For the US, see Raj Chetty, David Grusky, Maximilian Hell, Nathaniel Hendren, Robert Manduca, and Jimmy Narang, “The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility Since 1940,” Science 356 (April 28, 2017), pp. 398–406. See also Jens Beckert, “Durable Wealth: Institutions, Mechanisms, and Practices of Wealth Perpetuation,” Annual Review of Sociology 48 (2022), pp. 233–55.

29.  Michiel van der Heest, “Als je met 10–0 achterstand begint is hogerop komen geen klim op een ladder. Het is een tunnel waarin je moet blijven kruipen,” De Volkskrant, June 25, 2021, volkskrant.nl/columns-opinie/als-je-met-10-0-achterstand-begint-is-hogerop-komen-geen-klim-op-een-ladder-het-is-een-tunnel-waarin-je-moet-blijven-kruipen~b41eb81b/, and Tim ’S Jongers, Beledigende Broccoli (Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 2022).

7. There’s So Much We Can Do with the Money

  1.  For the UK, see George Dibb, Carsten Jung, Henry Parkes, and Shreya Nanda, Prosperity and Justice after the Pandemic (London: Institute for Policy Research, 2021), and Jasper Jolly, “Number of Billionaires in UK Reaches New Record During COVID Crisis,” Guardian, May 21, 2021, theguardian.com/business/2021/may/21/number-of-billionaires-in-uk-reached-new-record-during-covid-pandemic. For the USA, see Giacomo Tognini, “Meet the 44 Newcomers Joining the Forbes 400 List of America’s Richest People,” Forbes, October 5, 2021, forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2021/10/05/meet-the-44-newcomers-joining-the-forbes-400-list-of-americas-richest-people/. See also the 2023 Oxfam report Survival of the Richest.

  2.  “Bidder Pays $28m for Space Trip with Amazon’s Bezos,” BBC News, June 12, 2021, bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57457378.

  3.  The estimation of the 6,200 lives saved is based on $4,500 as the cost of saving a life. See givewell.org/cost-to-save-a-life.

  4.  Claudia Haarmann and Dirk Haarmann, “From Survival to Decent Employment: Basic Income Security in Namibia,” Basic Income Studies 2:1 (2007), article no. 11.

  5.  Basic Income Grant Coalition, Making the Difference! The BIG in Namibia. Basic Income Grant Pilot Project Assessment Report, April 2009.

  6.  Francesca Bastagli, Jessica Hagen-Zanker, Luke Harman, Valentina Barca, Georgina Sturge, Tanja Schmidt, and Luca Pellerano, Cash Transfers: What Does the Evidence Say? (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2016), and Johannes Haushofer and Jeremy Shapiro, “The Short-Term Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers to the Poor: Experimental Evidence from Kenya,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 131:4 (2016), pp. 1973–2042.

  7.  jeffsachs.org/recorded-lectures/5jf86pp5lxch35e6z3nct6xnmb8zy5.

  8.  The data on the average for poverty and financial insecurity is taken from the report How’s Life? Measuring Well-Being (Paris: OECD, 2020), p. 16. For the OECD relative-poverty statistics, see data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm. The data reported here is for 2021. Note that another poverty estimate puts the percentage of the population living in poverty in the UK at 20 percent; see Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Poverty in the UK (York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2023), jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/uk_poverty_2023_-_the_essential_guide_to_understanding_poverty_in_the_uk_0_0.pdf.

  9.  On meals in public schools in New York City, see schools.nyc.gov/school-life/food/menus.

10.  americandreamdoc.com/. For a film review, see Ingrid Robeyns, “Film Review: The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” Crooked Timber, January 11, 2023, crookedtimber.org/2023/01/11/film-review-the-american-dream-and-other-fairy-tales/.

11.  Cathy Free, “Farmer Dies; Town Learns He Secretly Paid Strangers’ Pharmacy Bills,” Washington Post, January 19, 2023, washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/01/19/alabama-farmer-hody-childress-prescriptions/, and Emily Schmall, “A Farmer Secretly Paid for His Neighbors’ Prescriptions for Years,” New York Times, January 25, 2023, nytimes.com/2023/01/25/us/alabama-pharmacy-donor.html. For data on the number of Americans saying they have difficulties paying for prescription drugs, see kff.org/health-costs/press-release/poll-nearly-1-in-4-americans-taking-prescription-drugs-say-its-difficult-to-afford-medicines-including-larger-shares-with-low-incomes/. For the profit margins, see ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7054843/.

12.  On public provisioning versus privatization, see Chiara Cordelli, The Privatized State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020).

13.  Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State, and idem, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism (London: Penguin Books, 2021).

14.  See the summary as reported in Paul Krugman, “The Economics of Soaking the Rich,” New York Times, January 5, 2019, nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tax-policy-dance.html#:~:text=What%20this%20implies%20for%20economic,to%20buy%20whatever%20they%20want. A study by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Stefanie Stantcheva shows that if executive CEOs have earnings that are not a reflection of their performance, then the optimal top tax rate is estimated to be 83 percent—Piketty, Saez, and Stantcheva, “Optimal Taxation of Top Labor Incomes: A Tale of Three Elasticities,” American Economic Journal, 6:1 (2014), pp. 230–71.

15.  G. A. Cohen, “Incentives, Inequality, and Community,” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Stanford University, May 21 and 23, 1991.

16.  Malleson, Against Inequality, pp. 96–8.

17.  We should be on our guard for abuse of this argument, though. The fact that teachers, nurses, scientists, and others are strongly motivated by serving the public good, rather than maximizing individual gain, is sometimes used as an argument that they shouldn’t be paid that much, or that we can take their structural unpaid overwork for granted. Clearly, the commitment of teachers and other public-sector workers for the common good should never be used as an argument to exploit them or to free-ride on their professional commitments.

8. Philanthropy Is Not the Answer

  1.  Conor O’Clery, The Billionaire Who Wasn’t: How Chuck Feeney Secretly Made and Gave Away a Fortune (New York: Public Affairs, 2013).

  2.  Jim Dwyer, “Out of Sight, Till Now, and Giving Away Billions,” New York Times, September 26, 2007, nytimes.com/2007/09/26/nyregion/26about.html; Jim Dwyer, “ ‘James Bond of Philanthropy’ Gives Away the Last of His Fortune,” New York Times, January 5, 2017, nytimes.com/2017/01/05/nyregion/james-bond-of-philanthropy-gives-away-the-last-of-his-fortune.html; and Steven Bertoni, “The Billionaire Who Wanted to Die Broke … Is Now Officially Broke.”

  3.  Data taken from data.oecd.org/inequality/poverty-rate.htm and data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm#indicator-chart. Note that poverty rates depend a lot on the definition of poverty. The OECD uses “living with less than half of the median household income of the population” as its poverty line. If one were to use national poverty lines, the percentages might be higher or lower. However, the comparative finding that poverty in the US is higher than in the UK, which again is higher than in other Western European countries, is a common finding.

  4.  arcolab.org/en/worlds-100-largest-philanthropic-foundations-list/. For the most recent estimate of the total amount of tax subsidies to fossil companies, see Alman Metten, “Belastingvoordelen voor fossiele brandstoffen nóg veel groter,” Me Judice, March 23, 2023, mejudice.nl/artikelen/detail/belastingvoordelen-voor-fossiele-brandstoffen-nog-veel-groter.

  5.  For example, whether philanthropy should play a bigger societal role was a central question of a recent scientific advisory report in the Netherlands. Together with political philosopher Tim Meijers, I contributed an ethical analysis of philanthropy as a chapter in that report. See Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, Filantropie op de Grens van Overheid en Markt (The Hague: WRR, 2018).

  6.  Morris Pearl’s preface in Collins, Born on Third Base.

  7.  Robert E. Goodin, Reasons for Welfare: The Political Theory of the Welfare State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), and Joseph Heath, “The Benefits of Cooperation,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 34:4 (2006), pp. 313–51.

  8.  Chomsky, Profit over People.

  9.  Disney, “I Was Taught from a Young Age to Protect My Dynastic Wealth.”

10.  Oreskes and Conway, The Big Myth. For accounts of the earliest neoliberal thinkers and their networks, active from the 1930s onward, see Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe (eds), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, second edition, with a new preface (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).

11.  On prosperity theology, see britannica.com/topic/prosperity-gospel and Tara Isabella Burton, “The Prosperity Gospel, Explained: Why Joel Osteen Believes That Prayer Can Make You Rich,” VOX, September 1, 2017, vox.com/identities/2017/9/1/15951874/prosperity-gospel-explained-why-joel-osteen-believes-prayer-can-make-you-rich-trump.

12.  Jens Beckert, “Durable Wealth: Institutions, Mechanism, and Practices of Wealth Perpetuation,” Annual Review of Sociology 48 (2022), pp. 233–55. For a summary of how widespread this practice is in the Netherlands, see “Vermogenden gebruiken eigen goede doelen als belastingconstructie,” NOS, August 15, 2022, nos.nl/artikel/2440715-vermogenden-gebruiken-eigen-goede-doelen-als-belastingconstructie.

13.  For some insightful work on the ethics and political analysis of philanthropy, see Rob Reich, Chiara Cordelli, and Lucy Bernholz (eds), Philanthropy in Democratic Societies (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2016), and Rob Reich, Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019). Note also that the first question to ask of any philanthropic funds is whether the wealth is in any sense dirty—that is, accumulated by morally illegitimate means. If the answer is yes, then the proper course of action for a would-be philanthropist would be not to give away the money but instead seek to rectify any past wrongdoing and offer compensation. It is, morally speaking, not up to the currently rich person to decide how to allocate that money; at the very least, they should seek input or advice from the people their wrongdoing (or their ancestors’ wrongdoing) has affected. See the analysis in Chiara Cordelli, “Reparative Justice and the Moral Limits of Discretionary Philanthropy,” in Reich et al. (eds), Philanthropy in Democratic Societies, pp. 244–65.

14.  I don’t think there is a general rule on what defines a “huge sum that comes with power.” If a philanthropist gives $100,000 to a very small organization, they can wield power over that organization. But donating $100,000 would not have been enough for Bill Gates to generate the power he now holds in global health institutions. On the importance of distinguishing “top-heavy philanthropy” from smaller donations in evaluating the consequences for society, see Chuck Collins, Josh Hoxie, and Helen Flannery, Gilded Giving 2018: Top-Heavy Philanthropy and Its Perils to the Independent Sector and Democracy (Washington, DC: Institute for Policy Studies, 2018).

15.  Reich, Just Giving, Chapter 2.

16.  Ibid., Chapter 4.

17.  Ingrid Robeyns, book review of Just Giving by Rob Reich, Perspectives on Politics 17:4 (2019), pp. 1175–6.

18.  Chouinard, Let My People Go Surfing, pp. 151–5.

19.  goodancestormovement.com/.

20.  Peter Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 1:3 (1972), pp. 229–43, and Peter Singer, The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty (New York: Random House, 2009).

21.  On the importance of a person’s own project, see Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism,” in Utilitarianism: For and Against, with J. J. C. Smart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973). On the claim that utilitarianism is overdemanding, see Garrett Cullety, The Moral Demands of Affluence (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), and Jørn Sønderholm, “World Poverty, Positive Duties, and the Overdemandingness Objection,” Philosophy, Politics and Economics 12:3 (2013), pp. 308–27.

22.  givingwhatwecan.org/blog/how-much-money-should-we-donate-to-charity.

23.  givingwhatwecan.org/pledge and William MacAskill, Andreas Mogensen, and Toby Ord, “Giving Isn’t Demanding,” in: Paul Woodruff (ed.), The Ethics of Giving: Philosophers’ Perspectives on Philanthropy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 178–203.

9. The Rich Will Benefit, Too

  1.  cnbc.com/2020/01/22/davos-2020-patriotic-millionaires-letter-calls-for-higher-taxes-on-global-elite.html.

  2.  costofextremewealth.com/.

  3.  Nick Hanauer, “The Pitchforks Are Coming … for Us Plutocrats,” Politico, July/August 2014, politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014/.

  4.  Plato, The Laws, ed. Malcolm Schofield and trans. Tom Griffith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) p. 193.

  5.  On the views of Sander Schimmelpenninck, see his pamphlet Sander en de Brug (Amsterdam: De Correspondent, 2023).

  6.  Collins, Born on Third Base, p. 13.

  7.  The psychological tendencies that Abigail Disney describes correspond with what the rather limited research on these issues reports. See Jessie H. O’Neill, The Golden Ghetto: The Psychology of Affluence (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 1997).

  8.  Ibid. O’Neill defines an affluent person as someone who doesn’t have to work to maintain an upper-class lifestyle. That certainly includes anyone living beyond the political limitarian threshold of 10 million pounds, dollars, or euros.

  9.  Lauren Greenfield, Generation Wealth (New York: Phaidon Press, 2017). The interview with Wendy is on p. 33.

10.  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “If We Are So Rich, Why Aren’t We Happy?,” American Psychologist 10 (1999), pp. 821–7.

11.  Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness (Petersfield: Harriman House, 2020), quotation on p. 42.

12.  Danielle Zwarthoed, “Autonomy-Based Reasons for Limitarianism,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (2018), pp. 1181–204.

13.  Housel, The Psychology of Money, p. 42.

14.  Sam Polk, “For the Love of Money,” New York Times, January 18, 2014, nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html.

15.  Michael W. Kraus, Paul K. Piff, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, Michelle L. Rheinschmidt, and Dacher Keltner, “Social Class, Solipsism, and Contextualism: How the Rich Are Different from the Poor,” Psychological Review 119 (2012), pp. 546–72, and Paul K. Piff, Daniel M. Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, “Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109 (2013), pp. 4086–91.

16.  Richard Rodems and Fabian T. Pfeffer, “Avoiding Material Hardship: The Buffer Function of Wealth,” Journal of European Social Policy 31:5 (2021), pp. 517–32.

17.  The findings from the London focus groups are analyzed in Katharina Hecht, Tania Burchardt, and Abigail Davis, “Richness, Insecurity and the Welfare State,” Journal of Social Policy (2022), pp. 1–22. For the paradox of inequality, see J. J. B. Mijs, “The Paradox of Inequality: Income Inequality and Belief in Meritocracy Go Hand in Hand,” Socio-Economic Review 19:1 (2021), pp. 7–35.

18.  Heath, “The Benefits of Cooperation”; Rodems and Pfeffer, “Avoiding Material Hardship”; and Collins, Born on Third Base, pp. xv–xvi.

19.  Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky, How Much Is Enough? The Love of Money, and the Case for the Good Life (London: Allen Lane, 2012). For a succinct overview of proto-limitarian thinkers in the history of Western economic and political thought, see Matthias Kramm and Ingrid Robeyns, “Limits to Wealth in the History of Western Philosophy,” European Journal of Philosophy 28 (2020), pp. 954–69.

10. The Road Ahead

  1.  Carina Engelhardt and Andreas Wagner, “What Do Germans Know about Income Inequality? A Survey Experiment,” Socio-Economic Review 16:4 (2018), pp. 743–67.

  2.  Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely, “Building a Better America—One Wealth Quintile at a Time,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 6:1 (2011), pp. 9–12. The precise numbers for the perceptions of inequality have been provided via email by Michael Norton.

  3.  Sorapop Kiatpongsan and Michael Norton, “How Much (More) Should CEOs Make? A Universal Desire for More Equal Pay,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 9:6 (2014), pp. 587–93.

  4.  Chiara Cordelli, The Privatized State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020).

  5.  Robert E. Goodin, Protecting the Vulnerable: A Reanalysis of Our Social Responsibilities (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985); Eva Kittay, Love’s Labor (New York: Routledge, 1999); Daniel Engster, The Heart of Justice: Care Ethics and Political Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Tom Malleson, “Interdependency: The Fourth Existential Insult to Humanity,” Contemporary Political Theory 17:2 (2017), pp. 160–86.

  6.  For the basic income proposal, see Philippe Van Parijs and Yannick Vanderborght, Basic Income: A Radical Proposal for a Free Society and a Sane Economy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), and Ingrid Robeyns, “Unconditional Basic Income: Why Would We (Not) Want to Have It?,” Ethical Annotation #6 (Utrecht: Utrecht University, Ethics Institute, 2018), uu.nl/sites/default/files/Ethical-Annotation-6-Unconditional-basic-income.pdf. For property-owning democracy, see Martin O’Neill and Thad Williamson (eds), Property-Owning Democracy: Rawls and Beyond (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), as well as Alan Thomas, Republic of Equals: Predistribution and Property-Owning Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). For a defense of the welfare state vis-à-vis property-owning democracy, see Christian Schemmel, “Distributive and Relational Equality,” Politics, Philosophy and Economics 11:2 (2011), pp. 123–48. For the ideas of Christan Felber, see his book Change Everything: Creating an Economy for the Common Good (London: Zed Books, 2015).

  7.  For key works on degrowth and alternative economic systems, see Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet, second edition (London: Routledge, 2016), and Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (London: Penguin Books, 2020). On the doughnut economy, see Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics (London: Penguin Books, 2017). For the well-being economy framework, see K. Trebeck, “Building a Wellbeing Economy,” in L. Macfarlane (ed.), New Thinking for the British Economy (London: Open Democracy, 2018), pp. 47–61, and the website of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance: weall.org/.

  8.  On the view that one of the important roles of political philosophers is to supply public debate with well-thought-through ideas and analysis of the kind that empowers citizens and strengthens democracy, see Avner de-Shalit, “Political Philosophy and Empowering Citizens,” Political Studies 52 (2004), pp. 802–18. See also Michael Walzer, “Philosophy and Democracy,” Political Theory 9:3 (1981), pp. 379–99, and Rutger Claassen, “Making Capability Lists: Philosophy versus Democracy,” Political Studies 59 (2011), pp. 491–508.

  9.  There is, of course, lots more to say about neoliberalism; the academic scholarship on neoliberalism is huge. See Damien Cahill, Melinda Cooper, Martijn Konings, and David Primrose, The SAGE Handbook of Neoliberalism (London: Sage, 2018).

10.  I think this follows from the empirical research done by sociologists such as Rachel Sherman, although in her book Uneasy Street Sherman does not draw these conclusions herself.

11.  Debra Satz, “In Defense of a Mandatory Public Service Requirement,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 91 (2022), pp. 259–69.

12.  Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book I (London: Penguin, 1999), pp. 167–71.

13.  Serena Olsaretti, “Freedom, Force and Choice: Against the Rights-Based Definition of Voluntariness,” Journal of Political Philosophy 6:1 (1998), pp. 53–78, and Matt Zwolinski, Benjamin Ferguson, and Alan Wertheimer, “Exploitation,” in Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman (eds), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive (Winter 2022), plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2022/entries/exploitation; Christopher McCammon, “Domination,” in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive (Winter 2018), plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/domination; and Dorothea Gädeke, “Who Should Fight Domination? Individual Responsibility and Structural Injustice,” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 20:2 (2021), pp. 180–201.

14.  Atkinson, Inequality, pp. 123–32. See also Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk About It) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), and Roberto Frega, Lisa Herzog, and Christian Neuhäuser, “Workplace Democracy—The Recent Debate,” Philosophy Compass 14:4 (2019), article no. e12574, pp. 1–11.

15.  Peter Dietsch, Catching Capital: The Ethics of Tax Competition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), and Peter Dietsch and Thomas Rixen (eds), Global Tax Governance: What Is Wrong with It and How to Fix It (Colchester: ECPR Press, 2016).

16.  For the “Good Clothes, Fair Pay” campaign, see goodclothesfairpay.eu/.

17.  Fergus Green, “Anti-Fossil Fuel Norms,” Climate Change 150 (2018), pp. 103–16.

18.  Sam Pizzigati, The Case for a Maximum Wage (London: Polity Press, 2018), pp. 115–17.

19.  oecd.org/tax/international-community-strikes-a-ground-breaking-tax-deal-for-the-digital-age.htm. For further discussion, see Tove Maria Ryding and Alex Voorhoeve, “Is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s 2021 Tax Deal Fair?,” LSE Public Policy Review 2:4 (2022), pp. 1–11, ppr.lse.ac.uk/articles/10.31389/lseppr.72/.

20.  rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2022/07/08/ibo-vermogensverdeling-5-juli-2022.

21.  Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, World Inequality Report 2018 (Paris: World Inequality Lab, 2018), pp. 257–60.

22.  See the proposals in the following: Bruce Ackermann and Anne Alstott, The Stakeholder Society (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999); Stuart White, The Civic Minimum: On the Rights and Obligations of Economic Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Miranda Perry Fleischer, “Divide and Conquer: Using an Accessions Tax to Combat Dynastic Wealth Transfers,” Boston College Law Review 57:3 (2016), pp. 913–46; Atkinson, Inequality, pp. 192–6; and Piketty, A Brief History of Equality, pp. 137–8 and 159–66.

23.  Mill, Principles of Political Economy. There are, however, different interpretations of Mill’s proposal on inheritance; see Cornelius Cappellen and Jørgen Pedersen, “Just Wealth Transfer Taxation: Defending John Stuart Mill’s Scheme,” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 17:3 (2018), pp. 317–35.

24.  Ackermann and Alstott, The Stakeholder Society, and White, The Civic Minimum.

25.  Juliana Bidadanure, Justice Across Ages: Treating Young and Old as Equals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).

26.  On resistance to inheritance tax (without earmarking the tax revenues), see Jens Beckert, “Why Is the Estate Tax so Controversial?,” Society 45 (2008), pp. 521–8, and Rajiv Prabhakar, “Why Do the Public Oppose Inheritance Taxes?,” in H. P. Gaisbauer, G. Schweiger, and C. Sedmak (eds), Philosophical Explorations of Justice and Taxation (Cham: Springer, 2015), pp. 151–66. For a thorough philosophical analysis of inheritance and bequest taxation, see Daniel Halliday, The Inheritance of Wealth: Justice, Equality, and the Right to Bequeath (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

Index

affluenza 194

air travel/aviation industry 101

air traffic controllers strike, US (1981) 33

climate change and 98, 100, 101–3, 110, 114

private jets 11, 101, 103, 115

Alazrak, Yahya 32

Allen, Robert 19, 20

Amazon (online retailer) 58–60, 65, 135

American Dream 156, 205, 217

American Dream and Other Fairy Tales, The (documentary) 156, 21

Antigua National Development Fund 78

Apple 136, 137

Arab Spring (2011) 191

Ariely, Dan 204

Arnault, Bernard xi

assassination 23

assets xi, 4, 12–13, 37, 66, 68, 70, 78, 120, 122, 130, 147, 172, 200

Atkinson, Anthony 220–1, 226; Inequality: What Can be Done? 220

Atlantic 172

Atmosfair 107

attribution bias 129, 174

Auschwitz concentration camp 44

austerity measures 92, 156, 217

Axelsen, David xxii

Baal, Mark van 96–7

balance of economic power 219–21

basic income 138, 150–2, 174, 178, 213

Basic Income Grant (BIG) Coalition 150

Benetton 58

Bentham, Jeremy 146

Berlusconi, Silvio 51–2

Beurden, Ben van 6–7

Bezos, Jeff xi, 58, 59, 60, 136, 147, 181, 194, 213

Bhopal disaster (1984) 55–6

Biden, Joe 79, 88, 96

big government 169–72

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation 18, 181

biodiversity crisis 115, 158, 211, 228

Black Lives Matter movement 191–2

Blair, Tony 38

Bloomberg 58

Bolsa Familia (Family Allowance) 152

Bouazizi, Mohamed 191

Boushey, Heather 39

BP 96

Branson, Richard 181

Brexit 87

Brin, Sergey 137

Brown University 46

Buffet, Warren 165

Buiter, Willem 35

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre 136

business practices, harmful 52

Cambridge University 49, 174

Cameron, David 87

capital

addiction to accumulation of 16

capital flight 222

capital gains 28, 37, 161

climate disaster and 94

deregulation and 210

human capital 216

inheritance and see inheritance

limiting income from 224–5

returns on 4

social capital 138

taxing 69, 70, 222, 225–6

trickle-down effect and 38

venture-capital 159, 188

capitalism

alternative economic systems and 208–14 see also individual system name

neoliberal and see neoliberalism

poverty and 19, 20–21

predatory 57

success in game of, 6

transnational capitalist class 92

carbon emissions 100–10

allowance/budget 98, 102, 105, 107, 109, 110–11, 112

offsetting 101, 102, 107

rich people and levels of 101–4

Carnegie, Andrew 123

CBS xxv

CDA (Dutch Christian-democratic party) 81

CEO (Chief Executive Officer) 39, 66

climate change and 106

luck and 130

pay 3, 6, 126, 127, 128, 133, 142, 145, 205–6, 221, 224

tax and 67, 86, 93

Cerrulli Associates 121

Chancel, Lucas 100, 107

Chang, Ha-Joon 21

charity 167, 175, 185

Chauvin, Derek 191

Chevron 96

childcare xv, 11, 127, 133, 177

child mortality rates 18, 21

Children’s Place 58

Childres, Hody 157

China 2, 20, 24, 25, 99

Chomsky, Noam 23, 35, 172

Chouinard, Yvon xxiii, 218; Let My People Go Surfing 180

Christiano, Thomas 82

“chumocracy” scandal, UK (2020) 52

citizenship

commodification of 77–8

democratic 217, 219

civil rights 30

class

awareness of 30

dominant class 29, 33, 93, 140, 145, 147, 154, 204 see also super-rich

existence of questioned 31

middle class see middle class

political candidates and 82

poor or impoverished 29

the rich 29, 32 see also rich, the

segregation 30, 217–8

terminology 29–31

transnational capitalist class/Davos class 91–3

working or disadvantaged class see working class

Clean Clothes Campaign 58

Clegg, Nick xxi

climate change 16, 95, 96–116, 143, 158, 177, 178, 179, 188, 228

air travel/aviation industry and 102

carbon emissions see carbon emissions

denialism 90, 104–6, 113

distributive justice and 106

drought and 99

extreme wealth and climate safety, relationship between 96–106

flooding and 99, 113

food consumption and 108

green transition 105–16

greenwashing 115

hunger/famine and 99

moral issue 106

oil company profits 96

Paris Climate Agreement and 104

Patagonia and xxiii

philanthropy and 175

polluter pays principle 103–4, 106

refugees 79

shared spaces and 109

tax and 102–3, 110, 112, 114, 115, 116

wildfires and 99, 105

codetermination system 220

Cohen, G. A. 161

collective-action problems 158–9, 182, 212

collective decision-making 74–5, 212

collective organizing 220

Collins, Chuck 8, 67, 193, 201

colonialism 21, 73

Columbia University, New York 90

Center for Sustainable Development 153

communism xx, 206–8

confiscation

confiscatory tax 114, 122

of wealth xiv, xviii, 47, 223

Congress, US 83

Conservative Party, British 92

conservatives xxi, xxi, xxv, xxvii, 51, 85–7, 89, 104–6, 120, 148, 169, 173, 176

consumer 39

climate change and 103, 104, 111, 113

communism and 207

consumer durables 28

consumer goods 36, 104, 111, 112, 117, 134, 207

demand 6, 39

neoliberal ideology and 191, 202, 216

oil and 48

platform economy and 210

profit-shifting and 66

regulation and 209

tax and 167

uncorrected market failures and 134

Cook, Tim 137

Cornell University 164, 165

corporations

climate change and 103, 104

effective altruism and 179

Global North power and 23

irresponsibility 55

ladder of ambition within 6

monopoly and 160

regulation of 213

state subsidies and 35

tax and 39, 65–6, 77, 90, 225

corruption 47–52, 57, 64, 81, 95, 148–9, 153

Covid–19 pandemic (2020–22) 18, 39, 39, 144

Credit Suisse 24

crime 9, 49, 64, 78, 197

crimes against humanity 43–5

Crimean Peninsula, annexation of (2014) 51

crowdfunding 178

crowding out effect 176

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly 196

Cyprus 78

Davis, Abigail 10

Davos Men 91–3. See also World Economic Forum (WEF)

declining marginal value of money 146, 184

degrowth 213

democracy

collective decision-making and 74–5

commodification of citizenship 77–80

corruption in 48

Davos Men and 91–3

equality and 31

illiberal democracies 73, 77, 94

kleptocratic practices in 51–2

liberal democracies 73–4, 94, 141, 180, 219, 222

lobbyists and 84

media outlets, super-rich ownership of and 86–9

neoliberalism and 216

persuasion and xxvi

philanthropy and 175–9

political funding and 80–84

property-owning democracy 213

research body/think tank donations and 89–90

transnational capitalist class 92

Universal Declaration of Human Rights and 72

wealth undermining 71, 72–95, 106, 116–17, 139

Democratic Party, US xxi

denial machine 104–6, 113

dental care 26

deregulation 35, 54, 89, 90, 210

Desmond, Matthew: Poverty, by America 37

dichotomous thinking 208

Dietsch, Peter 222

direct cash transfers 152

business practices, harmful 52

corporate irresponsibility 55

corruption 47–52

crimes against humanity and 43–5

dirty money 41–71, 76, 78, 105, 112, 118, 124, 166, 222

labor rights, violation of 57

letting others pay for your mistakes 54

tax dodging 60–8

disabilities 14, 31, 56, 75, 132, 133, 155, 157, 171, 200

discovery argument 177–8

discrimination 125

Disney xxv, 156, 172

Disney, Abigail xxv, 32, 156, 172–4, 193–4, 195, 199, 217

Disneyland, California 156

distributive justice 106

Dominion 88

doughnut economy 213

Dow Chemical Company 56–7

Drèze, Jean 21

drought 99

Duke University 204

Dutch Labour Party 141

Duty Free Shoppers (DFS) 164–5

economic growth 22, 34, 39, 159, 189

economic power, balance of 219–221

economic systems 33, 91, 120, 181, 229

alternative/new 208–14

economy of the common good 213

education

access to xv, 14, 18, 143

class/social integration and 30, 33, 35, 218

disabilities/developmental disorders and 157–8

free high-quality xv, 14, 143

neoliberalism and 217

non-financial incentives 163

effective altruism 179

efficiency 31, 170–71, 172, 210, 216

elephant graph 21

Elizabeth II, Queen 7

empathy 198, 199, 217

Engelhorn, Marlene 8, 65

entrepreneurship xxv, 11

climate change and 106

good life and 141

inheritance and 133, 134, 139

institution-building and 149

neoliberalism and 159, 162

philanthropy and 18, 164, 166

poverty 36, 92

“profits before people” philosophy and 57

tax and 35, 60, 62, 70, 161

World Economic Forum and 42

envy xiii, xx–xxii

equality

awareness of inequality levels xii, 8, 190, 204–6

capitalism and see capitalism

class and 31–2

climate change and 97, 101, 104

democracy and 72–6, 80, 82–5, 94–5, 190

doughnut economy and 213

envy and xxii

equal opportunity 73, 142

gender and race dimension to wealth inequality 28

Global North/Global South trade relations and 23, 136

health of economy and 39

importance of inequality 36–7

increase in inequality xii, xxiii, 2–3, 5, 27–9, 32–3, 38, 41, 61, 122, 200, 210, 218

inheritance and 122, 123

limitarianism and xviii, xx–xxi, 212

London and see London

morality, wealth inequality and xiii, xiv, xvii, xxv, xxvi, 15, 16, 24, 36, 118, 120, 122, 125, 134, 136, 138, 148, 161, 187, 188, 193, 194, 197, 198, 199, 212, 225

neoliberalism and 34–5

Oxfam report on inequality 3, 17

pay and 126, 131, 132, 224

philanthropy and 168, 169, 172, 175–6

political upheaval and 189

poverty and see poverty

structural action and xv

super-rich warn against xxi, 188–9

types of inequality 25–26

wealth inequalities within countries, increasing 27–8

wealth inequalities within countries, size of 26

work and 220–21

Equatorial Guinea 47, 76

ethical limit xviii, 12, 15–6, 93, 117, 139, 186

European Commission 79, 84

European Union (EU) 78, 79, 84, 87, 105, 223

Extinction Rebellion 114

Exxon Mobile 96, 98, 105

famine 99, 149

fashion industry 57–8, 135, 142, 223

“fast” fashion 57–8, 135, 142

Feeney, Charles “Chuck” xxiii, 164–7, 218

Felber, Christian 213

financial crisis (2008) xii, 2, 9, 54, 55, 210

Financial Times 128

fiscal action xvi, xvi

fiscal agency 221–2

“flexible” jobs 210

flooding 75, 99, 113

Floyd, George 191, 192

Follow This 97

Food and Drug Administration, US 53

food banks 2, 156, 167, 176

food consumption 108

food poverty 150

Forbes xi, 23, 50, 53, 58, 66, 133, 135, 157, 165

Forum voor Democratie (Forum for Democracy) 51

Fox News 87–8

France 24, 25, 27, 31, 45, 46, 92

Free University of Amsterdam’s Climate and Sustainability Law Clinic 102

full determinism 131–2

Gates, Bill xi, xxi, 8, 18, 137, 165, 177; How to Avoid a Climate Disaster 113

gender 21, 28, 73, 190, 194

General Motors 98, 194

Gilens, Martin 83

Giridharadas, Anand 91, 92; The Persuaders xxvi

Giving What We Can 185

Glasser, Susan 89

globalization 20, 26, 32, 92

Global North

extreme wealth concentrated in 25

fashion brands in 58

migration into 79, 94

mixed economy in 209

oil business and 48

refugees in 79

unequal exchange and 23, 136, 153

Global South

climate change and 94

crop yields in 100

exploitation of 21, 23, 136, 153

extreme poverty in 2

golden visas and 80

labor in 154

limitarian ethos and 186

unequal exchange and 23, 136

Global Wealth Report 24

golden passport 77–8

golden visa 77–80

Goldman Sachs xvii

Good Ancestor Movement 183, 192

good life xxiii, 11–3, 124, 141, 148, 182, 186, 201

Goodman, Peter 91, 92

Google 66, 137

Google Holdings 66

Green, Fergus 224

Greene King 47

Greenfield, Lauren 195; Generation Wealth 195

greenhouse gases 36, 85, 90, 96–7, 100, 101, 106, 108

Greenpeace 96

green transition 105, 108, 111, 114–116

greenwashing 115

Grenada 47

gun regulation 90

Gupta, Rajat 196

Haarmann, Claudia 235

Haarmann, Dirk 149

Haiti 46

Hamm, Jon 129

Hanauer, Nick: “The Pitchforks are Coming … for Us Plutocrats” 188–9

Harvard Business School 204

Harvard University 90

Haslett, D. W. 122

Hayman, Jake 183, 192

healthcare 14, 18, 30, 34, 35, 48, 132, 155–7, 165, 183, 200, 209

deficits 157

insurance 14, 143, 157, 170, 200

Obamacare 90

universal xv, 37

Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander 90

Hickel, Jason 19, 22, 136

Hitler, Adolf 43

Hobbes, Thomas 119

homelessness 1, 143, 155

Housel, Morgan: The Psychology of Money 196, 198

housing xv, 14, 30, 37, 75, 110, 111, 143, 156, 183, 209, 217–8, 228

Hughes, Kathleen 156, 217

human development indicators, 171

Hungary 73

hunger 17, 36, 99, 153, 154, 158

I, Daniel Blake (film) 171, 217

IG Farben 44

ignorance, wealth inequality and 205

illiberal democracies 73, 77, 94

incentives objection 160–61

income

basic 138, 150–52, 174, 178, 213

inequality xiii, 25–6, 28, 39, 168, 204

Minimum Income Standard 10

tax 33, 37, 39, 61, 70, 77, 160–61, 186

India 19, 21, 24, 55–6, 113

inequality. See equality

inflation 28, 34

inheritance 7, 81–82, 121–5, 133, 134, 139, 160, 174, 191, 193, 201, 226–7

tax 8, 68, 82, 121–5, 191, 226–7

Inside Climate News 98

Institute of Economic Affairs 40

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 97, 106

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) 62

International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) 63, 64, 180

International Labour Organization (ILO) 58

International Monetary Fund (IMF) 39

Jacobson, Mark 113

Jong, David de: Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History of Germany’s Wealthiest Dynasties 44

judiciary 52, 76, 94, 199, 219

Kerala, India 21

kerosene 102

Keynes, John Maynard 33

Kiribati 102, 106

kleptocracy 47–52, 70, 76

Koch, Charles and David 89–90

Koch Industries 90

labor

Global South and 153, 154

human capital and 216

manual labor, demand for 32

market discrimination 125

platform economy and 210

rights 23, 57, 166

taxing 69, 226

unions see unions

wages/pay inequalities see wages

Lakner, Christoph 21

Lega 50–51

liberal democracies 73–4, 94, 141, 180, 219, 222

libertarianism xxvii, 55, 77, 90, 120, 169, 173

Liechtenstein 166

life expectancy 18

limitarianism

basic income and see basic income

class and see individual class name

climate change and see climate change

defined xiv

democracy and see democracy

direct cash transfers and see direct cash transfers

dirty money and see dirty money

economic systems and see individual system name

equality and see equality

ethical action and xvi

ethical limit xix, 12, 15–6, 93, 117, 139, 182, 186

fiscal action and xvi, xvi

future of 203–229

inheritance and see inheritance

limitarian ethos xvi, 186

markets and see markets

philanthropy and see philanthropy

political limit xix, 15–6, 25, 116, 126, 161, 228

poverty and see poverty

regulative ideal xiv, 214

riches line and see riches line

tax and see tax

structural action xv

super-rich and see super-rich

wages see wages

literacy 18, 21

living wage 142, 160, 223

lobbying 56, 70, 84–5, 166, 167, 178, 203

Loblaw 58

London 9

homelessness in 143

living standards in 10

real-estate prices 13

refugees in 79

study into riches line in 11–2, 15, 41, 200

lower-middle class 5, 10, 25, 111

luck 14, 75, 82, 122, 129–130, 131, 139, 148, 155, 161, 174, 191, 200, 201, 212, 217

Lutheran Church 149

Machin, Dean 95

Madoff, Bernie 196–7

Malleson, Tom: Against Inequality 64, 162

Malm, Andreas 115–6

Malta 9, 78, 79, 80

Mangue, Teodoro Nguema Obiang 47–8

Marcos, Imelda 48–9

markets xii

abolition of 208

big government and 169

climate change and 177

constraints on xix

failures, uncorrected 134–5, 145

ideologies see individual ideology name

non-market economy 213–4

regulation 209, 211, 213

rent-seeking and 128–9

as social institution 118–22

Marshall Islands 106

maternal mortality rates 18

Mathisen, Ruben 83

Mayer, Jane 88–9, 89–90

Mazzucato, Mariana

Mission Economy 159

The Entrepreneurial State 137, 159

Mbappé, Kylian 126

media outlets, super-rich acquire 52, 86–9

meritocracy 141

Messi, Lionel 64

middle class

climate change and 100, 108, 110, 111, 114–5, 143

definition of 10–11, 29

energy prices and 96

global inequalities and 93–4

income tax and 185–6

inequality and xv, xxv–xxvi, 2, 3

inheritance cap and 227–8

savings and 4

“self-made” super-rich and 5, 6

trickle-down effect and 38

wages and 189

wealth-defense industry and 70

wealth of 25, 45

win-win narrative and 21, 22

working class and 217–8

migration 23, 79, 94, 127, 150, 155

Milanovic, Branko 21

military infrastructure 172

Mill, John Stuart 146

Millionaires for Humanity 6

miners strike, Britain (1984) 33

Minimum Income Standard 10

minimum wage xiv, 160, 174, 176, 211, 224

mixed economy 33–4, 209, 210–211

Monbiot, George 98, 232; Regenesis 108

“moonshot” strategies 114, 159

morality 106, 148

climate change and 103–4, 106, 110, 115–6

democracy and 72, 75, 81

dirty money and see dirty money

ethical limit see ethical limit

full determinism and 131

inheritance and 122, 125, 134, 226

philanthropy and 165–6, 168, 173, 176–7, 181, 184, 185, 186

riches line and 15

wealth inequality and xiii, xiv, xvii, xxiv, xxvi, 15, 16, 24, 31, 34, 36, 118, 120, 122, 125, 131, 134, 135–6, 138, 148, 161, 187, 188, 193, 194, 196, 197–8, 199, 212, 223–4

mortgage 11, 37, 61, 121, 227

Mossack Fonseca 63–4

Murdoch, Rupert 86–9

Murphy, Liam 120

Musk, Elon xi, 9, 181, 199, 212–3

Nagel, Thomas 120

narcissism 174

national parks 210–11

national public service 218–9

natural lottery 130

Nazi atrocities 43–5

Nembwaya, Frida 151

neoclassical economic theory 111–2

neoliberalism xxv, 38, 38–9, 54–5, 187

atomized individuals and 144–5, 200

climate change and 114

consumer and 191, 202

democracy and 90, 94

deserving poor and 151

dismantling 215–8

distrust of government and 172–3

entrepreneurs and 159

“greed is good” mantra 162

philanthropy and 165–6, 171, 172, 179–180

poverty in affluent nations and 156

progressive parties and 190

“self-made” super rich and 143

spread of 34, 191

tax rates and 146, 221

welfare state and 171

network effects 129

News of the World 87

New York Times 91, 198

Nielsen, Lasse xxii

non-financial incentives 162–3

Norton, Michael 204

Obama, Barack xx, 88, 90

Obermayer, Bastian 63–4

Obiang, Theodore 47, 47

obliviousness 174–5

Occupy movement xii, 9

oil 47, 83, 96, 98, 103, 211

oligarchy 9, 10, 73, 78, 79

O’Neill, Jessie: The Golden Ghetto 194–5

opioid crisis 53–4

Oportunidades (Opportunities) 152

Optimist, The 18

Orbán, Victor 73

Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 36, 155, 225–6

Ortega, Amancio 135–6

Osnos, Evan 89

Otele, Olivette 46–7

Otjivero, Namibia 149–52, 178, 226–7

Our World in Data 18–19

Oxfam report on inequality 3, 17

OxyContin 53–4

Page, Benjamin 83

Page, Larry 137

Panama Papers 63–4, 180

Paris Climate Agreement (2015) 104

Patagonia xxiii, 180

Patriotic Millionaires 6, 12, 69, 169, 172, 188

Payne, Erica 12; Tax the Rich! How Lies, Loopholes and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer 69

Pearl, Morris: Tax the Rich! How Lies, Loopholes and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer 69, 127, 169

pensions xix, 13, 92, 170, 183

philanthropy 53, 92, 114, 164–86

crowdfunding 178

crowding out effect 176

democracy and 175–9

dirty money and 166

discovery argument 177–8

donation level 184–6

effective altruism movement 179

efficiency and 170–1

Feeney and xxiii, 164–7, 218

Good Ancestor Movement 183, 192

government and 167–79, 181

pluralism argument 177

power asymmetry and 179

principled justification 176

“rules”/blueprints for dynastic wealth and 172

small donors 181

structural change and 180

tax and 164, 166–8, 172, 173, 175–6, 180, 186

Piketty, Thomas: Le Capital au XXle siecle, or Capital in the Twenty-First Century 2, 21, 27, 97, 107, 226

Pizzigati, Sam: The Case for a Maximum Wage 224

platform economy 210

Plato: The Laws 189

pluralism argument 177

Politkovskaya, Anna 50

political limit xix, 15–16, 25, 116, 126, 161, 228

Polk, Sam 198

polluter pays principle 103–4, 106

Polman, Paul 86

populism 190

Porter, Henry 87

poverty

China, decline in poverty in 2, 20

climate change and 79, 97, 114

Covid–19 pandemic (2020–22) and 18

definition of 149–50

developing countries and 29

elimination of xv, 36

entrepreneurs and 91

extreme 2, 18–20, 48, 79, 140, 141, 149, 153

globalization and 20–24

importance of 36–7

income/basic income and 150–52

inequality and xii, 35–7

instrumental/intrinsic importance of 36

kleptocracy and 47, 49

levels of 2, 18–23

line 10–11, 13, 19–20, 115, 146–7, 150

London living standards and 10–11

Oxfam report on inequality and 3, 17

pensions and 13

philanthropy and 168, 176

“relative poverty” measure 36

rich economies and 155

richest people worldwide, distribution of and 24

“self-made” rich and 5

USA distribution of wealth and 26–27

power asymmetry 179

Primark 58

principled justification 176

private jets 11, 101, 103, 115

profits 9, 23, 35, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 54, 70, 88, 92, 93

climate change and 97–8, 101, 103–4, 106, 114

Davos Men and 92, 93

dirty money and 43, 54

entrepreneurs and 133–7

fair division of 59

historic crimes and 46

neoliberalism and 35

non-profit organization xxiii, 177, 211

profit margins 157

profit-maximizing 88, 156, 170

“profits before people” philosophy 57

profit-seeking 9, 170, 209, 211

shifting 66

tax and 65–7, 124, 145, 160, 161, 222

propaganda 89, 180

property 4, 13, 48, 149

climate change and 99

inheritance and 124

Plato on limits to 189

private xx, 208, 209

property-owning democracy 213

public property transferred to private sector 209

rights 119–20

as social institution 118

tax 70, 118–20

prosperity theology 173

Protestant doctrine 173

public goods xx, 14, 34, 68, 119, 137, 146, 163, 168, 177, 209, 211

public–private partnerships 42, 103, 167

purchasing-power parity 19–20

Purdue Pharma 52–4

Putin, Vladimir 9, 49–50, 63, 76

quality of life 1, 14, 18, 41, 77, 146, 152, 171, 182

Quiggin, John 39–40

race 28–9, 194

racism 31, 88, 155, 174, 175, 191–2

Ramaswamy, Vivek xxv

Rana Plaza disaster, Dhaka, Bangladesh (2013) 57–8

Rana Plaza Donors Trust Fund 58

Rawls, John 130

Raworth, Kate 213–4

Reagan, Ronald 33, 173

recessions xxi, 18

referenda 224

refugees 79–80, 158

regulative ideal xiv–xv, 214

Reich, Rob 32–33, 45; Just Giving 175–8

renewable energies 96, 105, 115, 158

rent-seeking 128–9

Republican Party xxv, 81, 87–8, 90

Resource Generation 8–9, 32

rich

definition of 10–16

“too rich” xii, xviii, 13

See also super-rich

riches line 10–16, 41, 117, 182–4, 186

rich lists ix–x, 2, 133

Romney, Mitt 169–70

Ronaldo, Cristiano 126

Roser, Max 18

Rowling, J. K. 5, 11, 139

Russia 9–10, 24, 27, 39–40, 50–52, 63, 76, 78–9, 96, 104, 211

Rutte, Mark 85

Sachs, Jeffrey 153–4

Sackler family 52–4

Saez, Emmanuel 66, 69

safety regulations 57

Salk, Jonas 137

Sanders, Bernie xx–xxi

Satz, Debra 218–19

savings 4, 10, 11–12, 13, 25, 37, 41, 61, 62, 70–71, 82, 115, 121–2, 151, 152, 171, 189, 226

Schimmelpennick, Sander 190

Scott, MacKenzie 136

sea levels 99

Second World War (1939–45) 3, 27, 33–4, 151

Seko, Mobutu Sese 48–9

“self-made” super-rich 5–6, 121

Sen, Amartya 21

shared spaces 108–9

shareholders 6–7, 55, 56, 57, 59–60, 85, 96–7, 104, 135, 135–6, 145, 159, 210, 220–21, 223

Sharman, Jason 49

Shell 6–7, 86, 96, 102, 128

Sherman, Rachel 199–200

silver-bullet strategies 155, 214–15

Simon, Herbert A. 138

’S Jongers, Tim 140–41

Skidelsky, Edward 201

Skidelsky, Robert 201

Skocpol, Theda 89–90

slavery 20, 21, 28, 43–4, 45–7, 223, 224

smallpox xv

Smalls, Chris 59–60

Smith, Adam: The Wealth of Nations 219

Snyder, Timothy 76

SOAS 46

social capital 138

social comparison 197

social contract 31, 32, 68, 119, 120–21, 124, 137, 139, 167, 169, 176, 191–2, 220, 221

social housing 37, 209–210, 217–18

socialism 21, 44, 55, 208, 211

social mobility 33–4, 39, 123, 139–42, 205

social-security 5, 14, 65, 170

social unrest/“threat of the pitchforks” xxi, 77, 176, 187–92

Soros, George xxi–xxii

space tourism xi, xii, 6, 60, 101, 103, 114, 147–8, 154, 181

SpaceX xi

special obligations 185

stagflation 34

Stanford University 113, 175, 218–9, 231

state capture 76

Stichting Reclame Rood 102

structural action/change xv, xvi, 180–1, 212, 218

stylized facts 26

subsidies 28, 35, 37, 83, 102–3, 159, 176, 211

Süddeutsche Zeitung 63–4

Sullivan, Dylan 22–23, 136

Sunak, Rishi 40

Sunday Times xi

super-rich

class system and 29–30, 32

climate change and see climate change

corporate ladder and 6–7

corrosive effect of extreme wealth on xiii, 193–9

definition of 4–10

democracy and see democracy

dirty money and see dirty money

distribution of worldwide 24–5

diversity of 4–10

economic growth and 189–90

future of 203–29

good life and 201–2

government, distrust of 172–5

implementing limitarianism in their own lives xxii

inheritance and see inheritance

insecurity that characterizes affluent societies and 199–200

limitarianism benefits to 187–202

moral limits of inequality, averse to debating xxiv–xxv

neoliberalism and see neoliberalism

philanthropy and see philanthropy

riches line and see riches line

“self-made” 5–7, 121

social unrest/“threat of the pitchforks” and 187–92

tax and see tax

wealth addiction and 198–9

Switzerland 24–5, 63, 224

taboos 30–31, 32

tax

avoidance 60–68, 146, 166, 167, 168, 175, 180, 203, 221, 221–2, 223

breaks 37, 61

climate change and 102, 110–16

confiscatory tax 114, 122

corporation tax 39–40, 60, 65–7, 90, 225

cuts 33, 35, 38, 39–40, 90, 168

deductions xxiv 28, 65–6, 70, 175–6

dividends and 85–6, 225

dodging 60–80

“double” taxation 124

estate tax 8, 90, 121

evasion 37, 51–2, 60–61, 63, 64, 67, 68, 116, 146, 167, 203, 221, 221–2, 223z

fraud xiv, 51–2, 64–5, 221

fuel tax 103

government and 119–22

havens 42, 62–8, 121–2, 214, 222, 222–3

highest tax rate xv, xvii, 15–16, 37, 39–40, 69, 95, 160, 161–2, 214, 221

income tax 33, 37, 39–40, 61, 70, 77, 160–61, 186

inheritance tax 8, 68, 82, 121–5, 191, 226–7

international tax differences 166–67, 222

international tax organization 222

jaloesiebelasting (envy tax) xxi

labor and capital, income from and 60, 61–62, 69–70, 225

limitarian society and xv

lobbying and 69, 85–86

neoliberalism and 33, 34

100 per cent xvi, xvi, 15–16, 22, 95, 160, 214–15

optimal top marginal taxation rate 160

philanthropy and 166–9, 172, 173–4, 175–6, 180–81

profit shifting and 65–7

progressive tax rates xiv, xvii, xx–xxi, 34, 61, 145, 146, 221

property and 70, 120

racial inequality and 28

Reagan tax cuts 33

taxmenow 6, 65

trickle-down effect and 38–40

wealth-defense industry and 67–71, 82, 121, 124, 175, 180, 197

wealth taxes xviii, xx–xxi, 160, 222, 226

technological innovation 30–31, 32, 41, 108, 113–14, 137–8, 144, 158, 159, 177–78, 207

10 percent rule 185–6

Tesla xi

Thatcher, Margaret 33, 208

Thiel, Peter 77

think tanks 40, 89, 90, 94–5

“too rich” xii–xiii, xviii

Total Energies 96

transnational capitalist class 92–3

Trevelyan family 46–7

trickle-down effect 38–40, 189

Trump, Donald 52, 67, 68, 79, 81, 87–8, 92

Trump, Fred 67

Truss, Liz 40

tuition fees 14

Tuvalu 106

Twitter xi, xii, 5–6

ultra-high-net-worth individuals 24–5

unconditional basic income 138, 150, 174

undeserved wealth 117, 118–43, 184

inheritance 121–2

labor/wage inequalities 126–33

markets/property as social institutions 118–22

social mobility and 140–41

wealth creators/entrepreneurs and investors 133–9

unemployment 14, 34, 39, 65, 146, 150, 158, 170, 200

unequal exchange 23–4

Unilever 86

Union Carbide 55–7

unions, labor/trade 23, 30, 33, 58, 59–60, 83, 135, 160, 180, 220

United Nations (UN) 42, 72

Food Systems Pre-Summit (2021) 154

human development indicators 171

Sustainable Development Solutions Network 153

World Food Program 99

United Russia 50

Universal Declaration of Human Rights 72

universal draft 30

universities 6, 14, 33, 36, 46, 47, 76, 84, 90, 114–5, 165, 166, 169–70, 180, 181, 195, 223, 227

University of Glasgow 46

University of the West Indies 46

unmet needs 144–63, 182

collective-action problems and 159

Covid–19 and 144–146

declining marginal value of money and 146–7

direct cash transfers and 152

entrepreneurial goals and 159

extreme poverty and 149–150

incentives objection 160–3

money, possibility of addressing with 148–50

non-financial incentives 162–3

poverty in rich economies 155–8

USA

American Dream 156, 205, 217

asylum seekers in 79

basic income in 174

Black Lives Matter movement 191–2

business practices, harmful 52–7

CEO pay 7, 126, 127, 133

class system 30–32

climate change and 104–5, 108

Covid–19 and wealth in 145

estate tax 8, 90, 121

health deficits in 157

national parks 211

national public service in 218–9

oligarchy 73

philanthropy and 53, 164–8, 192

political donors and 80–84

political polarization in 88–91

poverty in 20, 26–7, 37, 155

presidential election (2020) xxi, xxii, 52, 88–9

race and 45–7, 174

taxes in 8, 33, 62, 64, 68, 69, 90, 121

tuition fees 14

wealth distribution in 24–8, 204–6

utilitarianism 146, 184

Utrecht 1, 15

Utrecht University 11

vaccines 36, 137, 145

Van der Veer, Peter 128, 160

variola virus xv

viruses xv, 146

VVD 85

wages

Amazon and 59

burden of job and 131–3

equality and 125–6, 131, 132, 223

garment industry 57, 58

globalization and 32

Global South and 23

labor market discrimination and 125

living wage 12, 143, 160, 223

low wages of working poor 156, 223

maximum wage 224

middle classes and 189

minimum wage xv, 160, 174, 176, 211, 224

ratio 224–5

slavery and 45

stagnation of 39

tax and 67

underestimation of 205

unions and 180

Wales, Prince William, Prince of 7

Wall Street 198–9

Walmart 58

Warren, Elizabeth xxi, 38

Washington Center for Equitable Growth 39

wealth

addiction 16, 195, 198–9

climate change and see climate change

concentration of xii, xiii–xiv, xvi, xviii, xxv, 4, 16, 24–5, 35, 36, 42, 65, 74, 89, 94–5, 100, 109–10, 116, 117, 118, 125, 139, 207, 221, 225, 231

confiscation of xiv, xix, 47, 191, 222

corrosive effect of xiii, 193–9

creators 133–9 see also entrepreneurs

defense industry 67–71, 82, 121, 124, 175, 180, 196

democracy and see democracy

dirty money and 41–71

distribution of xiii, xv, xxv, 2, 3, 24–9, 32, 35, 97, 100, 141, 169, 172, 183, 189, 204–6, 225

equality/inequality and see equality

extreme xx–xxi, xxv, xxvi 2, 3, 4, 5, 16, 17–40, 41, 68, 71, 75, 89, 97, 99–100, 106, 109, 115–7, 121, 125, 133, 139, 148, 161, 182, 185, 188, 192, 194–5, 196, 199, 200, 203, 207, 215, 221

inheritance and see inheritance

limiting see limitarianism

philanthropy and see philanthropy

poverty and se poverty

rich lists xi–xii, 2, 133–4

super-rich and see super-rich

tax and see tax

undeserved 118–43, 184

unmet needs and see unmet needs

welfare

fraud 65

state 14, 65, 83, 143, 156, 170–71, 190, 201, 213

well-being

big government and 169, 172

Covid–19 and 144–5

poverty and 140, 151, 152, 154–5

property rights and 119

super-rich people and 6, 16, 194, 197–8

tax and 146

utilitarianism and 184

well-being economy 213–14

Wellbeing Economy Alliance 213–14

Wenar, Leif: Blood Oil 48

White, Stuart 226

Wiardi Beckman Foundation 141

wildfires 99, 102, 105

Winfrey, Oprah 5, 6, 139

“winner takes all” market 129, 134–5

win-win narrative 18–21, 67

Wirsching, Andreas 44

working class 29, 31–32, 35, 83, 83–4, 164, 217–18

World Bank 18, 21

World Bank Economic Review 21

World Economic Forum (WEF) xxi, 42, 91

Annual Meeting, Davos xxi–xxiii, 17, 91–3, 103, 188

World Health Organization (WHO) xv

Zaïre 48–9

Zara 136

Zoomkawala, Huzaifa 22–3, 136

Zucman, Gabriel 62–3, 66, 69

Zwarthoed, Danielle 198

About the Author

Ingrid Robeyns currently holds the chair in ethics of institutions at Utrecht University. In 2018, she was elected as a member of the Netherlands Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts and in 2021, she was awarded an Emma Goldman Award for her work on inequality studies and feminism by the FLAX foundation in Vienna. She lives in Utrecht, Netherlands.