UN Urges Nations to Impose ‘Solidarity or Wealth Tax’ On Pandemic Profiters to ‘Reduce Extreme Inequalities’

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres proposed a wealth tax to impose upon those who benefited most from the global coronavirus pandemic. Guterres works under the premise that he wants to tackle the “wide inequalities” that COVID-19 created and use a wealth tax to finance global recovery.

Guteress cited reports of a “$5 trillion surge in the wealth of the world’s richest in the past year” of the pandemic. He suggests governments “consider a solidarity or wealth tax on those who have profited during the pandemic, to reduce extreme inequalities.”

The Associated Press reports Guterres’ call upon governments follows “an appeal in October by U.N. World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley to the more than 2,000 billionaires in the world, with a combined net worth of $8 trillion, to open their bank accounts.”

Beasley said if the wealthy do not “open their bank accounts” 2021 will be worse than 2020 and “we are going to have famines of biblical proportions in 2021.” Guterres says “advancing an equitable global response and recovery from the pandemic is putting multilateralism to the test…so far, it is a test we have failed.”

A lack of global solidarity means while some countries have been able to begin effective vaccination of their citizens and mobilize trillions of dollars for relief, “many developing countries face insurmountable debt burdens” said Guterres who then slid in an additional call to action for an investment “in education, decent and green jobs, social protection and health systems.”