Seán Ó Conaill: Wealth Tax Needed on Richest 1% – Piketty
To balance the world economy, protect democracy and halt global warming, a wealth tax on the world’s wealthiest 1% is urgently needed – according to Thomas Piketty, the best-selling French Economist. Link to article on ACI site.
“Right now, with the kind of climate investment that we are making, our baseline projection for global warming is above four degrees in 2100,” he told Naomi O’Leary of the Irish Times on August 15th, 2026.
Arguing that accepting this level of climate disaster is unthinkable, Piketty argued for the acceptance of the findings of the Global Justice Report, published recently by the ‘World Inequality Lab‘ based in Paris, which Piketty heads.
“…It’s going to be really warm. So we need to do something… The question is really how to reconcile prosperity with planetary habitability. This is, I think, a very optimistic report – it is saying it is possible to combine the two.”
The Global Justice Report proposes balancing per capita monthy income around €5,000 (£4275) in every country by the year 2100, by halving working hours, heavily taxing the wealthiest and promoting radical global reforestation..
Rejecting the argument that proposing an equalisation of wealth is ‘Utopian’ Piketty insists:
“It’s entirely a matter of political choice and political decision. Of course it’s easier if more governments get together and take the decision together. But I think even individual countries can do it. This is a very moderate proposal as compared to what already happened.”
This is a reference to the consequences of slow-walking climate-saving measures, arguably evident in devastating wildfires across the northern hemisphere in the summer of 20226. Piketty is insistent that predictive arguments against taxing wealth have consistently proved wrong historically.
“At every time period in history, there has been a feeling that you cannot change the tax system. At the time of the French Revolution, there was the idea that aristocrats, you cannot make them pay tax, that’s impossible. If you had asked mainstream economists or politicians in 1910 in Ireland or Britain or France: is it okay if we compress inequality three-fold? And is it okay if the total tax revenue goes from 10 per cent of GDP to 30, 40, 50 per cent of GDP? They would have said: ‘this is communism, this is going to be the collapse of the economy, the sky is going to fall’. But in the end, it was very successful and it came with unprecedented prosperity and growth.”
Piketty also criticises Ireland’s economic model for syphoning corporate tax income that would otherwise be collected in other countries, benefitting their economies and capacity to fight climate change.
“I don’t want to blame Ireland. I understand why every country is looking for its own little niche in this difficult world. I would like Ireland to say: look, we’ve been doing that because we had no other plan, to find a bit more resources for ourselves. This is the problem: this little niche that Ireland is creating for itself looks attractive, but in fact it’s a mediocre development strategy. I think in the end, Ireland could get more for itself through global co-operation than what they are doing now.”
For Naomi O’Leary’s complete interview with Thomas Piketty click here.
Piketty’s ‘World Inequality Lab’ held a ‘World Inequality Conference’ this year, 2026. I cannot find anywhere that these economists have an anthropology of desire – a grasp of what actually drives inequality other than permissive taxation policies.
And this means, of course, that they are totally blind to the traditional role of religion in critiquing e.g. covetousness – mimetic desire – the desire that springs into being just as soon as we see someone who owns something that we do not – something that seems to make them ‘greater’.
And this inevitably means that Piketty et al underestimate the political challenge of adopting the kind of radical progressive taxation regime he advocates. He is thinking and writing in an economist’s silo – oblivious of the psychology of Mr Toad in ‘Wind in the Willows’ – who lost interest in his horse-drawn caravan as soon as he was passed on the road by someone driving a high-powered sports car.
Egalitarian economists like Piketty desperately need the churches, and all of the great faith traditions, on board to have any hope of the global taxation regime they aspire to. Equally all those involved in faith formation need to know that there are economists out there who see the economic and climatic costs of inequality – and the existential necessity of economic justice.
Just how much of the Earth must burn before the insanity of unchecked desire burns everything?