A Global Income Tax

The world’s wealthy — and the corporations they run — are continually threatening to pull up stakes if the governments that host them get uppity enough to dare raise the tax rates on their wealth. But what if we only had one set of tax rates in the world — and a progressive set at that?

A silly impractical dream? Not to Saint Louis University law professor Henry Ordower. He argues in this new paper that a number of significant and often surprising changes in the financial and tax worlds have made a single global tax system now imaginable for the first time ever.

Ordower explains these changes and the many issues a grand unified global income tax raises in this sober and detailed study. If physicists can embark on a search for a grand unified theory to explain our natural world, he wonders, why can’t tax experts imagine something equally grand in their sphere?

New Wisdom on Wealth

• Henry Blodget, Sorry, Folks, Rich People Actually Don't 'Create The Jobs,' Business Insider, November 29, 2013. What does: an economy where most folks enjoy financial security.
• Bob Lord, Estate Taxes: Down to 1 Percent and Sinking, Inequality.Org, November 26, 2013. Why the estate tax is no longer braking the transfer of princely fortunes from one generation to the next.
• John Cavanagh and Robin Broad, Six of the Top Ten U.S. Billionaires Are Kochs and Waltons, AlterNet, November 26, 2013. These two families stand in the way of America's two most urgent tasks: transforming our economy and cleaning up our politics.
• John Harkinson, Why Are Big Retailers Trying to Kill Thanksgiving? Mother Jones, November 27, 2013. The only mega retailer to resist turkey day sales turns out to be Costco, the mega retailer with the smallest pay gap between execs and workers.
• Suzanne Moore, Boris Johnson's philosophy isn't just elitist — it's sinister, Guardian, November 28, 2013. London's mayor seems well on the way to becoming the world's most unabashed apologist for inequality.
• Anthony Hall, CEO pay just reflection of America’s economic apartheid, Florida Courier, November 28, 2013. We've gone from the 1950s, a time when CEOs had vested interests in their communities, to today an era with CEOs interested only in their share value.