One of the increasingly central and current issues in today's economy is the distribution of wealth. Or better yet, the economic inequalities, which are increasingly accentuated in Europe but even more so in the most recently developed areas of the planet. Economists from all over the world question themselves and periodically discuss this aspect which is often neglected by government policies, which at most offer short-term solutions, if they do not even end up widening the gap between the very few richer and richer e poorer and poorer: an increasingly smaller middle class, in favor of an increase in poverty in the lower classes. It is known to many Oxfam study according to which the richest 1% holds practically half of global net wealth. But that's not all: since 2020, the rich 1% of the population has accumulated almost two-thirds of all the world's new wealth. And even in Italy, historically a country with a low Gini index, today the richest 5% own more than the poorest 80%.
Economic inequalities: the case of Brazil
A case in point is that of South America and in particular Brazil, the leading economy in the area and a country with over 200 million inhabitants, of which 70 million, according to the UN, do not even have guaranteed access to food. According to the latest work of the Brazilian professor from Columbia University in New York, Marcelo Medeiros, by title "Os ricos e os pobres: O Brasil ea desigualdade” (Companhia das Letras), in the Latin American giant half of the GDP growth ends up in the hands of the richest 5% of the population. But there are other even more significant data: in Brazil 80% of the population has an income considered low, and 50% of the country's adults earn less than 14 thousand reais a year, equal to less than 3.000 euros. The richest 1%. it is instead a small group of 1,5 million people who earn at least the equivalent of 70 thousand euros a year: of these, around half a million are millionaires, who have doubled from 2021 to 2022 making Brazil, according to the Global Credit Suisse's Wealth Report 2023, the first country in the world for the increase in Scrooges.
Brazil: inequality is also in taxes
Economist Medeiros then notes that inequality is present not only at the level of income but also of taxation, always to the detriment of the lowest groups: "Employed workers, for example, tend to pay higher taxes than professionals or investors independent". How to resolve this anomaly? It's not simple, and that doesn't mean it is property tax which is also talked about a lot in Europe is the right solution. For one reason: the richest 10% is a very heterogeneous group, where there are ultra-millionaires but also people with medium-high incomes, only four times higher than that of the least wealthy 50%. “The richest 10% – explains Medeiros – is the one with the most inequality within it, it is a very heterogeneous group”. This is why the taxation of these fortunes, at very different levels, should also be diversified.
“It is an incredibly difficult problem, it will take a long time, it will mobilize monstrous political capital, because, ultimately, it is not possible to create a less unequal country with just an isolated set of factors. It is very important, first of all, insist on the progressiveness of taxation, which must be rationalized because we cannot put people in the richest 1% on the same level with those in the 5% group or with those in the 10% group. We need to be very careful about this,” suggested the Brazilian teacher when presenting his book.
