How do we get to a fairer world?
Chapter 6
Radically Normal, part 6 of 7 · Series overview · Dieses Kapitel auf Deutsch
“That all sounds nice — but how could it ever actually work?”
The short answer: The tools have existed for a long time, but the will is not there yet.
The 10x world is an admittedly utopian goal, whose purpose is to give us moral and practical orientation. Given the prevailing balance of power in the world, it cannot be enforced directly.
By definition, a 10x world becomes impossible if some countries refuse to take part. That is exactly why it matters so much that we see ourselves as individually responsible people who decide together how we want to arrange the balance of power among us.
The most important building block on the way to a more equal society is a progressive tax system — meaning that higher wealth and higher incomes are taxed at higher rates. Such a system leans on taxes that, by their very nature, fall mainly on wealthier people, and avoids taxes that hit the everyday spending of most people.
Because wealth inequality is far greater than income inequality, such a system should tax wealth above all, and burden income less.
There is a widespread assumption I want to push back on here: the point is not to tax extremely rich people in order to fund government spending. A state with its own currency can, in principle, pay for anything it decides to (that is the view of a growing school of economic thought that I find very convincing). In principle this also holds for the eurozone as a whole, though only to a limited extent, because fiscal policy is still largely a national matter. Taxation serves more to pull money out of the economy where it would otherwise be inflationary, to curb harmful behaviour by economic actors, and — not least — to counteract an uncontrolled accumulation of wealth-based power.
This is not a contradiction of the calculation from Chapter 4, but its flip side: we are not redistributing sums of money, but claims on real resources such as labour, raw materials, and housing. A wealth tax reduces those claims. That also takes the pressure out of the bidding war over scarce goods. In this way we create room to raise the claims at the bottom of the distribution without driving prices up.
Wealth and inheritance
The goal of taxing wealth and inheritance would be to narrow the gaps in wealth, with an end goal of 10x. The main instrument would be a wealth tax that applies to very high net worth. The threshold would follow the 10x principle and take the respective purchasing power into account. As for the level of the tax, economists like Piketty and Zucman consider a levy of 2–3% per year on the excess wealth to be realistic. In any case, the rate would have to be calibrated so that, year after year, it reliably pushes the overall distribution of wealth towards 10x.
At the same time, the build-up of wealth within dynasties would be made harder through more consistent taxation of inheritance — including for me, should I one day inherit from my parents. Loopholes via foundations would be closed off, and exemptions sharply limited. We often hear the argument that family-run businesses need exemptions so they are not crushed by the burden of the tax bill. Such exemptions can exist — but they have to be narrowly defined and tied to clear conditions, so that those who do not need them do not benefit.
One complication is that the size of a fortune can be hard to pin down, depending on the type of asset. For real estate and stock holdings it would be easiest. Shares in companies not listed on the stock exchange could be valued through standardised processes, with the publication of key business figures made mandatory. Above all, with illiquid and unique goods such as works of art, legal disputes are likely — and for that we would need rules and institutions for fair and efficient resolution.
A further difficulty is identifying the actual owners of companies. For this there would need to be publicly accessible ownership registers, or at least ones that tax authorities can see. The Open Ownership initiative could point the way here. Moving one’s residence to another country is also a popular way to escape taxation at home.
A side effect of consistent international taxation of wealth and inheritance would probably be a deflation in the prices of financial assets, which would bring 10x closer directly. The reasons would be a greater need for liquidity and a reduced appeal of unproductive assets such as gold and Bitcoin.
At this point one might object: what happens to the savings of ordinary people who have invested in such assets? The truth is that those prices would likely fall sharply. These assets only reached their current high value in the first place because they are parking spots for surplus capital — parking spots that yield all the more, the more people let themselves be tempted into them. In a 10x world they would lose much of their appeal. But that does not mean that someone who put all their money into Bitcoin would have to fear for their survival. Because in a 10x world, your security no longer hangs on your portfolio: enough housing, healthcare, and general provision would be guaranteed regardless of what anyone had bet on. What is at stake then is only rank, not existence.
Wealth taxes, by the way, would not be revolutionary at all: in the decades after the Second World War they were common in many industrialised countries. France, Germany, and Switzerland levied annual wealth taxes for a time (Switzerland still does), and the United States charged top rates of up to 77% on large inheritances.
But let’s be honest: numerous countries, including Sweden, France, and Germany, later rolled back or scaled down their existing wealth taxes. The reasons given were the difficulty of valuing wealth, capital flight, and ultimately also often disappointing revenues. But these weaknesses lie in the design of the respective taxes, not in the idea itself. The fact that Switzerland still levies wealth taxes today, and that Norway recently even raised its own, shows as much.
I have sketched a few instruments here: standardised valuation and reporting requirements against the valuation problem; automatic exchange of information and exit taxes against capital flight; international coalitions against the race to the bottom on taxes.
Income tax
Alongside a generally much more progressive income tax, the adequate taxation of corporate profits is the biggest lever for working towards a 10x income goal. Today the effective tax burden of international corporations, especially those in the digital sector, is many times lower than that of an average employee. This is mainly because companies can pay tax on their profit in a place with low corporate taxes, regardless of where that profit was generated.
Typically, companies report at most their revenues, but not their profits, in the various markets. Yet it is precisely this profitability per market that is a decisive criterion for these firms in deciding where to invest. This is exactly where a local taxation of profits would have to start, along the lines of: if you make a profit with our citizens, then you pay your taxes here.
One approach to this is so-called formulary apportionment: a corporation’s global profit would be distributed, according to a uniform key — such as revenue, number of employees, or share of capital — across the countries in which it operates. This does not mean that revenue is equated with profit, but rather that known quantities like revenue and employment serve as proxies to allocate a fair share of the global profit. This would prevent companies from artificially shifting profits into low-tax countries. It would ensure that, for incomes too, the 10x goal is not hollowed out by tax tricks.
Exchange of information
Before any taxation can happen, governments need to have the relevant information. The company-ownership registers already mentioned would have to be expanded in order to identify “beneficial owners.” Tax authorities must be able to exchange relevant information automatically. With the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), the OECD has already created a framework in which this would be possible, as have the United States with FATCA. Digitising tax administrations and introducing standardised valuation rules for wealth are essential for this. In general, strong and adequately funded institutions are needed.
Do these rules sound draconian? I think it is like all the rules we collectively impose on ourselves as a society. As long as there is the social will for it and human dignity is not undermined, such restrictions on personal or entrepreneurial freedom are fundamentally possible.
Enforcement
But all these measures remain symbolic if they cannot be enforced. That is why there must be effective means of sanction for those who evade taxation. And these sanctions have to be painful enough that trying becomes too risky.
The greatest risk, as described above, is that some countries will not want to take part. That has so far been the essential hurdle in implementing worldwide corporate taxes under OECD Pillar Two (the global minimum tax).
The most important factor for changing a state’s non-participation would be its own population, recognising its responsibility and taking it seriously. Should that alone not be enough — most likely in non-democratic countries — pressure would have to be built from outside. To that end, the countries that commit to a 10x goal could set up tariffs and other trade barriers, and even impose sanctions on the decision-makers in those countries. The mere threat could be enough to bring about a change of course.
Companies that evade taxation could be put under pressure by being denied access to the infrastructure in the markets where they are liable for tax. That could include access to government contracts and public infrastructure — to ports and airports, and where appropriate to digital infrastructure as well.
Besides classic sanctions, states can also create pressure via the financial markets: funds that want to be marketed in a country could be required to disclose or wind down their holdings in non-cooperative tax havens or companies. The state cannot prescribe everything directly — but transparency requirements and disclosure increase the pressure from investors and the public.
And individuals who move their residence to a still-existing tax haven could be hit with an exit tax, as the United States already does today.
Honestly, convincing individual states is the hardest part of the undertaking. Sanctions hurt both sides, larger economies can resist more easily, and the attempt to introduce a global minimum tax shows just how stubborn the resistance is.
Sequence
• Phase 0: Establish measurement and transparency (purchasing-power-parity (PPP) benchmarks, registers of beneficial owners, CRS).
• Phase 1: Sharpen the national wealth tax and inheritance rules, test exit taxes; introduce the minimum tax under OECD Pillar Two.
• Phase 2: Build coalitions, tie access to infrastructure to compliance with the rules; standardise valuation and dispute procedures.
• Phase 3: Global harmonisation, gradual tightening towards 10x; ongoing calibration with PPP data and progress indicators.
The measures I have sketched here are not a blueprint. They are neither the last word in wisdom nor would they be easy to implement. But they show that it is, in principle, possible to shift inequality towards a 10x world. Whether that succeeds depends less on the technical details of the measures than on the willingness of all of us to take responsibility and to demand these rules. But such political will has to be built over years.
I can already hear the objections: “That’s naïve, it’ll never happen.” But here we should distinguish whether we are disputing that something is possible, or disputing that it is wanted. A 10x world is fundamentally feasible — no economic law rules it out. This is clearly about will.
That will, admittedly, is unevenly distributed on this question. The greater part of humanity would be on the winning side. The strongest incentive to be against it lies with those who would lose by far the largest part of their wealth — but who also have the greatest levers to prevent a 10x world. What matters most, in my view, is the will of people like me. The ones who, in case of doubt, make themselves comfortable. Here we find the people whose will, on this question, really counts.
I can’t guarantee anything. But “impossible” is the wrong word. What a broad majority of people genuinely want over time, they have, in the end, mostly gotten.
Justice is by no means a political dead end: in Hungary, the newly elected government is planning an annual wealth tax on very large fortunes, and in California a billionaire tax qualified in 2026 for a statewide ballot vote. And a growing number of very rich people are now calling on governments to tax them more heavily — not by donation, but by law.
Momentum is possible.