CONFERENCE WITH GABRIEL ZUCMAN: INEQUALITY AND TAX HAVEN: HOW TO FIGHT THE EVASION OF CAPITAL

The economist Gabriel Zucman develops some of the main conclusions and implications for joint research with Thomas Piketty in the framework of the World Wealth and the Income Database project. This is a research that clearly shows an increase in inequality in many countries, especially since 1980. An increase mainly caused by the political changes that have led to the reduction of fiscal pressure and a dominated economy for finance. An inequality that is synthesized in the formula that Piketty popularizes, in which the rate of capital profitability significantly exceeds the growth rate of the economy, as it did for much of history until the nineteenth century. This means that capital and inheritance grow faster than production and income, which are the result of individual effort, which questions the foundations of a supposedly meritocratic society.

Likewise, Zucman will also focus on other aspects of his research, and specifically on international fiscal evasion and the role of tax havens as one of the causes of inequality. For Zucman, tax evasion is not inevitable.

But it is necessary to act against fiscal paradises as they represent the rupture of the social contract the loss of social and intergenerational solidarity.