Carl Schlyter (00:00:02)

Welcome to the third series of SystemShift, a podcast from Greenpeace which explores how we can move from a world that serves the economy to an economy that works for people and the planet.

In our previous series we looked at alternatives to our current failing economic and financial systems. The theme of this series is change. Can it happen in our lifetime? 

I’m Carl Schlyter and I’m your host in the two earlier seasons, and speaking of change, in this series I’ll be joined by two additional hosts. I’m so excited to be able to introduce them to you. Please welcome Joycelyn London and Yewande Omotoso.

Yewande Omotoso (00:00:40)

Thank you Carl, it’s great to be here, great to be on this show with yourself and with Joycelyn and I’m really looking forward to the conversations we’re going to have. 

Joycelyn London (00:00:49)

Thanks Carl, thanks for welcoming us to host this podcast alongside you. It’s really exciting, I’m really looking forward to working with you and Yewande.

Carl Schlyter (00:00:56)

Yes, I’m so happy you’re here, both of you. Before we get started on this first episode, why don’t you both take a chance to tell us a little bit more about yourself.

Joycelyn London (00:01:05)

Yeah of course. I’m Joycelyn, I am an environmental justice technologist, writer and educator I’m currently completing my doctoral studies looking at the environmental justice implications of conservation technologies like Bioacoustics, which you can think of like Shazam for nature, and I work to communicate accessible resources online and in real life with my platform “Climate and Colour”, at the intersection of climate justice and climate tech. And in April my first book “Natural Connections” will be released with Penguin Vintage, and this book is all about the legacy of people of colour and Indigenous communities in the environmental justice movement and the change that they have made, and how this can Inspire our connection with the natural world 

Yewande Omotoso (00:01:51)

And I’m Yewande, I’m a writer of three published novels and I work with storytelling at Greenpeace. I really believe in the power of story and the role stories play in the change we want to see in the world, and so it’s wonderful to join this podcast where really we’re going to be listening to stories from around the world, and stories of how change can and is happening.

Carl Schlyter (00:02:15)

That’s so exciting actually, because storytelling has been for thousands of years the way we have communicated learnings and teachings about how we should live as humans. And

Joycelyn, I think it’s quite interesting, when I studied chemical engineering, I wanted to be an environmental engineer and they said “oh that’s just hippies, that doesn’t exist”, but the year after they actually introduced it after our complaint. 

Joycelyn London (00:02:36)

That’s wonderful

Carl Schlyter (00:02:38)

So welcome both of you,

Yewande Omotoso & Joycelyn London (00:02:40)

Thank you 

Carl Schlyter (00:02:43)

For this episode we’re asking the question “would the world change if we taxed the super rich?”.

Joycelyn London (00:02:59)

We’ll be looking at taxes and how wealth tax could drive significant social and environmental change as well as funding climate adaptation practices whilst addressing economic inequality. So we put a poll on our Instagram page where we asked, “do you think raising taxes on the rich would help solve your country’s environmental and social problems?”. Carl, do you have any guesses about what people’s responses were?

Carl Schlyter (00:03:29)

It’s difficult to guess but my heart and brain tells me that people are more sensible than their leaders on these issues.

Joycelyn London (00:03:36)

Yep, you would be correct. Overwhelmingly people agreed that raising taxes on the rich would help solve environmental and social problems, with 60% voting yes, 24% voted in the middle said maybe, and 16% said no. 

Carl Schlyter (00:03:52)

We also asked how to get the super rich to pay their fair share of taxes and here’s what some of you had to say.

 “Stop all the loopholes and punish them with imprisonment if they commit fraud.”

“Have a global treaty.”

“The tax system should be based on equity not equality.”

“Tax the super rich to use the money for environmental protection and restoration.”

Joycelyn London (00:04:16)

This episode is incredibly interesting, and very poignant as recently there have been a lot more conversations and public demand for a wealth tax . And this comes with the understanding that those who are wealthier contribute more to (the) climate and biodiversity crisis, and also that these crises need a substantial amount of funding so that we can achieve social and environmental win-win outcomes. So today we’re going to be speaking about what a wealth tax is, the complexities of implementing wealth tax, what wealth tax looks like between the global North and the global South, and how we can rethink our economic systems in the ways that we redistribute wealth.

Carl Schlyter (00:04:58)

In this episode we’re joined by Chenai Mukumba, Executive Director of the Tax Justice Network Africa. Chenai has worked in the nonprofit sector for over 15 years in Asia and Africa.

Joycelyn London (00:05:14)

Thank you so much, Chenai, for being with us today. We’ve been asking our guests to help us learn a phrase about sustainability or just a phrase that is your favorite phrase in your mother tongue, or in the language of where you’re from, so I don’t know if you have a phrase that you’d like to share with us and teach us to say before we get into the full interview.

Chenai Mukumba (00:05:36)

Yeah, sure. So I am Zimbabwean and my mother tongue is Shona, which also is, I guess, my cultural group. And I think if I was to think of one saying, what comes to mind immediately would be, “chanda chimwe hachitswanyi inda” which literally means one finger cannot squash lice.

(It’s an) interpretation but really what it tries to speak to is the fact that you need collective efforts in order to to make change. So I think when thinking about this topic that’s the sort of proverb in my mother tongue that comes to mind.

Joycelyn London (00:06:11)

Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Yeah, I love proverbs.

It would be good to start just to really get an idea of what exactly a wealth tax is, how it works, and how it can be a tool for redistributing resources.

Chenai Mukumba (00:06:30)

So, I mean, a wealth tax tries to take advantage of one of the functions of taxation, right? So when thinking about tax, a lot of people only really think about the revenue-raising function of tax. And so this is the ability of taxes to contribute to the financial resources that are required to fund whatever objectives a government sets out. But tax has a number of different functions that we like to call the four, or now increasingly the five Rs of taxation. So revenue raising is one, redistribution is another, repricing is the other, representation is the other, and then reparations, an increasing function of tax that’s being explored these days. And so when thinking about wealth tax, you’re really trying to see the way in which you can bring forward the redistributive function of tax.

So (this is) looking at particularly wealthier individuals, either (the) income or wealth that they have, and trying to see how you can use tax policy in order to, in a sense, capture some of that wealth and then redistribute it within an economy or a society in order to have that wealth serve a larger societal objective.

Joycelyn London (00:07:42)

Tax can seem like such an overwhelming topic and something that feels unfamiliar or really technical to people, so it’s really great to just get down into the nitty gritty of what exactly it means. And I think one of the misunderstandings is the difference between the wealth (tax) and an income tax. So I don’t know if you would be able to elaborate on the specific differences between those two different types of tax.

Chenai Mukumba (00:08:05)

So I think wealth is essentially what one could say is the already existing resources, right, that one has. Whereas income, on the other hand, is something that is continuously generating itself. So at an individual level, if you have a job, you have an income that you’re earning on a monthly basis, and there’s a number of different ways that one can earn this income. Whereas wealth, so to speak, is this asset that one already has. Wealth can also generate income. But really, it’s an already existing amount that you have at your disposal.

Carl Schlyter (00:08:41)

So a wealth tax can be, for example, on the capital you have or on property that you own and the value of it, and you tax it every year. And another thing is then the capital gains tax where you make profit from the capital you have and then you can pay a profit tax on that. So that’s kind of different sorts of wealth taxes.

Chenai Mukumba (00:09:00)

Exactly. So a wealth tax, for example, would be an inheritance tax. So for example, say you’ve received a large amount of money from perhaps a family member or somebody that’s passed away, and then a taxation on that, that you’ve just received, is another type of wealth tax.

Carl Schlyter (00:09:19)

The common argument against that is people say, it’s already paid for, why should I pay tax twice on the same money? Can you explain the argument why an inheritance tax would be justified?

Chenai Mukumba (00:09:29)

I mean, it’s a question around incidence. So who paid that tax, right? And so in a sense, when we’re making the case for why the recipient of inheritance should pay tax it’s because in a sense, the recipient themself hasn’t paid their tax on what they’re about to benefit from.

Carl Schlyter (00:09:47)

And also, like the legacy, would you really, if you had zero inheritance tax, you would probably have such a concentration of wealth after a few generations. So you would also have maybe other negative aspects on society based on inequality and concentration of power and wealth. Could that be also an argument?

Chenai Mukumba (00:10:05)

Absolutely. I think there’s a lot of research that’s been done that shows what the negative impacts of having a high concentration of wealth within a small group of individuals looks like. And I mean, this looks like, for example, the undermined trust in institutions, because if you’ve got greater wealth, you’re more likely to have influence, political influence, right, into institutions, into media, et cetera. I think it also contributes in a sense to increased inequality within an economy, within a society, which then has the ripple effects of social unrest, for example, which is something that we’ve been seeing a lot of in the African continent. So absolutely, I think that high concentration of resources within the hands of a few definitely has negative impacts in a society.

Joycelyn London (00:10:48)

Yeah, it’s interesting. And I think these are some of the things that people maybe don’t think about when they’re kind of talking about these arguments. And another argument that people have against these wealth taxes is about investment being removed. I mean, you mentioned that these individuals have a huge amount of political influence, but also business influence, and there’s this assumption that you cannot touch the wealth of the rich because they will move their money elsewhere, which would bring a negative social impact. Could you speak about whether this assumption is valid and kind of explain how this works or how you’ve seen it play out?

Chenai Mukumba (00:11:27)

Yeah, I mean, this is part of the reason why when thinking about things like wealth tax, international tax cooperation is necessary. Because of what you’ve said, at times, particularly wealthy individuals, when I guess governments are trying to find a way to access that, they then start to think about moving their wealth. And this is often an argument that those that are anti-wealth taxes put forward.

But if you look at the numbers actually, whilst there often is some level of movement and shifting of wealth by individuals, it’s not as significant as a lot of the naysayers like to put out, right? In fact, I think there’s some research that was done by South Africa I know, when they were thinking about wealth tax that actually showed that yes, there’s gonna be some movement, but it’s negligible compared to what a country could benefit by actually putting that in place, and therefore benefiting from that type of tax policy.

Carl Schlyter (00:12:20)

It’s interesting how that can be similar through different jurisdictions because from the global North of the globe then, Norway, they introduced or increased their wealth tax. And we saw some flight, but the net income of the tax actually increased significantly despite this. So there are rather few that want to uproot everything and leave only to avoid a small tax.

Chenai Mukumba (00:12:43)

Yeah, and I think it’s important. That’s why podcasts like this are important, to make sure that that information is finding itself into the public domain, because then you tend to find a lot of policymakers are making decisions based off of that. It’s not accurate in terms of the implications and impact of wealth taxes.

Carl Schlyter (00:12:58)

Then I would like to go ahead and ask if you want to introduce a wealth tax, the decision is most often national. And then we have just talked about how some people might try to avoid it. So what would be the countermeasure to that effect, so to speak?

Chenai Mukumba (00:13:18)

So I know some countries are having conversations about putting what in a sense would almost be an exit tax. So if an individual decides that they want to shift their wealth outside of a country, put in place a tax that they would need to pay, right, for moving their resources from one jurisdiction to another. And so that’s a type of measure that I know some countries are thinking about.

But I think also very broadly when talking about international tax cooperation, this is also necessary because certain individuals may not try to do it in a way that’s as transparent and visible, particularly for governments to see. And so you want to be able then to engage and have interactions with other governments so that they’re able to inform you if, for example, there is wealth that’s being transferred to another jurisdiction, so that cooperation can then help them identify that movement.

Joycelyn London (00:14:09)

This is so interesting and I think it’s really interesting to also think about the dynamics between the global north and global south and specifically countries in Africa. And one thing that comes to mind is that a lot of the tax, when we’re thinking about the climate crisis and adaptation and mitigation, needs to be coming from the wealthiest countries. And you were talking about the five Rs of tax with reparations being the fifth one.

And so how do we ensure that the resources raised from wealth taxes in these wealthier nations would actually reach the most vulnerable, not just the most vulnerable countries, but also the most vulnerable within those countries as well?

Chenai Mukumba (00:14:46)

So I think there’s two points that I would make to this. I absolutely think that tax reparations is important. I absolutely think that global North countries have a responsibility, I think, to pay for the implications of climate change, particularly on developing countries. I think for reasons that you’ve probably discussed on the podcast already, right, they’re the main contributors and we’re seeing the most devastating impacts happening in developing countries. This is my first point.

My second point is, that’s easier said than done. And I think you only need to look at, you know, recent efforts in this regard and how they failed. So I think on my side, some of the thinking that we’ve been exploring is how can developing countries put measures in place that have them in a slightly more proactive position when it comes to climate financing.

And that might look like crazy ideas, such as when exporting some of your minerals. What kind of tax rate do you want to put in place for countries that need these minerals so that you’re maintaining that revenue within your country, rather than waiting on them to tax their individuals and then put in place a number of measures so that that money then finds itself within your borders. So I think on our side, we also need to think about ways to get that financing in a slightly more proactive way. But absolutely that money needs to find itself from the global North and into the purses of global South countries.

Carl Schlyter (00:16:12)

And this really shows why tax policy needs to be integrated with trade policy because the economic partnership agreements between the European Union and Africa actually banned many of those export taxes that (were) a huge revenue for several governments. So this is really important that we don’t only change taxes here, but we have a look (so that) they are not undermin(ing) the work we do here in trade policy. But I see that the African Union group of countries in the United Nations have made an excellent initiative to have a tax initiative. Could you tell us more about this?

Chenai Mukumba (00:16:44)

Yeah, before I go into that, I think (I) just want to double click that you’re completely right, I think tax policy is connected to every other type of policy that a government is putting in place. And you’re absolutely right, trade policy is one of those. I think a conversation that we were having recently as TJNA and some of our network members, was this idea that it’s really important for us to think about what the developmental objective we want to achieve as a continent is, and then, how does tax policy help contribute to that, And then of course that then has implications – so from a trade taxes perspective, what do we need to be thinking about? So just to absolutely say that that’s correct. 

And then I think with regards to your second question, which is another topic that I love talking about, is this conversation about a UN Tax Convention. And this is a conversation that started many years ago. But in the recent history, we can see it dating back to about 2015, where the high level panel that was established in 2011 to explore this topic of illicit financial flows and tax on the continent, put out as a recommendation in terms of how to address some of these issues that are undermining African countries’ ability to raise resources. So this panel flagged that African countries are losing resources due to a number of loopholes that exist in some of our domestic policies, due to lack of coordination at regional level, but also due to this very disparate framework that exists at the global level, that’s allowing multinational corporations and, relevant to this conversation, wealthy individuals, to exploit loopholes and move money around. So what we saw in 2022 was a proposal that was tabled by the Africa group, specifically Nigeria did the tabling on behalf of that group of countries, to say, we feel that this conversation about a global tax system that works for everybody, that’s cognisant of varying countries’ contexts, needs to happen at the UN, where every single country has a seat at the table.

Carl Schlyter (00:18:47)

Yeah, just for viewers who might not be familiar with that, the World Bank and the IMF is working a little bit like a corporation in its voting. The large rich nations have a lot more votes, and therefore a tax reform within the UN framework with one country, one vote would be an extremely much more fair way to do a tax reform. So that’s what we’re talking about here.

Chenai Mukumba (00:19:08)

Just to your point, I think we’ve got colleagues that say within the IMF and the World Bank, it’s one dollar one vote, right? So the more money you bring into that space, the more say you have, which really undermines these democratic principles that we like to say are essential for us to really govern ourselves effectively. So at the UN, whilst of course there are still sort of asymmetries of power, quite frankly, it’s one of the most, I would say, democratic spaces, where regardless of size of country, your voice can count the same as even say, for example, the United States.

Joycelyn London (00:19:46)

And we’ve been kind of touching on this idea that it’s beyond an individual wealth tax. There is a lot of complicated interactions going on here between individuals, governments, and also corporations, and I think it’d be interesting just to expand on the role of wealth tax as it pertains to corporations and how they affect each other.?

Chenai Mukumba (00:20:08)

Yeah, so I think with corporations or multinational corporations and wealthy individuals, I think we see them use very similar mechanisms to avoid paying taxes where they reside. So we often lump them together when thinking about the way governments need to have policies in place to avoid them from both illegally and illicitly shifting their taxes from one jurisdiction to often a low tax jurisdiction. And so I think for us, the reason we think of them collectively is because at the end of the day, when thinking about progressive tax systems, we have this notion that those who earn the most pay the most. Institutions and individuals with higher taxable capacities should be those that are contributing more to government purposes. So it’s particularly that group of individuals and companies that we feel need to be targeted specifically, to make sure that you don’t have an unfair burden of taxes being carried by ordinary citizens, or even at times marginalized citizens because of the implementation of regressive tax policies such as VAT, for example.

Carl Schlyter (00:21:15)

But then, I mean, there are many figures floating around, but one quoted figure is 500 billion dollars a year is lost in tax avoidance. And that’s mostly done by really rich individuals and corporations. So that’s actually a lot more than the total biodiversity and climate funding the United Nations is talking about. So how could you actually tackle tax avoidance? Would this new tax treaty help us do that and how?

Chenai Mukumba (00:21:43)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, within the African continent, figures that I like to quote quite often is that we’re losing close to 90 billion dollars annually. But when you take a look at, for example, the amount that we receive in ODA (Overseas Development Aid), we’re losing almost double that. So I always find it an interesting statistic, right, to say if you were to help African countries not lose their own resources, we actually almost wouldn’t even need development assistance from global.North countries. And I hope that sort of helps bring all of this into perspective. But then the conversation about the UN tax convention, I think that the point I made earlier is that we currently have a setup at the OECD where it’s a small group of rich countries that are making decisions on behalf of everybody. And these countries have very limited contextual understandings and appreciation of the situation of many developing countries. And so these rules are put in place and can’t be implemented by developing countries, and then because they can’t, it really undermines their ability to address this loss of revenue that’s happening. So our hope, our expectation, is that by shifting the platform where these rules are discussed and decided to the UN, you have countries even as small as Lesotho contribute to the rulemaking so that what’s agreed is something that even they can apply and hopefully, much more meaningfully address this issue in a way that they’re able to implement as well.

Joycelyn London (00:23:04)

And one question that always comes up to me when thinking about how hard we’re finding it to just rally up the funds that are needed is also, say we do get those funds, how should implementation be conducted on the ground? Do we have a clear idea of how these taxes, or (whether it comes from tax or whether it comes from other means), how this can be deployed on the ground, for the most use?

Chenai Mukumba (00:23:25)

I think it would look — were it ever to find itself, I think within global South countries – I think it would look different in different countries because I think many countries are experiencing the devastating impacts of climate change in different ways. So, I mean, earlier this year we had both droughts and floods on the continent, and so I think the way in which a country would deploy those resources would look very different.

I think what we would need to make sure is that the process of the way in which these resources (are) used is done inclusively, right, is done so that those communities that are being most negatively affected are part and parcel of the decision making because they’re the ones that are suffering the brunt, so I think principles around how those resources are going to be spent are what we need to be thinking about. And like I said, the actual outcome could look very different country by country.

Carl Schlyter (00:24:20)

The current system actually, first of all, benefits those who have short term thinking on keeping their private wealth away from anybody else and the planet’s needs. Then secondly, it benefits mostly global North countries, and global South countries are on the losing end of the stick. But then what would be the benefit for global North governments to agree on a tax convention that would benefit anyone? And what’s the kind of argument that you could use, if you live in the global North, to argue for, “you should support this initiative”? What would you use as arguments that it would benefit those countries?

Chenai Mukumba (00:25.00)

Well, first and foremost, this issue of loss of resources and revenues is not just a developing country thing. Developed countries are similarly losing significant amounts of money, in fact, much more than developing countries.

The reason we flag the impact it’s having on developing countries is because for us, it’s a larger percentage of our GDP and the implications are much more significant. But the amounts that developed countries are losing are very, very large. And in the same way that I mentioned earlier, you see an undermining of institutions, a growing of inequality; these are all things that we’re seeing, particularly in developed countries as well. And then I think the second point that I would make is that I think we need to think about ourselves in a much more global community sense. The extent to which developing countries are able to advance to become much more industrialized has positive implications for all of us. So I know, for example, in developed countries, a big issue that currently I think a lot of politicians are needing to navigate, is migration of people, particularly from global South countries to global North countries. The reason that’s happening is because global South countries don’t have the resources they need right now to invest in societies that are able to create job opportunities and all of that, for individuals that are located this side. So it’s really to say the extent to which you can contribute to the betterment of global South countries has positive impacts across the board, not just in those countries as well. And so that’s why I think closing loopholes, ensuring that governments are adequately resourced to fund education, health, et cetera, has broader impacts, positive impacts for all of us.

Joycelyn London (00:26:38)

So thank you, Chenai. I mean, it’s been such an incredible conversation and I mean, I’m learning so much and I think people who are listening will be learning so much. And one thing I think people might be thinking is it’s easy to see taxation as something beyond the individual, as in beyond everyday normal people. But I’d like you to just give us an idea of why we should be caring about this and why we should be thinking about this as individuals as part of the way we think about systems change and the way that we think about shifting the system, and what agency we have in this as well.

Chenai Mukumba (00:27:09)

Yeah, I think that’s a good question. One of my good friends at Tax Justice Network, Alex, he likes to say that tax is our superpower. It’s a different twist, right, on how we think about tax, because very rarely do you talk about tax and evoke positive emotions when you’re talking to people. But it really is that in the sense that, I mean, right at the beginning of this, you asked me to think about a phrase in my local language, you know, this proverb that we have, that a single finger cannot kill a whole head of lice. I think tax really sort of brings that to life in the sense that it’s our collective power as individuals to address so many of the societal issues that we have. I like to say about tax that here you literally start to see how the sum of our parts is bigger than the whole. Because as an individual, for example, to give a very practical example, you wouldn’t be able to build a road in order to get from point A to point B. As an individual, you can’t assure national security for yourself. You need to find a way to collate all of our resources to provide that type of service to each and every single one of us. And so I think about tax that way. I think about it being how we can, together, put in one basket what we need to all benefit from.

And this is not to say that the way it’s being implemented across countries is perfect. Very few things, I think, in our societies are perfect. But it really is, I think, an important tool that we have within our box to address many of the issues that we are confronted with today.

Joycelyn London (00:28:36)

Well, thank you so much, Chenai. It’s been such an eye-opening conversation and I’m really glad to have been able to meet you and talk to you about this topic. So thank you so much.

Carl Schlyter (00:28:46)

Yeah, me too.I want to say thank you for making this interesting topic even more interesting and maybe outside of the nerd community even.

Chenai Mukumba (00:28:55)

No, thank you so much for the invitation. This was a lot of fun. I appreciate the invitation.

Carl Schlyter (00:29.03)

So we touched upon many subjects that I thought  could be interesting to delve into a bit deeper, for example, this thing about tax avoidance and the impacts that (it can) have. 

Joycelyn London (00:29.16)

I think it was just so staggering to hear the statistics, I mean 90 billion dollars annually lost in tax avoidance. And I think this is something that we don’t think a lot about when we’re talking about wealth tax, and the impact, the social impact, of avoidance of wealth tax and just how much good could be happening with that money. You know we’re talking all the time about struggling to get nations together to provide enough money for climate adaptation and mitigation, yet Chenai mentioned that the loss to tax evasion each year is double the amount coming in for aid. So it just seems like such a huge lost opportunity for that to be having such an Impact.

Carl Schlyter (00:29:58)  

I agree, and I just came back from the global meeting on biodiversity that the UN had recently and there we had a big fight about the 20 billion (dollars) the rich countries should pay and here Africa alone loses 90 billion a year.

Joycelyn London (00:30:13)

It’s mind blowing!

Carl Schlyter (00:30:15) 

So like, okay we are not able to even pay 20 but we are able to steal 90 and there’s no discussion about it? I think that’s scandalous actually.

Joycelyn London (00:30:23)

Yes, I think it really builds on – you hear a lot in these spaces that there’s a scarcity of funds, that we don’t have enough funds for climate adaptation and mitigation or that climate adaptation and mitigation is too expensive. And I think this is really revealing of the kind of interests that are at play when we’re talking about money, and also how we frame how much things cost. When you start getting into the millions and billions I think it’s very hard for the everyday person to really understand how big we’re talking, and also how small we’re talking because it’s, as you say, it’s very hard to raise $20 billion. And that sounds really big  – a lot of us can’t really fathom what 20 billion dollars is, but when you compare that to the staggering $90 billion, you really see that the wealthy are playing a little game here, because there’s such a wide discrepancy between what we’re told is available and what is actually being kind of squirreled away elsewhere.

Carl Schlyter (00:31:21)

However it becomes extremely concrete for every single mum (on) the planet or or every retired person with a low pension, when they go to the food shop, and they have to pay taxes, and they

have little money left (at) the end of the month. Then it becomes extremely clear who is paying these taxes if the rich avoid them. So that’s where the clarity is, that’s where the figures are, that’s where you lose your 10 euros, your 10 dollars, or whatever currency you have where you live, because that is where you feel the impact. You would have had that money, you could have afforded that food, you could have paid your rent, you could have paid your electricity bill, if these extremely rich people actually (paid) their taxes. That’s where you feel it but you don’t (make) the connection 

Joycelyn London (00:32:05)

Yeah, and I think this links to the question that we had about how this involves the individual person, because it affects our daily lives but it’s just been made invisible, and we don’t see how our daily lives are impacted by this issue. I feel in ways, whether consciously or subconsciously, it’s intentional. It’s intentional, to make us feel disconnected from the ways in which our economic politics are tied to the economic politics of the wealthy. And then to understand that we are connected, and that we could be living more easeful and abundant lives, were people to take on more responsibility given their kind of social standing, and their wealth. And so I think it becomes very important for us to understand how wealth is distributed, or how it’s evaded, and work towards campaigning for these shifts in policy and in action.

Carl Schlyter (00:32:57):

I also liked a lot her reply on predistribution versus redistribution, that actually a change in tax policy could be the first step to tackle also the fact that predistribution is lacking in today’s economy. I think that was also an interesting perspective, that we should tone down the conflict between these two goals and see it as part of achieving a bigger goal.

Joycelyn London (00:33:22)

It’s kind of like moving in the opposite direction to finally meet. It’s like taking both ends of the system and shifting them and reimagining them. And I think this is again a common misconception within the climate space and with social change more, and systems change more broadly, is that we feel that there has to be one silver bullet solution, where we’re going to need action from so many different perspectives. We need everyone everywhere, in every industry, using a wide variety of solutions to tackle these issues, and as Chenai said, the way that tax is distributed, the way that money from wealthier Nations is put to use for adaptation and mitigation, will change, will be different and will be specific in different contexts. And it’s about being able to bring those different contexts and different approaches together and reducing the tension, because we all at the end have the same goals in mind. 

Carl Schlyter (00:34:21)

Also we talked a lot about the top level how the United Nations and countries could change things, but I think a lot of it also starts with communities getting together, like focusing on cooperation and community, because we won’t win at the UN level alone, we won’t win that IMF or any kind of global body. We need local communities to empower themselves and fight back and take back, also economic and political power, so that’s where 1,000 drops, you know, digs through the stone, also. So 1000 paper cuts, 1000 drops will have a good run.

Joycelyn London (00:34:58)

A hundred percent. And I mean you know you were talking about the impact of tax on everyday working people and I think this is where mutual aid becomes such an important practice for us as communities. You know that’s the tangible thing we can do as communities – whilst we’re fighting at the UN level, whilst we’re fighting for policy change – to ease the burden, ease the economic burden that we feel is, being in mutual relationship with each other and removing those barriers that make us feel like we’re alone or that we should hold our economic stresses alone. And more so, connecting, which really the capitalist system of, you know this late stage capitalist idea of individuality – you make it on your own, you fail on your own, you succeed on your own – by investing in mutual aid, investing in community support financially as well as non-financially, as we resist some of those systems and start remaking the system in our own small ways, in our own small communities, and I think that’s something tangible that we can do.

Carl Schlyter (00:35:59)

Yeah I like that, I mean every country’s focused so much on competitiveness, outperforming another country, often with unhealthy tax cuts or environmental legislations or pitting people against people, while we here would focus on cooperativeness, the power of cooperativeness more, I think that is a word we should use more. 

Joycelyn London (00:36:18)

I work in technology and a huge issue we’re seeing now is that our rampant consumption of technology is fueling a huge human rights crisis, conflict, oppression in many places including the Congo, which I think the statistic is, exports 60% of the world’s cobalt. I’m interested in how we can avoid these human rights abuses, or alleviate them, plus alleviate the environmental issues that are imposed by these kinds of rampant mineral extraction through tax. I don’t know whether you have any ideas about this.

Carl Schlyter (00:36:53)

I mean sure, and then also put this in an Indigenous people’s perspective with prior and informed consent, I think this is also like the human rights are lacking from the beginning here. But of course tax income could help us deal with that and fund participation and fund local communities to fight back and develop also. So I think that’s really important and I remember one conversation I had with a Botswana leading politician – Botswana is a big mining nation and they actually do have extraction taxes – and when I explained my country Sweden’s tax on 0.2% of which 75% goes to the landowner not the taxpayer, so it’s almost nothing really. And this is a problem we don’t only see in the global South, also in the global North we have mining corporations exploiting tax loopholes and extreme low tax policies in both Canada and Sweden and elsewhere. 

And many African countries tried not only to have mineral export taxes or fees and levies, but also some of them had added value promotion, so they don’t want you to export the basic ore or the simplest product, but moving up the value chain. And so they had high taxes on the lowest level of refinery and then the more it was, you know, added value locally, the higher the tax, and this was a really good policy to develop industry in those countries. But the EU really forced them to slash this policy, which was detrimental to both tax income and national development, so we deliberately killed the nascent industry here with our trade agreements.So these mineral export and export taxes in general, to promote and protect business environments and build up clusters, is really important. That’s actually how many European nations, early industrialized nations, actually managed to do that, so you protect yourself from some part of the competition until you’re ready to compete, and that’s also exactly what Korea did. So I think not permitting African countries to have a tax policy that benefits their development is extremely harmful and colonialistic and I think it’s interesting that you mentioned this as you said.  

Joycelyn London (00:39:04)

Yeah, I think this conversation really leads us to (see that) tax policy is linked to so many other polic(ies), to all policy, and when you take say the Congo example you start to pull apart the threads and see how everything is linked. I mean people are not in a position, people are in a position of desperation, of oppression, of need – deep deep need – and if there were the right tax mechanisms to provide better health care, better schooling, for that redistribution of finance, they would not be led to these very unsafe situations in the first place. But at the same time, with these export taxes, the way in which the infrastructure around these mining operations and maybe the ownership, the bartering power that communities would have to fight back against these very extractive or colonial kind of methods would also be resisted. I’m just seeing so many links with these different aspects of tax

Carl Schlyter (00:40:03)

Yes, on so many levels, because of course taxes could also be used to promote the circular economy, that we need less extraction to promote business models, that need(s) less consumerism or a change in business models that would make sure that we reuse things or longer life cycles of things. And so it’s not only on the mineral tax side, but it’s also you could use taxes to keep more of the local economy in place, less extraction, less destruction. It’s really important that we can’t continue a policy where we have trade agreements and taxes that undermine local community development and national development in other countries. I think that’s appalling.

Joycelyn London (00:40:46)

Yeah, and I think it’s so part of an environmental justice approach to consider this and to consider the actual mechanisms that can be used to allow communities to resist oppressive systems and oppressive infrastructures. So I’m really glad we’ve been able to touch on this today.

Carl Schlyter (00:41:01)

Yeah let’s build rather than tear down communities.

Joycelyn London (00:41:08)

So to finish, we know that the super rich caused the climate crisis, while still profiting from it. And in this episode we’ve been talking about how we could tax them. We need to change the social narrative on this topic and push leaders of countries and of multinational corporations to act. We’ve heard a lot about tax justice and some of the solutions and approaches we can take 

Carl Schlyter (00:41:30)

Sure, because in a situation where the super both caused the climate crisis and profit from it we need to fight back, and there are several things you can do – because we have been talking about what governments can do – but in this case you can join the Wellbeing Movement by signing the Wellbeing for All petition. You can also listen to the season 2 SystemShift episode with Tove Maria Ryding on the Tax Convention, I could recommend that one as well. And also we have a blog, where you can read about …the Greenpeace blog on global tax rules that work for the people, so there are a lot of things you can do.

Joycelyn London (00:42:05)

Great, sounds wonderful, I’ll be getting into those resources too.

Carl Schlyter (00:42:08)

Of all the topics we’ve talked about here in this podcast, tax change is 100% under human control, 100% possible to change very rapidly. So these are one of the few things we have been talking about here which is really easy and possible to change fundamentally. The only thing lacking is the political will to benefit the planet rather than the super rich, to benefit people rather than the large corporations, and to benefit our mutual survival and our ecosystems rather than short-term profits.

Joycelyn London (00:42:45)

Yeah, exactly, and this is as you say something that can happen in our lifetime, and will happen if we all resist and if we continue to educate ourselves and engage in movements for tax reform and for alternative economic systems. 

Carl Schlyter (00:43:02).

Perfect, nobody is alone here, we need to move on this and it’s actually easier than many other struggles we can have.

Yewande Omotoso (00:43:12)

Thanks for listening to this episode of SystemShift. Join us next time when we’re asking the question “are urban communities a remedy for loneliness?”.

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