Mexico’s López Obrador proposes to end poverty with a 4% tax on the wealthy

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, today joined the debate on the taxation of the world’s great fortunes and proposed a plan that consists of taxing great wealth with 4% as a recipe to end poverty.

In his long-awaited speech before the UN Security Council in New York, the President indicated how this “fund”, which he called the “Global Plan for Fraternity and Well-being”, would be composed: a “voluntary” 4% to be paid by the thousand wealthiest people in the world, another similar percentage would be paid by the thousand largest companies, and the G-20 countries would finally allocate 0.2% of their GDP to the fund.

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This would raise “one trillion dollars”, which would serve to lift out of poverty the 750 million people who survive on less than 2 dollars a day, as he explained in this speech, which he gave taking advantage of the fact that his country is chairing the Security Council this month.

Although the details will be revealed in the coming days at the UN, López Obrador said that to be a beneficiary of this fund, “a card or electronic purse” will be required, which can be created by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.

And he advanced that the first recipients of the funds would be the elderly and children with disabilities. It would also serve to finance scholarships and professional learning programs and distribute free vaccines and medicines.

To encourage contributions to the fund, Lopez Obrador suggested that the UN hand out a kind of “solidarity certificates” recognizing “corporations or individuals who stand out for their humanitarian vocation”.

Although he did not go as far as affirming that his country has banished poverty, he did give an example of his government for having been able to “banish corruption and allocate all the money freed up to the welfare of the people”, and he described some of the initiatives to favor, for example, youth employment and thus “avoid family disintegration and the loss of moral values”.

He also gave his country an example of migration policy, explaining that two programs for planting fruit trees and lumber are being carried out “successfully” in Chiapas, providing jobs for 80,000 planters and apprenticeships for 30,000 young people.

“If this were applied in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, 330,000 people would remain in their countries, when today they emigrate in search of work”, he stated.

The Mexican President had publicized this trip to the UN Security Council “which is the closest thing to a world government” -as he said today- for only his second trip abroad. He has had no other acts on his plan except those at the UN headquarters, including a private interview with the Secretary-General, António Guterres.

There was no specific event with the vast Mexican community in the United States -which Mexico estimates at 40 million people-, but some groups of compatriots waited for him at the gates of the UN headquarters to greet him and cheer him at the entrance and exit with flags of their country and slogans such as “López Obrador, it is an honor”.

To all of them, he recorded a video from the headquarters of the Mexican Mission to the UN. Before them, he showed his pride in the achievements of his government in support of the most disadvantaged and took the opportunity to thank them for the excellent health of the remittances they send to their families in Mexico.

Specifically, he said that if last year remittances amounted to US$40.6 billion despite the recession caused by the coronavirus pandemic, this year everything indicates that the figure will rise to US$50 billion.

He told them that migrants are the ones who “have built the great nations”, and for this reason, he plans to talk to the US President, Joe Biden, so that he “fulfills the commitment to regularize the situation of Mexicans who live and work honestly in the United States”, after recalling that he has committed to regularize eleven million.

“And that neither Mexican migrants nor any other migrant in the world is mistreated,” he added.