To commemorate its 70 years, the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the National University from Colombia, is carrying out different activities and one of them was the panel ‘The Colombian economy and the ideas of Thomas Piketty’.
Professors from the faculty and the renowned Economist Thomas Pickett one of the prominent voices in discussions of inequality and distribution of wealth.
The economist, known for his work ‘Capital in the 21st Century’, focused during his speech on discussing three aspects: the distribution of wealththe inequality of gender and carbon emissions and the need for a Tax Reform international.
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The economics expert pointed out that Latin America is unequal and there is not only a lack of transparency in terms of wealth distribution, but also of progressivity in terms of taxes.
In this region, “the top 10% of the population owns between 70% and 80% of the wealth” and in the case of countries like Colombia, about 50% of the populationn is the owner “only 1% of total wealth”pointed out the economist who also highlighted that this distribution shows a panorama of “the concentration of power”.
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Piketty mentioned that in the region “We have enormous class inequality” and assured that this is a global issue, and that “No region of the world is in a position to teach another about the distribution of wealth”.
Likewise, the tendency is to wait for economic growth to then do better distribution, but, according to Piketty, “The best way to increase wealth is through the reduction of inequality.”
On gender inequalitysaid that women still do not have access to the same jobs as men, this happens due to factors such as The discrimination and the high occupation of women in domestic or unpaid work.
Piketty stated that the issue of carbon emissions cannot be left aside, the organizations that carry them out the most must begin to pay high taxes progressively.
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Finally, the economist concluded by saying that, today, medium and small businesses pay more taxes than the multinationals that also obtain profits in the famous ‘tax havens’, a situation that must change through an international tax reform.
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