Inequality Financial News

Brazil's vision for a global deal to tax the ultra-rich sparked divisions Thursday at a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Rio de Janeiro, where Washington dismissed the need for an international accord on the matter.

budget in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram pushed forward five demands from finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi plans to raise spending to create more jobs and spur economic growth

Darren Walker, the outgoing president of the Ford Foundation, has had a far-reaching and profound impact on the philanthropic sector

IT sector to find the right balance between deployment of technology and deployment of labour because without labour income and without labor employment, that is no demand growth, which means it comes back to hurt the country's top line and bottom line as well," he said. Pointing to findings from the Staff Discussion Note of the International Monetary Fund published in June 2024 that talk of profound concerns stemming from Generative Artificial Intelligence, or GenAI’s, impact on massive labour disruptions and inequality, the survey said that it would be in the ‘self interest’ of corporate India to seriously create jobs even as they invest in AI across sectors.

Taxation of capital gains has again gained currency in the run-up to the budget. Specifically, the treatment of capital gains arising from equity ownership. Theoretically, there is little to justify differential treatment of capital gains arising from separate asset classes.

Peter Thiel’s Enhanced Games promise to be an annual sporting event that lets athletes use performance-enhancing drugs, nicknamed the pro-doping Olympics. The games have captured imaginations and money. But behind them is an unsettling effort spearheaded by tech billionaires like Thiel to use science and technology to enhance the human race.

BEIJING — China's real estate problems may be massive, but analysts expect the upcoming Third Plenum to focus on other areas — such as high local government debt levels and a push for advanced manufacturing.

There were a number of reports last week about the prime minister and finance minister meeting with a government-funded think tank to discuss a variety of issues involving “generational fairness,” one of which was the introduction of a home equity tax.

Budget date: Narendra Modi’s first Budget of his third term, to be presented on July 23, will see Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman leveraging revenue growth and a record dividend from the Reserve Bank of India. The focus will be on infrastructure investment and targeted spending for the middle class, women, and the agricultural sector. Besides showcasing economic resilience, the government plans to introduce reform measures that bypass the need for legislative approval. “Hon’ble President of India, on the recommendation of Govt of India, has approved the proposal for summoning of both the Houses of Parliament for the budget session, 2024 from 22nd July, 2024 to 12 August, 2024 (subject to exigencies of parliamentary business). Union Budget 2024-25 will be presented in Lok Sabha on 23 July, 2024,” parliamentary affairs minister Kiren Rijiju said in a post on X.

Paradigm shifts in mainstream economic thinking usually accompany crises demanding new answers, as occurred after stagflation—low growth and high inflation—gripped advanced economies in the 1970s. And it may be happening again, as liberal democracies confront a wave of popular distrust in their ability to serve their citizens and address the multiple crises— ranging from climate change to unbearable inequalities and major global conflicts—that threaten our future.

Impose a wealth tax on the super-rich! The call for a wealth tax on the super-rich arises frequently from citizens around the world, but, unfortunately, it has not yet been addressed by the authorities concerned. This demand resurfaces time and again, only to fade into the background. Over the past two decades, the issue of taxing the ultra-rich has been widely debated and highlighted by the media as well.

A global tax on the super-rich is proposed in a new report that Brazil commissioned for its current presidency of the leading 20 rich and developing nations

Narendra Modi took in his third term were to transfer a new instalment of the PM-Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN), amounting to about Rs 20,000 crore, and to approve assistance to construct three crore houses under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, indicating the priority the new government was according to social welfare schemes. In a new book, The Future of India’s Social Safety Nets, Andaleeb Rahman and Prabhu Pingali, research associate and founding director, respectively, at the TataCornell Institute, Cornell University, argue that while “standalone welfare schemes are important to address various forms of human deprivation, it is imperative to think about social welfare as a ‘system’ of programmes (welfare support) with ‘development resilience’ as its overarching objective”. In a Zoom interview from New York, Rahman speaks to ET about the threat from “new welfarism”, why inheritance tax could be an option and why it is too soon for universal basic income.Edited excerpts: An overarching theme in your book is that India needs to take a systems approach to social welfare. What would that look like?

Mint in the week gone by. The government has announced hikes in minimum support prices of kharif crops, while the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) plans to raise money from the sale of its plots and commercial buildings. As many as 55 companies are expected to go public in the coming months.

French President Emmanuel Macron is joining African leaders to kick off a planned $1 billion project to accelerate the rollout of vaccines in Africa

Labour Force Survey (PLFS) from quarterly urban unemployment data to monthly, and the quarterly release of the rural employment data, which is released annually at present. Revision of the base year of gross domestic product (GDP) and inflation is also being discussed, officials said. The ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) is looking at ways to use technology to make the process more efficient and faster as it aims to reduce time lags and improve the frequency of data availability. “We are trying to reduce the time period between surveys…some can be made quarterly and monthly going ahead which are annual right now,” said Saurabh Garg, secretary, MoSPI at the data user workshop on Household Consumption Expenditure Surveys (HCES) for 2022-23 Wednesday. As per the survey, consumption inequality has declined over the last decade with the share of top 10% households in consumption declining.

₹16,612 per head per month, which is 3.1 times what the median person spends, according to a Mint analysis of the 2022-23 Household Consumption Expenditure Survey. In rural areas, the top 10% spends ₹8,569, compared to a median of ₹3,268, a gap of 2.6 times. On the surface, both urban and rural inequalities have declined since the last available survey from 2011-12, with a sharper decline in urban areas.

Taxation policy is critically important since it intersects with the economic and social policies of the government, with the raised funds supporting programs such as social safety nets, pensions and income re-distribution, as well as critical infrastructure.

The Population Bomb. But the relative number of older people will skyrocket, causing anxiety among some economists and political leaders who want more people to have more kids.

Results of the recently concluded general election for the Lok Sabha have given the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) a clear mandate to form the government for a third successive term, although there is also a message for it in the sharply reduced seats it now holds. The principal party in this alliance, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), won only 240 seats, lower than the required 272 for a House majority, while the BJP had a majority of its own supporting the past two governments. While it may not hamper the smooth functioning of the government, the decline of BJP MPs in the Lok Sabha was unexpected, given that pollsters as well as the party had claimed a likely increase in its tally.