Thomas Piketty's lab proposes ambitious plan to cut global inequality and curb climate change

They are putting forward a utopia and make no apologies for it. They present it directly as an answer to the rising tide of nationalist-populist and climate-skeptic movements gaining ground on both sides of the Atlantic. “For some time now, we have seen Silicon Valley technoreactionaries dreaming of a world where they would create a colony on Mars, while an ultra-impoverished population remains on Earth because artificial intelligence would have destroyed many jobs: that’s not a very appealing future,” said economist Lucas Chancel, co-director of the World Inequality Lab (WIL), a research institute affiliated with the Paris School of Economics. “The technonationalist project is infused with an energy that is missing from the internationalist and egalitarian camp: in the ongoing cultural battle, we need to offer a future that is both desirable and appealing,” added Thomas Piketty, also co-director of the WIL.

Offering a desirable future and outlining a plan to reduce inequality while respecting planetary boundaries: This is the ambition of the “Global Justice Report” published Thursday, June 4, by the WIL. Written with contributions from 45 researchers, it draws on the laboratory’s extensive inequality database and aims to support other initiatives, such as Brazil’s efforts within the G20 to better tax billionaires.

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