December Article of the Month

Our December article of the month is Susan Schroeder’s contribution to our 2021 special issue on Configuring the Green New Deal. In it, Schroeder assesses whether a wealth tax based upon the work of Michal Kalecki could help avoid austerity measures and facilitate the introduction of Green New Deals and concludes that not only could it, but the expected revenue could also cover net interest outlays on national debt, at least in the case study of the US. While we are three years on from her main empirical concerns in how to fund what would become Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the importance of marrying the goals of environmental action, arresting the ever-widening inequality divide, and reigning in spiralling public debt is now more pertinent than it was then. In any case, it was the theoretical discussion in the paper that captured attention and made the article the most impactful of the special issue. Schroeder breaks down Kalecki’s idea of a wealth tax based on gross rather than net assets – the implication being that individuals are not able to reduce their tax liability by taking on debt – before interrogating how feasible it might be and whether it might raise enough to pay for a transition to a green (and fair) economy. In final reflections, she even suggests that it may stem the growth of financialisation. It is not hard to see in retrospect why this article garnered so much attention when it was first published.