French economist Gabriel Zucman has invited U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the Paris summit on tax fairness, which will take place on November 21. The event, billed as the “Summit Against International Oligarchy”, will begin a few days after the release of Zucman’s new book.
Zucman, who teaches at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley, is organizing a major summit on tax fairness in Paris. In France, he became widely known last year thanks to his proposal for a wealth tax.
“The explosion of extreme wealth and the accompanying concentration of power are disrupting our societies”, he said in an interview. According to Zucman, the summit should provide an objective assessment of this new reality and help build international alliances that will ultimately enable democratic forces to succeed.
In recent months, Zucman has also been campaigning in California for a state one-time tax initiative for billionaires amounting to 5% of their net worth. Zucman himself and two other economists estimated that Proposition 40 could bring in about $100 million in revenue, but it will not affect the California vote on November 3.
According to Zucman’s strategy and communications adviser Pierre Nathanaël Bussière, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his chief aide Morris Katz were also invited to the summit. Representatives for Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and among the co-organizers are Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and author Thomas Piketty. A gala dinner with Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire is planned after the summit, and the broader issue of inequality and the growing share of inherited wealth is affecting housing prices and purchasing power in Paris; the event, it is noted, fits into the agenda ahead of the first round of presidential elections in France in April next year.
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