Resumen de Revisiting Thomas Pogge's dividend and taxes to help the poor

Hussain Ibn Ahmed M. Albahrani

• The objective of this study is to verify the validity of Thomas Pogge’s Global Resources Dividend (henceforth, GRD) to al-leviate poverty in the world. The main question addressed in this paper is whether Pogge’s dividend and tax model has deficiencies, and if so, to identify these. Specifically, this paper discusses the validity of imposing a 1% tax on resources to help the poor, and the reasons for the selection of natural resources and not other sources of wealth. It also investigates whether Pogge’s idea can only be applied to a specific social group or it may be implemented universally. Did Pogge go far enough or did he set limits on his dividend? The central hypothesis in this paper is that Pogge’s dividend and tax may prove to be unfair and based on ethnocentric and unreasonable argu-ments. The study relies mainly on Pogge’s publications and, occasionally, includes economic data to examine Pogge’s dividend and taxes.

  The paper concludes that, even though Pogge recognises the role of colonialism in today’s poverty, his methodology for solving the problem fails to be fair for the following reasons:

  i. Being selective in terms of the tax percentage, that is, on what is to be taxed (i.e., natural resources, but not technology companies and financial institutions), and the terminology employed when calling for US and EU sanctions on those countries that do not agree to pay the dividend.

  ii. Non-equitable treatment of superpowers/ex-colonial countries and colonised countries when using terms such as “affluent” countries and corruption.

  iii. Imposing taxes on greenhouse emissions while ignoring the emis-sions produced by each country throughout history, putting pres-sure on developing countries to acquire technology to reduce emissions. Such technology, however, is more easily accessible for industrialised countries than for developing ones.

  For these and other reasons, Pogge’s idea may be considered as a real threat to developing countries. Similarly, his proposal presents his dividend and tax model and the mechanism to implement it as a potential neo-colonial instrument in the hands of superpowers and ex-colonial countries.