Tax: Answer for Wealth Inequality

In his 2014 world top bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Professor Thomas Piketty said “the rich get richer” had become a fundamental law of economics. He explained why rising wealth inequality would be harmful to a society and recommended tax as the best solution. He proposed significantly heavier taxes on the rich, so that the revenues could be used for education, jobs, or handouts to increase the wealth of everybody else. 

 

The wealth inequality of Hong Kong was observed to be serious despite a huge population of millionaires.  Excessive wealth inequality is dangerous. It leads to power disparity and corrodes public trust and interest. It weakens civic cohesion and social solidarity, which eventually segregates the community and hinders its economic growth. 

 

This course examines how wealth inequality emerges in Hong Kong, why it matters, and what can be done for its reduction.  Solving wealth inequality is a complex issue that requires a multi-faceted approach involving various stakeholders, policies and strategies. On one hand, students will be given the opportunity to gain a basic understanding of such issue by examining the sociological factors such as the impact of social class, race, gender, and other social factors on wealth distribution.  At the end, students would be able to accomplish a full understanding on the wealth inequality issue by further studying the relevant economic theories and models, such as income distribution, wealth accumulation, and taxation policies that contribute to inequality.

 

This course aims to contribute to the local community sustainability by providing students with the knowledge of how certain social measures can complement with changes to the tax system in Hong Kong to address the local wealth inequality concerns. Comparative tax reforms in other countries are explored for lessons that may be useful for Hong Kong. In this course, the possible tax changes to achieve more wealth redistribution are evaluated alongside their problems and/or other issues.  Students are therefore better equipped to evaluate what tax change(s) is (are) optimal for Hong Kong. 

 

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