Imagine a future where 90% of the world’s population doubles their income but works half the hours we work today. A world where the bottom half of humanity sees its share of global wealth rise from a pathetic 2% to a still-modest 30%. A world where we consume enough, but nobody over-consumes. And all of this on a planet that hasn’t turned into a giant space oven.
Against the bleak techno-authoritarian futures currently being marketed to us - think surveillance capitalism with a side of climate collapse - a radical new vision for global progress feels urgently needed. The most credible vision, according to a new report from the World Inequality Lab, is one where the planet’s habitability is a precondition for human development and equality, not an afterthought.
The Global Justice Report examines the conditions required for the world to progress toward this ambition by the end of the century. Its conclusion? A global transformation that reconciles planetary habitability and high standards of wellbeing for all is possible - as long as three conditions are simultaneously met. First, fast decarbonisation of energy systems. Second, a major shift away from overconsumption toward “sufficiency” - involving a sharp reduction in labour hours and raw material use, along with big changes in consumption patterns, food habits, land use, and forest cover. Third, financing and politically sustaining all this will require a drastic reduction in inequality of income, wealth, and power, between countries and within them.
What would this transition deliver? At its heart is convergence between countries. Average per capita national income, today separated by a 16-fold gap between the poorest (€290 a month in sub-Saharan Africa) and richest (€4,590 in North America/Oceania) regions, would rise toward a common level of about €5,000 a month in all countries by 2100. Annual working hours per employed person would fall from roughly 2,100 to about 1,000, continuing the long shift toward shorter working time. The share of global working hours devoted to education and health would rise from 11% to 43%. Women and men would converge on equal pay and on an equal share of economic and domestic labour.
All of this would unfold within a habitable climate. Thanks to sustainable convergence and fast decarbonisation, global heating would reach 1.8°C, against more than 4°C on current trends. The income scale between individuals would narrow to a ratio of one to five and the wealth scale to one to 10, prolonging what Western and Nordic Europe achieved over the 20th century. The share of global wealth held by the poorest half of humanity would rise from 2% to 30%, while the share held by the billionaire class would fall from 6% to 0.05%.
These shifts would be financed through new institutions. A global justice fund would spend an average of 10% of world GDP a year from 2026 to 2060 on country dividends and investment - compared to the less than 0.4% that aid and the combined budgets of the UN, IMF, and World Bank represent today. Its resources would come from a world sovereign fund holding 10% of the world capital stock, a global wealth tax rising to 20% a year on billionaires, and a global income tax rising to 90% at the very top, each touching about 1% of the world’s population.
The result is not a transfer from many to few but a gain for almost everyone. Close to 90% of the world’s population would double their income between 2026 and 2100, and once leisure and a habitable planet are counted, more than 99% come out ahead. The plan also redistributes power. Today, the richest regions hold four times as many votes at the IMF and World Bank as their share of the world’s population would dictate; in the new order, every inhabitant would have equal voice.
Authors Thomas Piketty, Lucas Chancel, Cornelia Mohren, Rowaida Moshrif, Moritz Odersky, and Anmol Somanchi note that technical impossibility is not what stands in the way - but rather the absence of a shared vision of social progress, at once concrete and radical. What it will take instead is political choice, and the hard work of coalition-building behind it. So, you know, just that.