‘It’s an ill wind,’ they used to say, ‘that blows nobody any good.’ It’s difficult to imagine how this could be true of the Covid-19 pandemic, but let’s think who might have benefited.

Certainly not the poor, many of whom were obliged to continue working in unsafe environments, and not the parents who had to stay at home to look after children whose schools were closed. It isn’t the hospital staff who had to work overtime in exhausting, distressing, and often unsafe conditions, and have been offered an insultingly derisory increase in pay by way of reward. or the families of those who have suffered and died because of their government’s failure to act promptly or effectively.

So has anyone benefitted from the pandemic?

Well, apparently most of the super-rich are now even super-richer. During the pandemic year 2020, ‘[t]he planet’s 2,365 billionaires have seen their wealth increase $4 trillion, or 54 percent’. It is perhaps a little unfair to suggest that they profited directly from the pandemic, but it does seem to be the case that much of that vast increase in wealth was a result of locked-down populations turning from their traditional suppliers to online behemoths. That, and a reduction in competition from smaller businesses that couldn’t cope with the economic down-turn.

But whatever the reason, as we near (we hope!) the end of the pandemic the rich are much richer than they were, and on the whole the poor are even poorer.

This has prompted some commentators (including, to their credit, some of the super-rich) to argue for a wealth tax. Their arguments are two: first, they see it as a way to reduce inequality; and second, they suggest the money ‘recovered’ could ‘pay for’ the delivery of vaccines. It is argued that a 2% tax on assets over $50 million and 3% on assets over $1 billion, as proposed by US Senator Elizabeth Warren, would provide the US government annually with ‘more than twice the estimated $141.2 billion cost of delivering Covid-19 vaccines to every person on the planet.’

If we are to be strictly accurate, we (sadly) need to discard the second argument. Tax doesn’t actually pay for anything. (See, for example, Stephanie Kelton, The Deficit Myth — or even my book, The Magic Money Tree: How Money Really Works.) A government can simply create any funds it needs in its own currency, and can deploy it — without risk of inflation — for the public purpose.

But the argument for a wealth tax is compelling even without that second argument. Seriously uneven distribution of wealth (aka inequality) seriously distorts ‘the market’. The super-rich — end even the moderately rich — do not need to spend their money into the economy that most of us inhabit. Indeed, they often prefer not to spend it at all. And excessive wealth brings with it excessive power that may be used for good or for ill. But however it is used it should not be up to the whim of unelected individuals.

The purpose of a wealth tax should not be an illusory attempt to recover funds that we could put to better and more democratically accountable use. Neither should it be merely to lessen inequality. Instead we should grasp the nettle and set about removing serious inequality altogether.

Anything less is just tinkering.