No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need

by Naomi Klein

We knew that the greatest obstacle our platform would face was the force of austerity logic—the message we have all received, over decades, that governments are perpetually broke, so why even bother dreaming of a genuinely equitable society? With this in mind, we worked closely with a team of economists to cost out how we could raise the revenues to pay for our plan. The key tools included: ending fossil fuel subsidies (worth about $775 billion globally); getting a fairer share of the financial sector’s massive earnings by imposing a transaction tax (which could raise $650 billion globally, according to the European Parliament); increasing royalties on fossil fuel extraction; raising income taxes on corporations and the wealthiest people (lots of room there—a one-percent billionaire’s tax alone could raise $45 billion globally, according to the United Nations); a progressive carbon tax (a $50 tax per metric ton of CO2 emitted in developed countries would raise an estimated $450 billion annually); and making cuts to military spending (if the military budgets of the top ten military spenders globally were cut by 25 percent, that would free up $325 billion, according to numbers reported by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute). To our chagrin, we neglected to include a call to shut down tax havens, perhaps the greatest potential revenue source of all. The math is clear: the money for this great transition is out there—we just need governments with the guts to ...