Proposals paper for the XXIst century: Fiscal Policy: Taxes, Distribution of National Income, and Social Security

It has been unanimously observed that the expansion of transnational firms and financial irregularities have led to a weakening of nation-states. Both the largest firms and conglomerates and their majority shareholders are located in the Northern nations; in the North, the transnational companies and deregulated capital act as “ extraordinary ” reinforcement agents for their respective nation-states and governments, with which they share the glory, the power, and the money. Opposite trends appear in the poor and emerging nations: de-industrialization, the incapacity to manage technology of their own, loss of markets, lack of financial resources, and growing indebtedness. This impoverishment has led many sociologists to believe that the greatest conflict of all time will result from the polarization between the North and the South. In the lagging economies, the state is undergoing an acute process of financial weakening, lack of legitimacy, and even loss of sovereignty in the face of international lending institutions. Fiscal (or structural) adjustment programs in their current version – zero deficit – drafted and controlled by international agencies (like the IMF and the World Bank) help to weaken governments and limit their growth and economic development, while promoting models based on commercial and financial liberalization, the most visible result of which is the loss of monetary autonomy and burgeoning, unpaid foreign debts. There is a wide range of initiatives attempting to minimize the pernicious effects of neoliberal globalization. We are only selecting those that occur in the field of macroeconomic policies – monetary and fiscal – and which interfere in the tax and financial regimes of the public order. We prioritize initiatives that denote rebellion or resistance to the neoliberal guidelines and the One-Track Thinking system.