THE CONVERSATION: Global Justice Report offers bold ideas but misses the realities of 2 billion informal workers

The report’s understanding of how labour markets operate in the Global South demands scrutiny. A programme conceived in the name of global justice must not turn the particular history and institutions of the developed world into the future prescribed for everyone else.

Rising inequality is, at its core, a political and policy choice. This is the central message of the Global Justice Report authored by experts based at the World Inequality Lab , led by economists Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel .

As economists and experts on labour, inequality and the informal economy, we believe there is a great deal to support in the report, which was released in June 2026. It is a bold effort to connect redistribution, climate action and global democracy.

Among the proposals it makes is the creation of a Global Justice Fund financed through additional taxes on the wealth and incomes of roughly the richest 1% of the world’s population. Much of the initial revenue would be invested in a World Sovereign Fund. The returns would finance continuing transfers to countries on an equal per-capita basis. These country dividends would support investment in health, education, climate action and infrastructure.

The report makes a number of other proposals too. These include moving towards “sufficiency” , through a sharp reduction in labour hours and material footprint and large changes in consumption patterns, food habits, land use, and forest cover.

But the report’s understanding of how labour markets operate in the Global South demands scrutiny. A programme conceived in the name of global justice must not turn the particular history and institutions of the developed world into the future prescribed for everyone else.

Rather, it should start from a defining economic reality of the Global South. This is that most workers earn their livelihoods in informal employment, beyond the employment relationships, labour protections and redistributive institutions on which many of the report’s proposals implicitly rely.

Consider the report’s proposal on working time. It envisages using productivity growth to reduce average annual working time by more than half – from approximately 2,100 hours today to 1,000 hours by 2100. The report argues that this can be done without reducing workers’ incomes. A greater share of the remaining working hours would be devoted to relatively low-carbon services, particularly health and education.

The attraction is obvious. Productivity gains should give people more control over their lives, rather than simply producing ever-higher profits and consumption. Shorter working time could:

Promote a fairer distribution of paid and unpaid work between women and men; and

The historical record also shows that rising productivity has enabled substantial reductions in working time in many wealthy economies.

Our concern is with the assumption that the pathway followed by wealthy economies can be turned into a universal prescription.