In an open letter to G20 leaders as they prepared to convene in New Delhi, India for their annual summit, U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) joined economist Jayati Ghosh, Patriotic Millionaires chair Morris Pearl, philanthropist Abigail Disney, and more than 300 others in declaring that “we cannot allow extreme wealth to continue corroding our collective future.”

“Decades of falling taxes on the richest, based on the false promise that the wealth at the top would somehow benefit us all, has contributed to the rise in extreme inequality,” the Tuesday letter states. “Our political choices allow ultra-wealthy individuals to continue to use tax shelters and enjoy preferential treatment to the extent that, in most countries in the world, they pay lower tax rates than ordinary people.”

“At the same time, the world has seldom had more need for the richest to pay,” the letter continues, noting that global extreme poverty rose in 2020 for the first time in more than two decades as Covid-19 threw the world into economic chaos.