Let the Billionaires pay for this
Each year, Forbes magazine releases its famous list of billionaires. The just released 2010 classifications provide insightful information that in one year, the number of billionaires increased from 793 to 1011, and their accumulated wealth is 3,600 billion, up 50% compared to the previous year. For the super rich, the crisis is long gone.
No matter that Bill Gates is only the second, passed by Mexico’s Carlos Slim, whose wealth reached $53.5 billion. The most important is that such an amount, concentrated in the hands of one person, represents 12 times the budget of a country like the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which houses over 68 million people. It also represents more than 3.3 million years of minimum wage (guaranteed) in force in France.
This sharp increase in the number of millionaires happens when billions of people see their living conditions deteriorated after the crisis. This shows vividly the manner that the rich have successfully managed to let the cost of this crisis be borne by greater numbers. In many countries, North and South, the state debt has soared, particularly for the relief of those responsible for this crisis (private banks, hedge funds …) or to pay the consequences. The increase of this debt is then the excuse to impose antisocial measures that penalize the people, but spare the richest.
In contrast to the capitalist system that shows every day its disastrous social consequences, one idea is gaining ground: that of a global tax on large fortunes, advanced by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1995. For example, a 20% tax on the wealth of the few thousand millionaires would get 720 billion dollars, half the public external debt of all developing countries in 2008 (1,405 billion) and 3.5 times their total annual payments under such debt (211 billion dollars).
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