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We need a Global Wealth Tax

Wealth tax can contribute to mitigating to global warming: further information

How rich are the rich relative to the poor? If they had ten times the wealth, no problem. It has always been that way. But what if the ratio was a million to one? That's undemocratic power.

You know when democracy has gone. Elections become a sham, and leaders become increasingly incompetent, dishonest, and corrupt. Sound familiar?

The existence of just one billionaire -- a single person with the wealth of a thousand millionaires, or a million workers with $1000 each -- is a sign that democracy is on the way out. We now have 3000 billionaries, including three smiling centibillionaires (Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg). A centibillionare has the wealth of 100 billionaires or 100,000 millionaires. Capitalism may have its pros and cons, but this is getting ridiculous.

If we want our democracy back, we have no choice but to reduce the wealth of the wealthiest. If we want peace, we have to do that gradually and fairly. In a word: democratically.

Don't despair. It can be done. Big changes have happened before. Our main task is to think clearly and tell the truth.

Richard Parncutt
June 2012, revised 2020



In the anti-Nazi poem "Alfabet" (1934), Bertold Brecht wrote:
A rich man and a poor man stood and looked at each other. The poor man said palely: "If I was not poor, you would not be rich". (Reicher Mann und armer Mann standen da und sahn sich an, und der Arme sagte bleich: "Wär ich nicht arm, wärst du nicht reich.")

Today, this is not true. The rich are now in a position to eliminate poverty while remaining rich. By "rich" I mean a person whose income and wealth are about ten times more than that of the average worker. In a normal world, that would be a lot. If the rich are the top 10% and the poor are the bottom 10%, a ratio of 10:1 used to be typical (more).

Eliminating poverty is one of the great challenges of our time. It is important because every person has the right to life in freedom and dignity. It is also important as a prerequisite for democracy. Poverty can be eliminated globally in various ways. We need:
The most effective solution to tax havens is globally harmonized wealth tax -- "global wealth tax" for short. GWT is wealth tax that applies similarly in different countries so it cannot be evaded by moving wealth to another country (capital flight).

Why global? In a globalized world, we need a globalized approach. But national election campaigns are still dominated by local and regional issues. The most important global issues are ignored as if the future (and our own children) did not exist. Taxation is one of many issues that need to be considered across national borders rather than solely within them.

Wealth taxes can be direct or indirect. A direct wealth tax is calculated from an estimate of personal assets. Examples are regularly published by Forbes magazine. Indirect wealth taxes include real estate taxes, inheritance taxes, transaction taxes, and environmental taxes. Another possibility is to tax stock exchanges, requiring every company to pay say 1% of its market capitalization (share value times no. of shares) every year. While all of these forms of wealth tax can play an important role, I will focus here on direct wealth taxes.

How would a global wealth tax work?

Picketty recommended a progressive wealth tax according to the principle that tax should be paid in proportion to the ability to pay. The more money you have, the higher percentage rate you would pay. While we admire and support Picketty's approach, we instead recommend a flat wealth tax on the following grounds:
 The proposed tax would be collected within countries using existing mechanisms, according to a global agreement. If wealth tax can work in France, Spain, Iceland, India, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, and Italy, it can work everywhere. The global community (e.g. the G20) would agree at last to end global tax evasion; tax havens that did not comply would face economic sanctions. 

All citizens would be required to declare their wealth, just as they now declare their income. Multinational companies and individuals would assign their wealth to different countries according to globally agreed criteria. Tax offices would establish a budget for investigating wealth declarations (e.g. 1% of the 1% tax, or 1/10000 of the tax office's initial wealth estimate). Undeclared wealth, when discovered, would be taxed at a higher rate, say 5%. Existing methods for punishing tax evasion would apply and might include jail sentences or loss of citizenship.

Why do we need a global wealth tax?

Every year, the wealth gap gets wider, but essentially nothing is done. The widening wealth gap is undermining democracy, which is being replaced by oligarchy, or rule by the rich (watch George Monbiot's brilliant 2020 video). This is corruption at the highest level. 
 Humanity is progressing, slowly but surely, toward economic, political, and environmental meltdown. These three aspects are feeding on each other: the wealth gap is undermining democracy, which in turn is inhibiting the sustainable energy revolution. The worse global warming becomes, the greater will be the economic and political consequences. The ultimate losers will be human beings, who will die in hundreds of millions later this century as a result of the failure of today's political, business and academic leaders to solve this problem, especially in the Global South (more). The deaths will in general be caused by a combination of climate change, biodiversity loss, and poverty. Poverty increases the vulnerability of individuals and families to  problems of all kinds. Direct causes of death will include hunger and lack of drinking water, political unrest and violence (including wars over natural resources), direct heat, unprecented storms, and migration. 

How would a global wealth tax be introduced?

Politicians have the opportunity to work together with wise billionaires. The ones who realize we are all in this together. Their existence makes the project politically realistic.

Imagine you are a billionaire. You want to spend a million dollars on a project to end hunger. But even a million dollars won’t change much, globally. If however 3000 billionaires paid a million each, the project would have a better chance of success. You therefore support wealth tax. 

Take climate change for example. Mitigating it costs a lot of money and wealth tax is a good way to raise that money. In the end, billionaires will benefit like everyone else. No matter how much money you’ve got, there is no planet B.

For these and other reasons, many rich people are calling for wealth taxes (more -- more). Their support gives politicians an opportunity to act. There are also many realistic current proposals for new wealth taxes (more). It’s not a new idea (more).

But to avoid capital flight, wealth taxes need to be introduced in many countries at once, step by step:
 To get democracy back, we need gradual coordinated change -- not violent revolution. Within each country, wealth tax should be introduced gradually, to avoid political backlash. The rate should initially be low, for example 1% of all capital per year. As people get used to the tax and experience the benefits, the rate can be increased. If this was done in many countries at the same time, the global number of billionaires would eventually stop increasing. If the tax rate was increased even more, the number of billionaires would gradually come down. That might mean a tax rate of several percent.

It sounds like a long shot, but amazing changes have happened in history: the end of slavery, the vote for women, the universal declaration of human rights. This time, we are talking about human survival. The official motto of the U.S. state of New Hampshire is "Live Free or Die", but what we should be saying is “Think Big or Die”.

Fake news

Fake news, also known as truth distortion or bullshit, is rampant in the pseudo-serious anti-wealth-tax literature. Here are are some examples.

Many have claimed that wealth tax doesn’t bring much revenue (more). Any kid with a calculator can see that this is nonsense. The wealth of the rich is so enormous we can't imagine how big it is. We lose track of the zeroes. If Bezos has $200 billion, then just 1% per year is $2 billion per year. That's a big boost in annual revenue for any national government.

As a taxpayer I might as well argue that taxing me individually doesn’t bring much revenue to the government, therefore I should not pay. That is the level of ridiculousness we are dealing with.

Wealth-tax opponents may claim that rich people have special reasons to be exempt from regular taxation. In fact, taxation has always been based on ability to pay, that is, income and wealth. The more you can pay, the more you should pay. There is no other reasonable objective principle. If you claimed that some people should pay less because of their other contributions to society, you would immediately run into the problem that such contributions are impossible to evaluate objectively.

If wealth tax is not bringing enough revenue, it’s not because there is something wrong with wealth tax. It’s because the rate is too low. The solution is to increase the rate, not decrease it. If wealth tax is causing capital flight, the solution is global harmonization. All of this is very simple, if not blatantly obvious.

The author of this text claims (with a perfectly straight face, it seems) that “the lion’s share of the wealth of the wealthiest is in business assets that produce economic growth, and forcing their owners to sell them to pay taxes could hurt growth”. But we need stability not growth, and trickle-down economics is known to be nonsense. You can stimulate the economy by either giving money to the rich or giving money to the poor. Both strategies work in different ways, and both also have important disadvantages. These things are obvious. We are not doing rocket science here.

I almost forgot the old lady argument. This one really tugs at the heart strings. Imagine an old lady living in a house that she owns. She bought it together with her husband, who is now dead. They worked all their lives to pay for it. Now the government wants to tax it. How unfair! The truth, of course, is rather different. First, a wealth tax should only be applied above a rather high threshold, perhaps $10m, so it would not affect our "old lady" unless she was particularly rich. In that case, she could easily afford the tax anyway, or could use her existing wealth to generate the necessary funds. Second, politicians who advance arguments of this kind usually care only about the well-being of their rich benefactors. Whether their benefactors are female or male, old or young, makes no difference. Third, this is a distraction. We should actually  be concerned about the many "old ladies" who have no capital and are struggling to pay the rent.

Honest economists do exist, and they can easily refute every anti-wealth-tax argument, for example like this. What we need now is politicians like Bernie Sanders to build a global movement and focus on this issue.

The failure of mainstream economic theory

Why aren't economists complaining about the false arguments against wealth taxes? Worse, sometimes qualified economists are the authors of false arguments.

The rising wealth gap is clearly one of the few most important issues in modern economics. Yet to my knowledge few economists are talking about it, as if they had no idea what was going on or had no responsibility toward to the society that pays their wages (at least for university professors).

LIke any academic discipline, economics is biased. The problem in economics is especially acute for the simple reason that economics is about money, and money corrupts. If you look for academic literature about that problem, you don't find much. There is indeed a lot of literature on economic ethics, which in the broader scheme of things is regarded as a minor subdiscipline within both economics and ethics. Economics and ethics have always been related, for obvious reasons. But ethical approaches to economics are still presented as if they were novel (link) -- "soft" economics for mediocre or desperate scholars. The academic literature in this area (example) is sidelined both academically and politically.

There is a strange lack of ethics within "economic ethics". I am no expert, but I just searched for the word poverty within the long Wikipedia page on economic ethics (September 2020) and could not find it. Since most of Wikipedia is drawn from published sources, I assume this is typical of relevant academic literature. Other central concepts in economic ethics that are not mentioned on the long page with that name include democracy, sexism, racism, death, mortality, hunger. I'm serious: these words are not even mentioned. Relevant words that do occur include wealth, health, happiness, values, well-being, freedom, justice, moral, beneficiary, scarcity, labor, ownership, monopoly, right and wrong. Clearly, this is ethics for the rich world. The "bottom billion" -- people living below the poverty line -- are quietly ignored as if they did not exist. Is the word "ethics" appropriate for such a biased and implicitly racist or colonialist theory?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the evidence is all around us. Poverty is stagnating (every year three million children are still dying of hunger) at the same time as wealth is growing to unprecedented levels. The wealth gap is hijacking democracy. The carbon economy must urgently be replaced by a new sustainable energy economy. And here is the thing: most economists are not talking about these, today's most important economic issues. 

I am not an economist, but from what I can see, the system works like this. Economists whose research is motivated by the desire to reduce poverty and the wealth gap are regarded as "soft" and quietly marginalized by conservative colleagues. Caring about other people is too embarrassing for a distinguished academic discipline. More important is maintaining a veneer of scientific/mathematic respectability by means of high-impact peer-review journals with high rejection rates, well-paid professorships (usually filled by men), and implicit sexism and racism (or at least: androcentrism and eurocentrism). While all academic disciplines suffer from such problems, the obvious connection between economics and money makes economists more susceptible to corruption of different kinds, from the subtle to the blatant (more).

Economists are not the only ones failing to address these problems. People in general are steadfastly refusing to talk about the simplest, most obvious solutions to the biggest, most important problems. Perhaps the ultimate causes are psychological: denial and victim mentality. But the psychologists do not seem to talk about that, either, and if they do, they fail to make the big political connections that would be necessary to solve these problems. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I realise that I may have overstepped the mark with some of these comments. The point is that progress toward globally harmonized wealth taxes might happen more quickly if problems of this kind are brought out into the open. If that is the case, the discussion will have been worth it.

The petition

The following change.org petition was written in 2012 and is now closed. The issues and the urgency are unchanged. The complete original change.org page, with commentary and explanations, is here. Additional explanations are here.

Here is the original petition text:

To UN, IMF, World Bank, G20: National governments cannot pay their debts, a billion people are living in poverty worldwide, and urgent warnings about climate change are being ignored. In all three cases, the main problem is money. But the money is available - in abundance. Economic globalisation and technological developments are making the rich megarich. Worldwide, there are now over a thousand US$-billionaires. As concerned citizens across the world, we call on relevant global organisations such as the UN, IMF, World Bank, and G20 to negotiate a global agreement to tax all wealth - including all companies, trusts, and wealthy individuals - at a single rate of about 1% per year, in addition to existing non-wealth taxes. Exceptions should be limited to genuine non-profit organisations and individuals whose assets are less than about US$ 1 million.

Since 2012, none of this has changed, except that the situation has become steadily worse. In 2013, the problem and its solution were presented by Thomas Piketty in his ground-breaking book Capital in the 21st Century, with a wealth of historical data and economic theory. The book attracted much more publicity than this petition, but in the end it was also ignored.

Many people commented on the petition. A selection of comments is appended below.

Comments on petition

The following comments were entered to the change.org website. It's not often that you receive comments of this quality after an open petition:

Because this would be a relatively easy tax to collect, at least on the $12.3 trillion of cross-border financial assets that we at Tax Justice Network estimate is now parked in just 50 global leaders in international private banking. Make it an annual withholding tax on "anonymous" financial wealth, including criminal money, and devote the proceeds to multilateral aid for climate change relief.
James S. Henry, Sag Harbor, NY

There is under supply of investment and excessive saving on a global scale. This proposal will result in surplus savings invested into long term development.
Mike Robbins, Cheltenham, UK

Deploying a 1% tax on wealth means that any individual on earth would have to reimburse during its lifetime most of the wealth enjoyed privately. That makes sense to leave this world having paid ones debt to the community. I love this idea.
Marc de Basquiat, Versailles, France

This is a workable solution to a major economic problem. Those paying the tax would hardly notice it, but it would make an enormous difference to most people.
John Sloboda, London, UK

The current levels of inequality are inhumane. We're entering a post-scarcity world, yet our socio-economic systems resemble a gold rush that inflicts suffering on a vast share of the world's population.
Jakub Bukaj, Warsaw, Poland

This is the only way to bring inequality, in the UK and globally, under control - which we desperately need to do. It's just a bloody shame the richest people in the world control much of the political spectrum as well as economic, and even worse the majority of the world's press is either owned by them or generally sucks up to them. Come on folks, we're going to need people power for this one! Spread the word!
Nicholas Stokes, Portsmouth, UK

It's time that governments had the guts to say to voters we need to tax you more. Generally, voters are looking for a government that will reduce their taxes, and increase their public services. They're dreaming. I am able to pay a bit more tax. I'm not sure if this idea will work but it should be seriously considered.
Graeme Parncutt, Hawthorn, Australia

It is nonsense for this group to gradually steal the resources of all humanity, to profiteer from wrecking the environment, and to make our species extinct. By paying fair share, it would release resources to pay for the restoration of the earth, communities and the infrastructure of the future.
Mary Marinkovich, Port Townsend, WA

The rich poor gap is a brake on human maturity. This will provide at least a palliative for massive suffering., and hopefully lead on to profound cures for our ailing sense of inclusive justice.
Peter Challen, London, UK

As I'm convinced such a tax is necessary to sustain peace between the industrialized nations. Furthermore we won't have a planet to live on in a few decades if we continue polluting our environment and doing nothing to preserve it!
René Kastner, Graz, Austria

Inequity is a central cause of social dysfunction and a threat to democracy. Wealth is NOT correlated to level of work or creation or contribution in reality!
Aaron Wolf, Ann Arbor, MI

To try to eliminate global poverty and make for a more fair and just world
Valerie Ward, Englefield Green, UK

I want to pay my debits and but a house for my children.
Tshidi Miranda Kekana, Pretoria, South Africa

This is an issue that desperately needs solving!
Jenna Brame, Bury St Edmunds, UK

It's a great idea!!! I'm not rich but I would happily pay 1%
Jill Davidson, Aldershot, UK

As long as it's funded to benefit social programs I think almost everyone would win.
Nicolaas Coats, Los Angeles, CA

Hospital and schools are being starved of cash so that more money can trickle up to those who already have more than then can possibly spend.... 2% would be better - with the extra 1% devoted to implementing clean energy generation across the globe
John Dinwoodie, London, UK

I believe in taxing the super rich. No one person needs a billion pounds or more!
Denis Gleeson, Manchester, UK

Food for thought: If the USA can print 7% of its GDP to save it's economy and the assets of the mega rich then perhaps the entire world should be printing 7% of it's GDP and the money used to address all sorts of social issues. Currency depreciation would not occur if everyone agrees to print money at same % of GDP. Likewise inflation would not be an issue because it has been proven that inflation can be effectively controlled when a central bank targets inflation and only inflation. This inflation fighting policy was introduced in Australia in the early 1990's. By the late 1990's many of the world's central banks had adopted this inflation control policy and it has worked brilliantly through 2 stock market bubbles and a property bubble.
John Gallego, Australia

Porque creo en la justicia social.
Rafael Taguas Sanchez, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Die Reichen sollen sich angemessen beteiligen
Hauke Smidt, Germany

“Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.”
― Michael Crichton, The Lost World
“Let's be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet - or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.”
― Michael Crichton
Anita Kanitz, Stuttgart, Germany

Because global warming is real and we need to do something about it. NOW.
Renzo Calcagno, Montevideo, Uruguay

This could help the poor and keep more and more people from going poor. The recession we're facing now could go worse than the great depression or be just as bad.
Timothy Paich, Loveladies, NJ

The wealth gap is growing, but a more progressive tax than a single rate is needed to diminish the gap.
John Lawson, Raglan, New Zealand

We need to care for the poor of whom there are millions. The rich do not need our support.
Graham Kirkby, Sheffield, UK

We all suffer under debt - consider how the Venetians and their fiscal plans have caused problems since the 1340s - read more in the Palmerston's Zoo papers at Schiller.
There used to be laws for 7 year debt relief and 50 year write offs - not onstant debt selling which hits the poor whilst the rich laugh and use it as a form of eugenics by destroying individual health by stress, communities by destroying local impetus in favour of big brother
David Hepworth, Brighouse, UK

The rich keep getting richer while the poor keep getting ignored.
Michael Macnamara, Perth, Australia

If you have 100 cars in your garage you are not paying enough taxes or giving enough to charity. I used to deliver pizzas, and I also know the vast majority of wealthy individuals even tip poorly compared to normal or even less fortunate people. I guess us reggos don't have that fire of greed burning in our soul in a permanant state of unquenched desire.
Dan Sandler, Atlantic Highlands, NJ

Its important that Americans know their Government are impoverishing thousands of low-income Americans.
Pab Marquez, Miami, FL

An excellent petition about the most urgent issue of our time
Agneta lane, Hoganas, Sweden

It‘s the only way to a fairer economy
Gunilla Gustavsson, Höganäs, Sweden

We have to think of future generations.
Pekka Toivanen, Jyväskylä, Finland

Because they're criminals that must be condemened and also pay taxes.
Marcelo Tuller, Buenos Aires, Argentinia

If you have the ability to help (your are wealthy), then you have the responsibility
Emma Leaper, Penzance, UK

To create more equal incomes and to do at least SOMETHING about the incredible injustice of the fact that some people DIE through lack of food while others can afford mansions, luxury food, and all sorts of other goodies; in many cases not even as a result of anything they've DONE but simply because of who their family is which is hardly something they have achieved!
Margaret King, London, UK

Fairness
Raphael Boleloucky-Bolen, Vienna, Austria

In an increasingly "global" world, we should all take responsibility globally - including the richest, the profiteers, the self-seekers.
Elcome Cary, Mishima, Japan

The present long-term financial melt-down is the result of the games played by the rich with economies of the world (both of countries & individuals). They can only do this because of their EXCESS wealth. It needs to be redistributed to all the rest of us - and the world - whence it was created.
Barry Hollingsbee, London, UK

Climate change and enormous wealth disparity are both serious problems that need adressing.
Wookey, Cambridge, UK

Who else is going to do anything?
Adrian Beam, Edmond

Redistribution of wealth as a means of reducing poverty is an obviously sensible idea. In these terms, poverty means having no access to proper toilet facilities and is relevant to 40% of the planet's population.
Mark Quiney, London, UK

Survival of life on this planet is at stake. What a legacy to leave
Aileen Owen Davies, Egham, UK

To lessen the gap between rich & poor & to give poorer people the chance to live decently with food, shelter & healthcare etc.
Sylvia Coles, villefranche de Rouergue, France

Our children don't have enough food to grow their bodies and feed their brains.
Jenny Neve, Birkenhead, New Zealand

"[A] progressive policy needs more than just a bigger break with the economic and moral assumptions of the past 30 years. It needs a return to the conviction that economic growth and the affluence it brings is a means and not an end. The end is what it does to the lives, life-chances and hopes of people. ... The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the "capabilities" of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy - not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action. ... And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side." (Eric Hobsbawm)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/10/financial-crisis-capitalism-socialism-alternatives
Harald Fladischer, Leoben, Austria

Because I understand game theory. Because I have children. Because humanity needs a moral upgrade, and those for whom the current system works will not change by themselves.
Doreen Soutar, Dalkeith, UK

The suffering globally has to come to an end. It's immoral and it's destroying our planet and its citizens.
Charlee Martin, Northolt, UK

Charity should not be required to fight starvation. Enough food to live should be the right of every human. Like a good Samaritan law - if you can afford to feed someone who is starving it should be your legal obligation to.
Liam Murphy, Birmingham, UK

Because the world needs to share its wealth not just for the sake of the poor but for the conscience of the rich.
Damian Baughan, Dronfield, UK

Money has no value compared to life.
Sheryl Odlum, Leeds, UK

I am part of the 99%.
John Elvidge, South Molton, UK

This sounds like a very easy way to make an immense difference, if the relevant bodies can be made to agree, - a big IF, but certainly important to try.
Kay Williams, Crewe, UK

Even a 1% tax can help us to allocate monetary and material resources more fairly.
Gerd Kaup, Graz, Austria

On every transaction, even if I buy a single apple, I pay 10-20% taxes (depends on product, country, etc). How come we pay taxes when it comes to food, but people who own great sums of money don't [have to] contribute?
Bernd Brabec de Mori, Gratwein, Austria

It's past due.
Justin Winkler, Graz, Austria

It's the right thing to do to help reduce the deficit.
David Holder, Waco, TX

We need the world in equlibrium.
Darko Šfiligoj, Nova Gorica, Slovenia

This is important because we need to make all that we can to tacke existing problems of poverty and environmental disequilibrium.
Albina Škerbinc, Ljubljana, Slovenia

I want to see hunger and poverty eradicated asap and for all time, and for every person to have the necessities of life - in a word: JUSTICE!
Elisabeth Reinhard, Mangonui, New Zealand

Visionen zur Weltverbesserung unterstütze ich, auch wenn ich meine, jede/r von uns sollte zunächst in einem kleineren und überschaubaren Kreise seine Kräfte einsetzen - hier ein konkretes Beispiel aus Österreich: http://www.gemeinwohl-oekonomie.org/en/uber-uns/gwo-in-3-min/
Hermann Becke, Graz, Austria

After I die I would like my grandchildren to be able to enjoy the same beautiful world that we enjoy today.
Richard Parncutt, Graz, Austria

Because I care.
Mine Eder, Bogazici, Türkei

People who have more may be in this position because others have less, because that is the way the balance often works. We need address urgent problems of poverty around the world and this is one simple way to do it.
Rob Parkinson, Tonbridge, UK

There is a long reasoning behind, but very briefly: because there is no other way for peace and freedom.
Friedemann Lenz, Markgröningen, Germany

It will improve the quality of most people in the world.
Lorenzo Canizares, Harrisburg, PA

Though 1% is paltry compared to what the super-rich take from everyone and our environment, it's a good principle. The only better way is to stop the accumulations before they happen by shared ownership of everything!
Joseph Maizlish, Los Angeles, CA

Way overdue to flatten the playing field.
B.E. Macomber, Alfombra, Baru, Costa Rica

Pressure!
PRAT Boris, Bruniquel, France

For peace
Jacques Berthillier, 09400 Gourbit, France

Ethics
Alain Busser, Le Tampon, Réunion

Earth solidarity
Jean-Marc Tagliaferri, Saint Denis Reunion, France

Everyone has to participate for a better world!
Axelle Saury, Toulouse, France

I have children.
Joseph Horgan, Kensington, MD
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