Constructing new ways of achieving economic redistribution is the key to resolving many global problems. If wealthy people progressively care less for the lives of those whom they relegate to living under inhumane conditions, the lives of the wealthy will become more meaningless and inhuman to the underprivileged masses. This global trap in which neither rich nor poor care if millions of the other group should die is the recipe for persistent conflict and unnecessary loss of life on a grand scale. While economic equality is an impossible goal, narrowing of the current gap is surely well within our grasp. Debt relief, various forms of taxation, such as the Tobin tax on currency trades across borders (which could generate US$100–300 billion per year) and environmental taxes, have been suggested as means of facilitating the development of the solidarity required for peaceful coexistence in a complex world.
(Solomon R. Benatar, Abdallah S. Daar, and Peter A. Singer, "Global Health Ethics: The Rationale for Mutual Caring," International Affairs 79 [January 2003]: 107-38, at 137 [footnote omitted])
