This is a great idea to end global poverty!
Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger is the top goal of U.N.'s Millennium Development Goals. However, our political leaders are not making enough commitment to this project.
Accprding to The Borgen Project, $12 billion can provide education for every kid on earth; $15 billion can provide access to water and sanitation. Comparing to the $522 billion U.S. military budget, these annual costs of improving the world is very little.
We should put pressure on U.S. leaders to achieve the plan they already agreed to, and share our wealth to the poor.
When nobody's in hunger and poverty, maybe there would be no war on terror.

HARTFORD, CT Friday The 13th. One family guy with his wife and two young kids standing up front of the Governor Office in the State Capitol of Connecticut and States Supreme Court .One man protest is about Patriot Act , Hate Crime and Civil Liberties for people of color. The letter he is handing to the people is about asking Justice from the federal government. Bush administration?s anti-terrorism practices represent a stunning assault on basic principles of justice, government accountability, and the role of the courts. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King is his hero as his letter say at the bottom. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it?

There can be a tax and then there can be some thing akin to the Israeli government that will prevent the tax money (of Palestinians) to reach the Palestinians......and that government is:

(A) U.S. government and its veto over the IMF, or
(B) The world's debtor, or
(C) both of A and B above

Most will leave nothing (some even less than nothing) behind...

Eventually every one is going to die and leave everything behind.

All tax systems should follow Finland's example, where you're taxed based on your income. A traffic fine can vary depending on your income, for example. That way everybody is paying the same proportion to the country they owe their own richness (or poorness).

Abolish philanthropy. In each country: 1. determine the "maximum revenue admissible" per period (ten times the lowest revenue admissible), 2. put a ceiling on the highest level admissible for personal ownership of property and riches (a thousand times the lowest). Put the rest of the money to public use for all...

how about a "stupid tax" for ideas that are so harebrained as to discourage legitimate debate.

Mr. Kuttab,

I seem to recall that the two richest people in the world, William Gates III and Warren Buffett, have committed to giving away the vast majority of their wealth to charity.

American billionaires givng a substantial some of their wealth (much more than 10%) has been a tradition all the way back to the first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller Sr.

The causes these people have chosen to give to may not align with your own, however I would hardly be in favor of confiscation of property just because our own personal favorite charity doesn't receive a windfall.