Solution for the sovereign debt crisis - Tax the rich

Extracted from Version 2.0: A kinder brand of capitalism
by Teh Hooi Ling

Published March 26-27 2011 on The Business Times Weekend

Are the rich of the world so rich that combined they would actually have enough stashed away to help solve their country's debts?According to Forbes list of world's billionaires, there are 1,210 billionaires in the world now. Their combined wealth , is about US$4.5 trillion. That's more than the GDP of Brazil, India, Indonesia and Thailand combined.

The United States has the most number of billionaires, at 412. It is followed by China and Russia - ironically two countries which used to subscribe to the Marxist philosophy but have since made some drastic ideological changes. China has 115 billionaires and Russia has 101. But the billionaires in Russia are far richer than those in China. Their combined wealth is US$433 billion, compared with China's US$230 billion.

India's billionaires (with combined wealth of US$247 billion), meanwhile can fund nearly two years of the country's estimated budget deficit of US$131 billion last year. The billionaires in the US can help trim their government's net debt by 16 per cent, Brazil's by 18 per cent and Mexico by 31 per cent. 

Meanwhile, Hong Kong's 36 billionaires have wealth amounting to a staggering 70 per cent of their economy's GDP last year.