The richest .005% of people in the world have enough money to go a long way to solving the world's problems. Many of these people are the hedge fund managers and similar investors who own billions of dollars in properties on the Cayman Islands and elsewhere, who do not produce a thing, but just make money trading on other people's labor and enterprise with sharp business practices, like short trading. A Tobin tax was originally suggested in the early 1970's by James Tobin, an economist who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Tobin's tax was originally intended to penalize short-term financial round-trip excursions into another currency. By the late 1990s, the term Tobin tax was being applied to all forms of short term transaction taxation, whether across currencies or not. The concept of the Tobin tax is being picked up by various tax proposals currently being discussed around the world, amongst them the European Union Financial Transaction Tax. Something similar called the 'Robin Hood' tax has been suggested by many economists and celebrities, and has been seriously discussed at the G20 summit last year. It seems the idea of a general Robin Hood tax was considered to be fine, but maybe a bit too amorphous to gain traction, a bit like the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations of 2011. What the world needs, is for people to galvanize their sentiment on specific ideas and direct them at specific organizations, such as the United Nations. You can start by voting here. Vote yes to an international Tobin tax!