Abstract

We live in a world of radical inequality: Hundreds of millions suffer severe, lifelong poverty. Many others are quite well off and affluent enough significantly to improve the lives of the global poor. Does this radical inequality constitute an injustice in which we are involved? An affirmative answer finds broad support in different strands of the Western moral tradition, which also support the same program of institutional reform. This reform centers around a Global Resources Dividend, or GRD. A GRD in the amount of one percent of the global social product would raise some $300 Billion a year. This amount is too small to lead to economic dislocation. But it is large enough to eradicate global poverty within one or two decades.