Yes. Making Mitt Romney pay more in capital gains taxes would both help slow the alarming growth of inequality in the U.S. and, if offset by a decrease in the corporate tax rate, help keep capital and investment within our borders.

When Muhammad Yunus won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work on microfinance with the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, he would have been mortified to know that a version of his model would one day force his country’s poor into the organ trade. At the time, microfinance (particularly the practice of giving small loans to the unsalaried poor with low to no collateral) was revered for its ability to “do good while doing well.” In other words, it enabled people to escape poverty while turning a profit.

Call 2011 the year of the biometric ID. Once the territory of high-security enclaves and spy novels, identification by iris scan, fingerprint, and other unique physical features has now become de rigueur around the world—especially in India, whose program to ID every citizen has been the subject of almost giddy reports about the technology's potential to democratize society. The New York Times described India's biometric database as "building real citizenship" for the first time. Wired emphasized how biometrics can finally bring the disenfranchised into the formal economy.

Two years into economic recovery from the Great Recession, over 46 million Americans live in poverty, including 16 million children, according to the latest data released by the US Census Bureau. But beyond these staggering numbers, the report also clearly identifies a key investment opportunity that could produce higher incomes, lower rates of poverty, a more resilient labor force, and even higher tax revenue.