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The Robin Hood Tax
Just when you thought the story of bankers vs the people couldn't get any more surreal, there's this. A UK coalition launched a campaign this week to support a 0.05% tax on every trade in the global financial markets. The group says the tax could raise $700 billion for the world's poor and help address climate change. The campaign features a slick video with a famous British actor, plus an online poll. There are also allegations that somebody at Goldman Sachs tampered with the poll's results.
A coalition including the anti-poverty charity War on Want is behind the call for "The Robin Hood Tax." War on Want actually proposed this almost a decade ago but is seizing on the public's current mood to try again. The charity thinks the money should go to fighting poverty, protecting public services and addressing climate change.
At the Robin Hood tax website, the tagline is: Turning a crisis for the banks into an opportunity for the world:
John Hilary, the charity's executive director, said: "British people have been appalled by bankers' abuse of public money to pay themselves large bonuses. The Robin Hood tax is a direct way for the banks to repay their debt to society. It is truly an idea whose time has come."
Here's the campaign's video, starring British actor Bill Nighy:
Here's Nighy discussing the concept on a BBC talk show.
As of writing this post, the poll results were: YES: 30441 votes NO: 3631 votes. But there were a lot more NO votes when the poll first launched. The Robin Hood Tax supporters reportedly looked into it and discovered...
...the unlikely backlash against the rob-the-rich plan - almost 5,000 no votes against the Robin Hood tax within 20 minutes - turned out to emanate from just two computer servers, one of which was registered to the investment bank Goldman Sachs...
More than 1,700 came from a Goldman-registered server, with the rest from what appeared to be a personal address. It was unclear whether the stunt involved an individual or a number of people. Goldman said: "We have just received this information, and we are investigating the matter fully."
May you live in interesting times.
How would you vote?
"Robin Hood is not remembered as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became a symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors. It is this foulest of creatures – the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich – whom men have come to regard as the moral idea." -Ayn Rand
I guess the banks received money from the government. Now it's our turn.
When I was shotting pool at a bar in Montana, good looking woman walked up to me and kissed me real good. About an hour later I got to thinking what a great idea she had come up with. I walked over to her, grabbed her and kissed her. She looked at me stern, "don't grab!", she quipped curtly. She walked out. Although I never saw her again, I could never forget what she had taught me.
Have the mobsters, the banksters, and the internal revenue personnel grabbed. Have our sleazy elected official moved wall street into our sacred Capitol Building, the building our forefathers gave to us, the building that many of us have fought and killed to defend? Have they moved the casino into the Temple of Our Forefathers?
U B Judge
U B Patriot
The rich only want free markets when it makes them richer but they like big government when it saves them from losing their fortune. How many times has Donald Trump be saved by the bankruptcy laws. How can BoA and other companies give bonuses and show billions in loses. I wonder how much tax these to big to fail will get out of because of loses.
I've always thought of Robin Hood as a champion against misrule and predatory taxation of the Church of Rome and the State as represented by the Sheriff of Nottingham.<p>
Apparently Robin Hood's enemies were not as clever as ours. If they had only realized that all they had to do is co-opt him and then the serfs would vote to tax themselves!
What is surreal about a tax on financial transactions or progressive taxes that more fairly and efficiently distribute the productivity of a country?
A tax on short term financial transactions to reduce volatility (mostly in currency exchange rates) is known in economics as a Tobin tax after the econ nobel winner James Tobin who suggested it in 1972.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobin_tax
Numerous modified Tobin tax regimes have been discussed recently in more rigorous blogs as part of a regulatory solution to prevent similar crises.
It's amusing that the august "talent" at Goldman Sachs is either to stupid or too smug to cover their tracks. Their worry over public opinion shows that they remain uncertain as to whether they have bought off enough politicians to continue the looting and dangerous "business" model.
I thought about the Alan Greenspan connection as well, and my interest peaked into what she would think of him then and now. I thought he was more of a friend then a disciple. I wouldn't want to be held accountable for the sins of my friends even if we believe in similar concepts. How about you?
