posted February 10, 2010 07:37 AM         

A little too "Merchant of Venice" this seems to me but I'm open to considering it.

However, who decides what programs all this money is going to? What good is all this money if it's going to sit around or be wasted on things like "climate change"? And I don't mean the climate ain't changing ... I mean any stupid program can be labelled as helping to stop climate change because where are the guidelines and the proof that xyz programs WILL actually work?

Idealistic but I want some hard figures before I toss my support behind something of this nature.

posted February 10, 2010 02:48 PM         

a banker i know in england says the bonuses are being subjected to 150% tax...not sure how that works! but apparently gordy brown is doing NOTHING with the money...

posted February 10, 2010 04:26 PM         

...

"Funds would be managed by a UN mechanism, to ensure they are allocated fairly and according to each country’s particular needs."

...

"And there is a growing movement in the US to introduce a financial transaction tax. Economists such as Jeffrey Sachs, Joseph Stiglitz and Dean Baker support the proposal. House of Representatives Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is also in support."

...

"Under the Robin Hood Tax plan, the tax would not be levied on banks' transactions with their High Street customers.

Instead it would only apply to transactions between financial institutions, with different rates applied to different types of transaction - with an average tariff of five pence for every £1,000 traded.

The campaign is calling for countries that levy the tax to keep half the proceeds domestically and for the rest to be split 50-50 between poverty reduction and tackling climate change."

...

"However, any plans to implement an international tax would need international backing - and any plans for similar measures have received a less than lukewarm welcome from the US and IMF."

posted February 12, 2010 03:01 AM         

Don't you care about the poor? Or the oppressed? Or the polar bears? Or the pond smelt? Or the few bits of green left in the world? Without taxing everyone, how are we ever going to save the world and feel good about ourselves?

Nevermind where the money actually goes ... nobody even knows ... so long as we meant to do good, we're good.

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You do realize that Robin Hood, in robbing the rich, typically robbed the TAX COLLECTORS (if not those who got the tax money), and gave the money back to the ones who had been taxed in the first place?

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posted February 12, 2010 06:23 AM         

I happen to like the idea and hope they find a way to work it in practice, honestly, ethically and fairly. Obviously it would need stringent rugulation by an independant body to ensure the money was being collected and distributed properly and in the manner intended. It's a delicate balancing act I grant you but surely one worth a punt in these rather desperate times?

posted February 12, 2010 04:53 PM         

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hope they find a way to work it in practice, honestly, ethically and fairly

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If they did, it would be a first.

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but surely one worth a punt in these rather desperate times?

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Would you support a tax on you to help a give huge bonuses to corporate CEOs and bankers, or new pay raises to politicians who feel desperate as they find their perks a little more expensive than usual? Of course not. That's why they don't tell you what it is. Instead they say it's something else, and once you take the bait, they then switch it. They do it over & over again.

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I often wonder why we're so addicted to overcomplicating life nowadays

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I see feel good schemes like these as overcomplicating things and doing more harm than good. I also see it as another screwed up effort at control.

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we seem so desperate to proove that simple solutions won't and can't work for some reason.

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posted February 13, 2010 12:41 AM         

Really, I think the world's problems are far too complex; mostly because there are too many people who refuse to listen to anyone else's view and who are overly defensive. From the tiny spiderweb of the home to the massive web of worldwide interdependence, no one wants to see that they may be wrong; that their way may not be the best way. Without FIRST looking at any problem honestly, from the cause to the projected future effects, nothing will be accomplished but putting a bandaid on a severed limb. But try to seriously get into the nitty gritty of any problem and all you get is a mishmash of blind allegiances, misplaced loyalties, and childish behaviors on the part of almost everyone involved. So we "make do" with fiscal and social duct tape just to be able to pat ourselves on our collective back and then return our attention to whatever new craze our favorite box tells us is significant.

posted February 13, 2010 04:51 AM         

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Really, I think the world's problems are far too complex; mostly because there are too many people who refuse to listen to anyone else's view and who are overly defensive.

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Unfortunately starting to agree with that.

Maybe some people really don't like the idea of banks putting a small percentage of their profits back into the societies that earn them a significant proportion of those profits?

posted February 13, 2010 05:31 AM         

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Maybe some people really don't like the idea of banks putting a small percentage of their profits back into the societies that earn them a significant proportion of those profits?

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The Robin Hood tax is a lie. You are being deceived.

With the chump change a banker can access, bankers can buy loopholes & bait & switch legislation which radically changes the intent and/or adds riders which more than makeup for the loss. Another common trick is once something like goes into effect, then the tax dollars currently going for that are then redirected elsewhere so there's no gain, and then if the law is subverted later (as it often is) those programs don't get their old tax dollars back (now going into politician pockets and the like).

They keep doing it over & over. It keeps working for bankers & such because too many people fail to learn how they're being scammed by a government that is in the same social circles with the bankers and don't give a damn about you and/or the poor, only in fooling you to think otherwise to keep you in your place under the illusion that "something (for you) is being done." But the bankers and the private sector are not opposites, they're partners, and it doesn't matter if the system is capitalist or communist, they are cronies who work together to fleece the poor and middle class so they stay at the top.

And even if there isn't, even if the Robin Hood tax is all that it claims to be and gets passed as such, the bankers just raise their rates to cover it which means they're not the ones taxed, WE are. And that's a best case scenerio. Of course they can raise our rates and subvert the law both, too.

And THEN you have to look at the programs they fund, which are often dysfunctional and sometimes make the problem worse instead of better.

Of course I LIKE the idea, and given how much I dislike banks who screw people over so that I don't sympathize with it being done to them against their will, I wouldn't even care that it was against their will. I also like the idea of flying on a broomstick, too. But I'm not going to support the Robin Hood tax anymore than I'm gonna jump out a window on a broom.

Try one of the options that doesn't involve the government. Or just try something new period.

posted February 13, 2010 05:03 PM         

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Perhaps if the banks are involved in the scam, no one told Goldman Sachs as they were found to be behind the sudden flurry of 'no' votes on the Robin Hood tax site

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That sounds more cost effective than driving a dump truck of money up to their pet MP or Congresscritter's door.

But sometimes they pretend to be against something to gain more support for it. For example, when the patent on freon was almost expired, the makers manipulated environmentalists to work to ban it while openly pretending to be fighting against such a ban. But it passed (they also paid the congresscritters to pass it) and so it was...just as the patent expired. Of course they had a replacement ready to sell instead...one they still held the patent on so essentially kept their monopoly on it rather than facing competition as others started marketing freon, too.

Sad, isn't it, just how people against the greed of corporations so readily help them in their schemes? And many of them never learn. I expect many of them are considered useful idiots by the big biz people they hate the most.

You can find the details of this, and other such scams by corporations pretending to be against something they were actually for, in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Doublespeak-Anyones-Saying-Anymore/dp/0060928395