The G8 leaders meeting in Toronto managed to live down to my worst expectations.
I arrived at the G8 by a roundabout route. Just a day earlier, I was standing in Dandora, a toxic tip on the edge of Nairobi where little girls as young as five live on a mound composed of toxic and human waste. They survive by competing with wild pigs for scraps of rubbish, forced to sell their bodies to get access to the richest pickings.
I was there to bear witness to the good work aid does before traveling to the Toronto summit as Oxfam's Global Ambassador. Comic Relief, a British charity, rescues children from this dump and gives them schooling in a safe, almost fairytale environment.
At the G8, I have been lobbying for action, with TV and radio appearances to do what little I can to put pressure on leaders to live up to their aid promises first made in 2005 in Gleneagles, Scotland. G8 governments are $20 billion short on those promises due this year. It takes $220 to rescue a girl from Dandora. Just think what a difference that could make in Africa and elsewhere.
The summit did bring the promise of $7.3 billion to improve maternal and child health. Good news, you might think, when a shocking 1,000 women and girls every day die unnecessarily from complications in childbirth and an estimated $10 billion dollars a year is needed to solve the problem.
Sadly, the good news is limited. The money will come over five years. The G8 has promised only $5 billion, the rest will come from a combination of other countries and the Gates Foundation. I find it incredible that with a promise of $1.5 billion over five years, Bill and Melinda Gates are providing almost a third of the total of the world's richest economies.
Worse, the promise of "new" aid is a scandal of creative accounting. With no increase in overall G8 aid, their money will have to be taken from other pots, from the budgets for food, clean water, health or education. I wish someone would tell me how it can be right that a mother's health should be secured by sacrificing her child's schooling.
Now attention shifts to the G20, which has the opportunity to make good the G8's broken promises. Leaders will discuss a simple but brilliant idea for a tax on banks and hedge funds -- dubbed the Robin Hood Tax -- that could raise $400 billion for good causes every year. Oxfam are pressing for half this money to help poor people hit hardest by the economic slump, hunger and climate change.
Gambling by the financial sector was a big cause of the economic crisis but banks, bailed out to the tune of $17 trillion are now returning to bonuses as usual. Banking is the most profitable industry on earth but is taxed the least. With rich governments unwilling to make good on their own promises, surely they can ask bankers to spare some of their small change to help the girls from Dandora and millions more who need a little help from us to get to first base with a chance then to help themselves.
Bill Nighy: World Leaders Need to Agree to the Robin Hood Tax at G20
Cut Spending. Ever heard of the poor spending their way to riches.
I do think we should tax the rich. Statistics show when the rich pay taxes also we prosper, when they dont like during the Bush years we fall into recession. We need to return to the 70% rate Bush dropped it to 30 and we went to hell.
Perhaps the Robin Hood provisions should be expanded to actually limit profits to those we allow our electric and water companies enjoy, and begin treating banks and hedge-funds as public utilities. Treated in such a manner, profits of these financial monoliths could not exceed a 10% return on investment, ensuring that the money earned in Corporate America, and indeed around the globe, are funneled to investors who will re-inject them into the economy at large, rather than to their corporate leadership!
As to the tax. If you just want to raise revenues from the uber rich why limit it to bankers. Just close the loop holes so that everyones income is treated the same and add a tax bracket for very high income earners. If this is about reforming the financial system so that the banks are paying for their bailouts then you are institutionalizing the bailouts. Better in that case to bring in real regulation about capital ratios and the other causes of the instability.
No one will be able to tell you because it's wrong.
You know why this is: War is far more profitable than the alleviation of human suffering. So rather than devoting the sufficient proportion of capital to it, organizations like Oxfam and others have to fight for scraps. much like the children of whom you wrote.
May God have mercy on our souls, because we are failng to care for the least of His children
Logic and common sense will tell you that that the 'tax' must be collected.
Who are they going to collect it from? ...the very poor people or cut other services which is austerity
What should've been done was not bail out Wall Street/City of London.
We should've put them through RECIEVERSHIP/BANKRUPTCY/RE-ORGANIZATION
Bankruptcy laws are not to shame anyone, it's to protect our precious taxpayer's money for vital services needed by the poor and to invest in the scientific/technological industries of the future.
Robin Hood don't steal from the rich to give to the poor. The government stole from the poor. Robin Hood stole from the government and gave it back to its rightful owners, the poor people.
Big difference.