The 99 percent and the 0.001 percent agree on something, but the Obama administration is holding out.
The world's second-richest man and a group of American nurses on the frontlines of the Occupy Wall Street protests came to the G20 summit in Cannes, France this week to advocate for the same thing.
Bill Gates came because French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked him to give G20 leaders recommendations on how to raise funds to meet the needs of the world's poorest. Among Gates's proposals: a small tax on trades of stocks, derivatives, and other financial instruments, also known as a financial transactions tax (FTT), Wall Street speculation tax, or the Robin Hood tax.
According to an advance copy of Gates's report, "FTTs already exist in many countries, where they generate significant revenue, so they are clearly technically feasible. According to the IMF, 15 G20 countries have some form of securities transaction tax. In the seven countries where the IMF estimates revenue, these taxes raise an estimated $15 billion per year."
"It is very plausible that certain kinds of FTTs could work," Gates told the Guardian. "I am lending some credibility to that. This money could be well spent and make a difference."
Gates has a net worth of $59 billion. So forget the 1 percent, he'd be in what, the top 0.001 percent? Meanwhile, representatives of the 99 percent were outside the summit security zone, plugging the same idea.
National Nurses United, the largest union representing U.S. nurses, came to France from the Occupy Wall Street protests across the United States where they have been providing first aid for the encampments. In Cannes, they dressed in their scrubs and joined nurses from Australia, France, Ireland, and Korea. This global group then administered an FTT saline drip to an ailing world economy -- represented by a man painted in full body art as the Earth.
"The economic decline is literally making our patients sick," said one of the U.S. nurses. "We see more and more children with conditions related to poor nutrition and stress." The solution, according to the nurses, is a Wall Street tax that could generate the revenues needed to address human needs.
Bill Nighy, an actor famous for his roles in Love, Actually and other British films, jumped right into the world economy's hospital bed and posed for photos. "People around the world are dying of illnesses that should have been eliminated hundreds of years ago," Nighy said, noting that a new Wall Street tax could help raise the money required to stop those scourges.
One of his contributions to the campaign for such a tax in the UK was a video that went viral, in which he plays a banker trying to argue against the idea. Ultimately, his character can't find a good reason why not to raise huge amounts of money for the things people need through a tiny tax on financial transactions.
Back inside the summit venue, there's a frenzy of last-minute lobbying going on to try to line up a group of G20 governments to launch a "coalition of the willing on FTT." The Obama administration isn't expected to be on the list.
But RoseAnn DeMoro, National Nurses United's executive director, said, "Nurses don't give up on people and they won't give up on this." The union also spearheaded a rally in Washington, DC today, with more than a thousand nurses and their allies targeting opponents of the Wall Street tax in the Treasury Department and Congress.
Bill Nighy: Robin Hood Tax Can Still be Agreed at the G20
Sharan Burrow: Lost in Translation in Cannes
And we need to do what he says as far as taxes go???? Sounds like "do as I say, NOT as I do"
Here is a better way:
2% Asset Tax Can Eliminate All Other Taxes
"If the total value of all US assets is about $200 trillion, and the total tax revenue in the US (federal, state, and local combined) is about $4 trillion per year, then if follows that a simple tax of 2% on all US assets would pay all taxes."
http://patrick.net/forum/?p=1133205
No one should be asking for a handout to help the poor. It's not charity. This is a tax to pay for the costs of allowing such destructive banking to occur. Sales taxes apply to many sectors of the economy, why not to one of the biggest sectors?
Ellen Brown: Who Will Pay: Wall Street or Main Street?
"...A more viable and more equitable solution would be to tap into the only major market left on the planet that is not now subject to a sales tax – the “financial products” that are the stock in trade of the robust financial sector itself. A financial transaction tax on speculative trading is sometimes called a “Tobin tax,” after the man who first proposed it, Nobel laureate economist James Tobin. The revenue potential of a Tobin tax is huge. The Bank for International Settlements reported in 2008 that total annual derivatives trades were $1.14 quadrillion (a quadrillion is a thousand trillion). That figure was probably low, since over-the-counter trades are unreported and their magnitude is unknown. A mere 1% tax on $1 quadrillion in trades would generate $10 trillion annually in public funds. That is only for derivatives. There are also stocks, bonds and other financial trades to throw in the mix; and more than half of this trading occurs in the United States.
A Tobin tax would not generate these huge sums year after year, because it would largely kill the computerized high-frequency program trades that now compose 70% of stock market purchases. But that is a worthy end in itself..."
And whether they care about ordinary Americans or not, they are smart enough to NOT want to live in a banana republic where the rich are hated and have to live in fear.
THAT means the rich must pay more taxes and the social safety net should not be cut when it is most needed (during a recession/depression) as well as finding a way to create jobs.
Why would we want to legitamize a system of looting?
It's like saying: "Goldman can sell s---- deals and bet against their own clients as long as we can tax them".
It's no way to rebuild the physical and the only solution is Glass-Steagall so Wall Street/City of London are free to make all the money they want screwing their customers but their derivatives will not be backed by commercial deposits.
Assuming a minimum total tax base of four quadrillion dollars, wherein every single documented transfer of value is taxed at the same low rate regardless of classification or size, a rate of ten cents per thousand dollars produces $400 billion in revenue, while a rate of done dollar per thousand, a mere one tenth of one percent, generates $4 trillion, more than enough to fund the entire federal budget.
Facts are facts. There is enough money sloshing back and forth in the US financial casino to totally fund the federal budget at a tax rate of one mil.
Support Universal Exchange Tax (UET), the only truly fair and equitable method of taxation, assessing the movement of money or value within an economic arena, wherein all contribute based upon level of economic activity, not according to political whimsy. UET is constitutional for all citizens, real and fictitious.
1. The Republican controlled house of representatives would kill it if it came up for a vote.
2. Key Democrats in the Senate like Charles Schumer and Dick Durbin are against it.
3. The Obama administration came out against the FTT saying that treasury department studies showed that most of the cost would be born by retail investors and not the financial institutions. The Obama administration is putting forward an alternative type of tax (similar to what they use in Sweden). Lael Brainard, Treasury Department Undersecretary for International Affairs, recently said: “We're very much in sync with Europe on their goal of ensuring that large financial institutions bear their fair share of the burden, but the US-proposed 'responsibility fee' would better deter the kind of risky behavior that led to the crisis as well as ensure that large financial institutions and not retail investors bear the burden."
4. The European Union's "Impact Assessment Report" of the EU proposed FTT showed that it would contract GDP, costs thousands of jobs and would actually decrease total tax revenue collections because taxes lost from the contracting economy and decreased employment would be greater than the FTT taxes collected. After reading the report, the Czech Finance Minister called the tax "economically irrational." The Swedish Finance Minister also denounced the tax and said that Sweden would not participate. The UK, Ireland and Malta have also opted out of the EU FTT.
The proposed tax is just a stupid little tax that will fall on pension funds and mutual funds and small time investors that will do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to slow the accumulation and concentration of wealth worldwide. We are on the threshold of a return to MIDDLE AGE style Feudalism, with the oligarchy of worldwide Billionaires in charge..
Even if he could dump it all, it would fall by 20-30% probably, and then he'd have a tax bill that would cut that down another chunk. Certainly not chump change, but $60B becomes $30-40B.
So instead, he sells off a little at a time, regulated intervals, and give it all to charity / non profit work.
It's ironic that Sarkozy, who is obviously limited, has with cooperation of Merkel et al and the IMF to do everything they can to increase the number of poor.
If the ruling elite would like to address world poverty, then they should ban all speculation on commodities and food stuffs. A barrel of oil is traded on average 27 times before it is physically delivered. Ban the speculation on Foreign Exchange, unwind and ban all derivatives. Withdraw funding for the IMF and World Bank and allow them to fade into the sunset.
That would do much more for the world, and the world's poor than any tax dreamt up by Mr. Gates or anyone else.