The Robin Hood Tax
by Daniel Neville on 2010/02/13
Here's an idea: implement tiny tax on bankers that would give billions to tackle poverty and climate change. Sounds very simple, and it is. The experts reckon that by taking an average of 0.05% from speculative banking transactions (those are the ones that don't involve the consumer), hundreds of billions of pounds would be raised every year. That cash will then go to the poor, a brilliant modern application of Robin Hood's "steal from the rich, give to the poor" mantra.
This video is well produced and an excellent example of furthering a social cause through video, although it would have been better to use YouTube annotations at the end.
Still confused? Let Bill Nighy and Richard Curtis explain:
Personally I really like this idea, possibly because it's so simple and obvious. Now there might be a few staunch free market advocates out there who think this is really bad idea - the comments and debate under the above video on YouTube are very opinionated and heated - but if you start thinking about how much banks have gotten away with globally, this is a drop in the ocean for them. The Robin Hood Tax campaign is based in the UK and was put together by a dozen different organisations, and even has the backing of a number of politicians.
The campaign has been brilliantly rolled out and basically asks the public to help push for the legal implementation of this tax. You can head over to robinhoodtax.org and sign up to become one of the merry (wo)men and help spread the word. So far on the site it lists 23910 supporters of the tax; some of whom must have downloaded the Robin Hood type masks and gone to terrorise some bankers. So what do you think of the tax? Good idea? Bad idea?
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