100+ economists urge finance ministers to tax the banks - raise your voice with them!

                                                                     Hi Friend,

Today, as G20 finance chiefs gathered in Venice, Robin delivered this letter from more than 100 major economists, urging them to immediately introduce a Robin Hood Tax on banks to help cover the costs of the post-pandemic recovery.

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Take $100 billion from banks: top economists tell Finance Ministers!

 

Robin’s list of signatories spanned every continent and included renowned US economist Jeffrey Sachs, and France’s Gabriel Zucman.

The urgent appeal from such highly regarded experts was covered in the Guardian and leading French paper, Le Monde.

The pandemic has multiplied existing inequalities both at home and abroad. Health systems have been brought to their knees; economies shutdown; livelihoods deteriorated and loved ones lost. But whilst wealthier nations begin to regenerate due to accelerated vaccine rollouts, poorer nations, already seriously burdened by debt, are being forced to make life and death choices between servicing their debt and the provision of healthcare for their citizens.

If the G20 implemented a Robin Hood Tax on banks, an additional $100billion could be generated every year to help nations support their people’s health and livelihoods, address the devastating impacts of a warming planet, and prepare for future pandemics.

Amplifying this letter is a crucial step in our plan to make those who can afford to - pay the most.

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Thanks so much for your support. The G20 finance ministers need to know the world is watching.

Together, we can tax the banks now!

From the team at Robin Hood Tax

UNISON NDC 2010: Tobin (Robin Hood) Tax Motion 92

I actually managed to give this speech to conference without being “bumped off”!

"President, conference, John Gray, Housing Association Branch, London region speaking in favour of motion 92.

The Tobin or rather the Robin Hood Tax is a win, win for everyone. Not only a means to redistribute wealth from the very rich to the desperately poor but also a way of trying to ensure financially stability for our economy. Previous speakers have described how this tax is affordable, targeted and can raise large sums of money and the good use it could be put to.

However, we need to remind all members who have funded pension scheme’s or life assurance policies that it is very much in their own personal and collective interests that this tax is brought in. Remember conference that the original aim of the tax was to counter damage caused to economies by short term financial speculators who constantly buy and sell or “churn” currencies, stocks and shares. If by a relatively small tax on every city transaction it will make speculators think twice about such “churn” - then this will benefit not only our economy but our own worker savings.

Conference, don’t think that City speculators have nothing to do with you. For example every 3 months or so, city fund managers come and visit town halls up and down the country about their pension schemes. I’ve been a UNISON pension representative on my mine for 14 years; Pensions are by definition long term investments. What pensions need is investments that are also long term. But what happens in many pension funds at this moment is that we pay huge amounts of money to fund managers, who then spend even more of our money in commissions, buying and selling shares, on a daily or even hourly basis - not that they think these companies are well managed, well run businesses which will provide security and revenue for our pensions but because of short term volatility. This is what is meant by “casino finance”.

Conference, there is plenty of hard evidence that investing for the long term will produce superior investment returns. If our pension funds had been run in the past in our long term interests rather than the short term interests of the people who are employed in our name to run them, then perhaps we would not be having the problems and attacks on our pensions that we see now.

We should of course as unison activists be challenging our managers about their investments but the Robin Hood tax would make churn more expensive and also make it far more difficult for fund managers to justify such speculation.

Conference, please support this motion not least because it not only the right thing to do for your conscious but it will also be the right thing to do for your own pocket.

(I don’t think I will use my notebook to read off a conference speech again – during the speech I kept thinking that I was going to press the wrong key and it would crash! not a very nice feeling to have while in front of 1000 plus folk)

Robin Hood Tax

Better late than never but I will now join on the band wagon and post the excellent Richard Curtis “YouTube” video staring Bill Nighy. Now the idea that a tiny, tiny 0.05% tax paid on certain big money financial transitions could raise £100 billion plus of revenue to “fight poverty, protect public services and tackle climate change” is deeply attractive to all progressives. I would support such an idea unconditionally for this reason alone.

However, the idea has also been supported as a means of discouraging damaging short term speculation and encouraging long term capital investment (Tobin Tax). Which may actually be even more socially progressive than anything even 0.05% Robin and his merry men delivers.