The Tobin tax or Wall Street sales tax is rapidly gathering momentum thanks to a bid by British Labour Party MPs to save themselves from looming defeat at the hands of the Tories by playing this great economic populist card. If the Labour Party succeeds with this gambit, it will tend to transform the situation in the US as well, with desperate Democrats embracing the Tobin tax as a means of getting some populist credibility. The Republicans, by contrast, will be forced to line up in defense of their Wall Street backers, stripping away all their Tea Party camouflage. Obama-Summers-Geithner will also be put into a bind. I have been campaigning for the Tobin tax for a number of years, and it is an idea whose time has come.
If a sales tax on financial transactions (Tobin tax, trading tax, securities transfer tax, Robin Hood tax) can bring the British Labour Party back from the dead, it can defeat Geithner, Summers, Bernanke, Wall Street, and the reactionary Republicans here in the US. It is time to make this a world-wide campaign to force the bankers to pay for the world economic depression they have created.
Webster Tarpley
Home Page
A tiny tax on bankers that would give billions to tackle poverty and climate change, here and abroad.
This tax on banks – not you or I – has the power to raise hundreds of billions every year. It could give a vital boost to the NHS, our schools, and the fight against child poverty in the UK – as well as tackling poverty and climate change around the world.
Not complicated. Just brilliant.
Phi Beta Iota: We support the elimination of the Federal income tax as being unconstitutional in the Unted STATES of America. Individuals should pay taxes to localities; businesses should pay taxes to all states where they do business; and federal operations should be based on the Tobin tax and strictly limited to the narrow administrative services of common concern that are consistently authorized and approved by Congress acting on behalf of the STATES.
