Saturday, 13 February 2010

Tobin Hood and His Merry Pinkos

Just a cursory glance down the list of the organisations supporting the
Robin Hood Tax
shows you exactly where these delusional hippies are coming from. Just look at the mandatory use of “Merry men and women” in the description to gauge exactly the sort of lefty bores we are dealing with here. Trade Unions, barking communists, self-aggrandising green movements, you get the picture. Instead of electing politicians to run the country perhaps it would be a much better idea just to put that nice Bill Nighy, or seasoned economist Richard Curtis, or what about obnoxious loud mouthed Fern Cotton, in charge.

For starters, it should be made very clear that however many pinkos join a Facebook group, the chances of the Robin Hood Tax succeeding are somewhere around half of half of point one percent of a percent – that doesn’t sound like very much to normal people. And that’s because normal people don’t run the worlds banking systems. That’s why bankers do – people who actually know what they are talking about, people who have been consistently smeared by those looking to shift the blame for their own cock-ups. The Labour Party is as much to blame for the recession as the bankers they are so willing to blame. We would be well on the road to recovery by now if it wasn’t for the ridiculous levels of government spending instigated by Gordon Brown. Now the left want to levy a new tax, not for deficit reduction, but wait for it… more public spending!

The chances of US investment banks agreeing to this are tiny. Thank goodness. As for the rest of the world? Well the global community can barely agree where to hold summits, let alone on anything actually discussed at them. The delusion of the supporters becomes immediately clear when they state that 0.05% is a tiny figure. Yes it is a small percentage but as Tim Worstall
points out
, that figure represents half of the profits generated by the banking system. Do you seriously for one second believe that the banking section would put up with losing half of it’s incentive to bother trading, and thus prop up the world we live in?

Have these people ever thought for one second what the world would be like without international trade and the banking system? Or maybe they have, maybe they want government controlled finance. Maybe this is indeed part of their grander plans to redesign the world, who knows what these mentalists are really thinking.

Most of the people supporting this either spent their childhood standing in the cold while their parents gave out Socialist Worker, or failing that, were too busy eating tofu and lentils in-between sessions of singing Joni Mitchell songs on an old battered guitar. However TB actually spent his childhood reading Robin Hood.

He remembers the true story, not the hijacked jumped up version that these deluded morons are spouting. Robin of Loxley returned to his homeland to find it crippled by a tyrannical regime hell-bent of propping itself up by taxing its citizens till the pips squeaked. Sound familiar yet? Robin Hood as he became was the ultimate fighter against taxation, he wasn’t stealing from the rich to give the poor, he was merely taking back from the rich what they had taken from the poor through taxation.

Nottingham was the ultimate big state, with its only desire to grow and a casual disregard for its citizens. The irony of the name is hilarious. This tax does not steal from the rich to give to the poor. It’s just sanctioned stealing by the state. It should be named the Sheriff of Nottingham Tax if anything. This countries recession has been made so much worse due to the ridiculous size of our state. How will giving the state more money to piss up the wall solve anything?

Time to move on to some of the more well disguised bull that supporters of the Robin Hood Tax seem to have swallowed. Take Will “Evidence Based Blogging” Straw's
Left Foot Forward
for example. LFF constantly refers to “world economists” as if every economist is part of the world club and all agree with each other that everything the Conservative Party has ever said is wrong.

Left Foot Forward also bands about the figure of 350 economists as if it is something to be proud off. Margaret Thatcher got at least 25 more economists than that to slam her ideas and she went on to become the greatest peacetime Prime Minister this country has ever had, and her ideas were eventually embraced by the Labour Party he is so tireless to defend. He also has to stop banding the expression “Nobel Prize Winning” as if it actually means anything. They gave Obama one for Christ sake.

Will’s spin swallowing naivety really becomes obvious in his myth-busting attempts:
“Claim #2: It will harm ordinary consumers, including ‘holidaymakers when they exchange money at the airport’ 
The Robin Hood tax campaign FAQ states that: 
“The Robin Hood Tax will not impact on personal banking or on retail banking. That’s because it targets a distinct area of bank operations – high-frequency large-volume trading, undertaken by financial institutions in the ‘casino economy’. 
“If you change money to go on holiday, send remittances abroad, invest in a pension fund or take out a mortgage, you will not be affected by this tiny tax.””
Yes, that is correct. But come on Will, banks are there to make a profit, it is what they do. To suggest that they won’t find a way to make up for the losses of Robin Hood’s theft is naïve at best, and plain ignorant at worst. Banks aren’t the fluffiest of creatures but they are a necessary evil and will pass on the any cost inflicted upon them to their customers without fail. Higher bank charges immediately come to mind. Boom right there, you have then inflicted the poorest this pathetic and delusional tax is meant to help. Whoops.

The idea that taxation is theft is rarely so hysterically and openly embraced by the left. They normally spend most of the time hiding their casual disregard for other people’s money. At times like this you see right into the thought process of the modern left. Their ideas have been rejected again and again, decade after decade so they opportunistically wait for a low point to strike and force their thievery through the back door. You could yell and yell that’s “It’s not your money!” until you were blue in the face, but frankly these people don’t care. They are dressing up there desire to hamper and limit global capitalism under a veneer of caring.

Just as they are so quick to dismiss the fact the climate scientists are a bunch of politicking liars, you would think that the case for a global levy was open and shut. If it is such a good idea why hasn’t it been implemented over half a century since the concept was first mooted? It won’t work because it is stealing money that governments have absolutely no right to touch. Opposition to this tax will prevail, whatever the more naïve and deluded elements of society wish to call it.



Many more voices have come out against The Tobin Robin Hood Tax.

TB Recommends:

Robin Hood Tax, or Compulsory charity in a post-religious age

Picking apart the ‘Robin Hood Tax'

Forget the Robin Hood Tax, I want a Celeb Tax

Robin Hood: A Libertarian Hero Defamed

Robin Hood Tax

PM 'Bananas' Over Robin Hood Tax

Robin Hood Tax, yet another view

Robin Hood Tax – Stealing from the worthy

ROBIN HOOD, ROBIN HOOD, RIDING THROUGH THE GLEN

On the Robin Hood Tax

Fairytales like a ‘Robin Hood Tax’ won’t help anyone

The cruel deceits of the left - the re-branded Tobin Tax


And a special mention to
Guy of Gisbourne
- resurrected as the good guy to fight the resurgent Robin and his evil tax.

15 comments:

richard.blogger
said...

TB, the SWP do not hand out the Socialist Worker, they sell it. Yes, that's right they expect people to buy it. They really are proto-Murdochs at heart.

Tory Bear
said...

if that was the only point you could find to pick out of that post then it must be one of my better ones..

glad to hear you find the robin tax ridiculous as well.

ST said...

The "charities" on the usefully provided list can stick their lefty campaigning where the sun don't shine.

Funnily enough Oxfam phoned me last week asking me to renew my subscription. Part of the script included the impact of climate change on poor countries which had seen increased flooding.......

Me: If we accept man made climate change occurs can you prove a link between recent flooding and climate change?

Him: No. But events have increased by 100% since the 1980's.

M: From how many to how many. An increase from 2 to 4 major floods is a 100% increase but that's the statistics of small numbers.

H: I don't know, but 100% is significant

M:........

H: Anyway, we're a purely responsive organisation and not a campaigning one.


M: I won't be renewing my subscription.

In light of this I'm doubly glad I didn't. I've always given a fixed % of my income to charity but I'm finding it harder to find worthy causes that don't also wish to undermine my polticial views. I note, incredibly, that the RSPB is signed up. Lets hope the RNLI don't jump on the wagon or else I'll have no one else to give to!

Costello
said...

Excellent post TB.

The King of Wrong
said...

This tax, like all 'Tobin' taxes, is a tax on liquidity. Anyone advocating it should consider what happened last time money market liquidity was reduced: namely that house prices dropped 20% because nobody could get a mortgage.

That will also make it difficult for the government to borrow the tens of billions a year for deficit spending, potentially forcing 30% cuts in the public sector almost overnight. Perhaps it's another scorched earth policy?

Alfred
said...

Let us not forget the words of WS Churchill: "... for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."

richard.blogger
said...

LOL! TB I just wanted to point out how much the SWP and you agree. Guido wouldn't, of course (or at least that is what I glean from his pronouncements on the dead tree media, which the Socialist Worker most definitely is).

Do you remember the fuel duty escalator that Major implemented (probably not, you are just a wee 'um, but it is still there on petrol). Tell me, is that tax 0.05%? Nah it wasn't and it isn't, it is a significant tax (imposed by a Conservative government, no less). As you know damned well the fuel duty escalator was supposed to persuade people to use cars less and to use more efficient cars. Has it succeeded? No it hasn't: people like cars.

Taxes raise money, that is what they are for and that is what they do. The "behavioural economics" of the fuel duty escalator failed, (as will the plethora of Steve Hilton's planned "behavioural economics" policies) taxes do not change people's behaviour. The Tobin tax is just that, a tax. You don't like taxes, I think they can be important. We agree to disagree.

Billy Blofeld
said...

TB,

It is pointless using logic to argue a case with lefties.

They only respond to things like pictures of starving children, sick puppies and toffs.

I'm starting to work on some concepts myself....

Will Straw
said...

Just worth pointing out that although I support the Robin Hood tax and stand by the article which Tory Bear quotes, it was written by David Taylor for Left Foot Forward and not by me. David should get the credit!

All the best,

Will

andrew said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
longrun2
said...

I tried to post on their website:
"Have the Cayman Islands signed up?
No? then the Hedge Fund billionaires will be exempt whereas Granny will be charged when she sells the shares Grandad received from his firm’s Save-As-You-Earn Scheme to pay for his funeral. Changing banking licences would only affect banks and not Hedge Funds.
You haven’t thought how to deal with OTC. The whole of small investor individual dealing is done on regulated markets but the unregulated Chi-X now turns over more than London, Frankfurt or any other stock exchange in Europe(the FT says it is ranked second because the total of Amsterdam, Paris and Brussels are treated as one, qwheras each is smaller than London or Frankfurt). There are other unregulated “deep pools” as well.
Again the big banks (Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Nomura, UBS, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Societe Generale and BNP Paribas are big players on and investors in Chi-X) so, again the rich can dodge this tax while the little guys get caught.
Of course a tax on banks’ FX deals will impact retail transactions since the banks have to balance their FX books several times a day and every retail purchaser or seller of FX unbalances the bank’s FX book – so the transaction cost has to be passed on to the retail customer (unless the bank wants to go bust). If you want to stop people buying foreign goods (including oranges and bananas as well as Champagne and Mercedes) that is a debatable proposition, but please argue the case for it so that I can put up the counter-arguments instead of sneaking it through under the pretence of supporting charities.
There are a surprising number of Christians in the City, so next time you have a “bright idea” you should ask one of them whether or not it will work"
What happened?
Of course it got suppressed like all my posts to most of the Lefty sites (except Tom Harris) - e.g. Will Straw cannot accept facts on his "evidence-based" blog.
Naturally I object to self-styled "bankers" picking up a £million or so for adding no value but this is not a solution and does more harm than good.

Man in a Shed
said...

I have a feeling the SWP members had to buy so many of these papers every month as a condition of membership.

Selling them was getting their money back.

Capitalist incentives - you can't beat em...

longrun2
said...

I tried to post a reasonable comment on why this naive policy won't work (including a post suppressed by their site) and your computer refused to recognise my identity. What do I do next?

Pfffft said...

Tobin Hood: Men In Tights.

titus-aduxas
said...

Robin Hood Tax? Not fair, Robin Hood fought against tyranny and swingeing taxes. Gordon Brown wants swingeing taxes and to be the tyrant that implements (and benefits from) them.

It should be known as the King John Tax or, in recognition of his personal contribution, the Robin Bastard Tax.

O/T but rather ironic. I read that Lord Paul is considering leaving the UK. He wants to move his domicile, to avoid paying the swingeing tax burden that he and the rest of Labour voted for.

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