Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The Robin Hood Tax

The idea of the Robin Hood Tax has been around for years but never seems to get anywhere. It's a simple, ridiculously low (0.05%) tax scheme for the massive financial deals that go on making billions. This tiny tax alone would fund all the social programs being wiped out by the rich vampires around the world. Think about that. British actor Bill Nighy has long been a proponent of the Robin Hood Tax and here's an excellent opinion piece I've been meaning to cite for weeks: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/02/deficit-cuts-banks-robin-hood-tax?INTCMP=SRCH Why is it that the rich get to keep their money- and reinvest to make more- while the workers and the poor pay taxes and suffer? Isn't that systemic corruption? I lost a third of my retirement savings to tax. It was a whopping less than $8,000 US dollars, and nearly 3 grand went right to the gummit, because I wasn't 66 yet and had become disabled. There's something hugely wrong when a single worker carries the tax load while the obscenely rich carry on in Marie Antoinette style. Edward Dowling wrote: "The two great obstacles to democracy in the US are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy; and second, the chronic terror amongst the rich, lest we get it."

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