Is Atlas Shrugging? Part IV
Tell me if this reminds you of anything.
Protesters in Chicago call for ‘Robin Hood’ tax
Thousands of nurses and other protesters gathered Friday at a downtown Chicago plaza for a noisy but largely peaceful demonstration demanding a “Robin Hood” tax on banks’ financial transactions, before a smaller but more raucous crowd broke away and began marching through city streets.
And then there’s this.
I really don’t know what to say about that. I mean, this is supposed to be a video for the Robin Hood tax. I guess we’re supposed to find a bunch of thugs accosting an old guy and scaring him half to death funny because after all they only took a little bit of the man’s money. I actually found it unsettling.
But at least it’s honest. The Robin Hood tax is nothing but a slightly more civilized form of robbery.
Yaron and I discuss the Robin Hood myth. . .from a slightly different angle. . .over at Forbes.
(HT: Kurt Kramer)
7 Comments to “Is Atlas Shrugging? Part IV”
That video is very unsettling and yes, honest, since such a tax is just another form of robbery. What bothers me most is that the rationale for the tax is that “it will raise billions and cost people nothing”. Aside from being inaccurate, it’s not the point. Taking that which is unearned is not moral, no matter how small that taking is (although one can hardly describe “billions” as small). And then to literally waste that money on non-productive spending simply deepens the evil behind this idea.
In Ontario, the government recently introduced a surtax of 2% for earnings in excess of $500,000 per year. The most-leftist party (the NDP) which called for the tax as a condition of voting in favour of the ruling (and also lefties) party’s (the Liberals) budget claimed it will raise $500 million. The Liberals estimated the tax will raise $420 million. Both parties justify the tax as a means to reduce Ontario’s exploding debt. However, economists seem to agree that the new tax will raise only $250 million since there are deference mechanisms in the tax code and revenue can also be shifted to other jurisdictions, along with a mis-calculation of how many people actually earn in excess of $500,000 of income. The response form the market was a downgrade of Ontario’s debt by Moody’s, which triggers a higher yield that Ontario must pay on it’s bonds.
The result is that the introduction of the tax will probably INCREASE Ontario’s debt burden!! So not only is it morally unjustifiable, it will produce the opposite result of what the government intends.
The moral is the practical.
Robin Hood lived under a tyrant who ruled in the absence of the just King. In fact much of what the people had was taken in tax, so the Government could live in luxury while the people struggled. It’s not that they were robbing anyone, it’s that they were being robbed. The problem with entitlements is we want to wipe out the social side without touching all the corporate welfare that is shouldered by average taxpayer. Ethanol, oil company subsidies, no negotiations on Pharma prices, enough nuclear weapons to blow up the entire planet 18 times, the list goes on and on. All clearly examples of money given that is not earned. We certainly don’t need to take from the rich to give to the poor, but we should also stop taxing the unborn to absorb cost that should be borne by the companies that benefit from it. If we eliminate ANY entitlements, we should eliminate ALL entitlements including patents on things that occur in nature.
Also recall that the Robin Hood of legend did not “rob from the rich and give to the poor”, he reclaimed the taxes coerced by the state from rich and poor alike, and returned them. I would cheerfully encourage a genuine Robin Hood tax, as it would be a rebate to all taxpayers from the state. FTT is not a “Robin Hood tax”, it’s simply more coercion.
Robin Hood stole, not from the innovators and producers of his day, (of which there were very few,) but from a cruel, parasitic, aristocratic class, which obtained its wealth by robbing merchants, artisans and serfs through the imposition by force, of subsidence wages, exorbitant rents, and excessive taxation, thereby reducing thousands of peasant families to starvation levels. Perhaps we need a modern Robin Hood movement that would find a way to raid government coffers and return all of the stolen money to the long suffering citizens of the Western nations.
Well, I used to be a big fan of Ben Kingsley.
In the Real American version, the Kingsley character would wheel around and drop a Sig Saur p229 (45acp) in the thugs face.