Obama Endorses Global Taxes on Eve of U.N. Summit

[The T]

T, the books is "Dreams From My Father". Makes more sense, eh?

Yes yes. My bad. You're correct. So in any case when he stated during his campaign that he was going to restore the wealth back to those that earned it?

He wasn't kidding.

 

[boedicca]

Yet More Evidence that Obama is the Anti-Colonialist hellbent on realizing The Dream From His Father of redistributing the wealth of colonial exploiters to the victims in their former colonies.

 

[hipeter924]

1. The UN is a incompetent organization, the large majority (70% onwards) of nations are corrupt dictatorships or theocracies.

2. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights supports BIG government, and the amount of times it says 'right to a government...' (to paraphrase) is nauseating. It needs to be rewritten or the very least made to sound consistent, like for example you cannot have total freedom of religion (total freedom of religion can go as far as human sacrifice).

3. Ever since the UN has been founded it has not stopped a single war, in fact the only wars ever stopped have been stopped by individual nations diplomatic efforts (not the UN). Yet the UN claims to be the most important forum for international diplomacy.

4. The only tool within the UN is economic sanctions, a tool that led approximately to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children in the infamous oil-for-food program scandal. Not to mention UN sanctions have worked brilliantly for North Korea (which now has nuclear weapons), and even better for Iran (which thanks to the UN is well on the way to getting its own).

5. Carbon trading is a joke, it's flawed in principle alone:

A company/nation has a carbon 'surplus' and it sells its surplus to another company/nation which has a deficit. So it will create competition between companies and allegedly reduce carbon emissions.

What will happen realistically is that companies will fight for a monopoly over carbon credits, small companies will lose their rights to exist whereas big multinational corporations and the government will control all the carbon credits.

That's enough for now I think. I can safely say that a world without the UN would be a better place, both in the money saved (no nation would have to pay to run it) and also due to fact all the energy and resources could be diverted to forums of diplomacy of discussion that do things.

 

[Zoom-boing]

Yet More Evidence that Obama is the Anti-Colonialist hellbent on realizing The Dream From His Father of redistributing the wealth of colonial exploiters to the victims in their former colonies.

Hey, didn't you hear? The Washington Post said all the "anticolonialist" stuff was hooey!

They're not going to be happy until we're all a third world country.

 

[Modbert]

So is there any actual evidence or is it just fear mongering? Never mind the fact about who funds AIM.

 

[Avorysuds]

Does this mean some of the "stimulus" will be taxed being millions if not billions went to other countries?

 

[daveman]

I'm highly skeptical of documents such as this, especially when it involves the concept of UN taxes. I'm not saying its wrong, but I am saying it is likely the writer is highly partisan and pushing an ideological agenda, and thus distorting the news to illicit a response. For example, it says this

The proposal, popular at the United Nations for decades and long-advocated by Fidel Castro, is called the Tobin Tax and named after Yale University economist James Tobin. Steven Solomon, a former staff reporter at Forbes, said in his book, The Confidence Game, that such a proposal “might net some $13 trillion a year…” because it is based on taking a percentage of money from the trillions of dollars exchanged daily in global financial markets.

The Tobin Tax is a concept supported by a wide range of people for a variety of reasons. However, the writer chose to cite one single person who supports this tax, Fidel Castro. Clearly, he did that because he's trying to scare people by referring to a Communist henchman and enemy of America, as opposed to, say, Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister of Britain, who also supported this idea. Its a lot easier to scare the right-wing into action by invoking the name of Fidel Castro than it is Gordon Brown.

For the record, the Tobin Tax will almost certainly never come into existence because it would require the coordination of all the major countries in the world. If just one or two countries declined, it couldn't work. Oh, and the Tobin Tax is a terrible idea.

I also liked the reference to the $13 trillion in taxes, which is another scare tactic. The GDP of the US is over $14 trillion and represents about 30% of global GDP. Do you honestly believe that by taxing all financial transactions we could raise nearly a third of global GDP that would then be transferred elsewhere? Be serious.

I don't know if Obama supports this or not, but this article seems highly politically biased and appears to be playing to the gullible, so we should be skeptical of it.

Rule of thumb: If a dictator likes it, it's bad.

 

[WillowTree]

In a classic case of misdirection, while the media are preoccupied with the fate of the Bush tax cuts, President Obama is preparing to attend a United Nations summit next week to endorse “innovative finance mechanisms”—global taxes—to drain even more wealth out of the U.S. economy.

A draft “outcome document” produced in advance of the September 20-22 U.N. Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) commits the nations of the world to supporting “innovative financing mechanisms” to supplement foreign aid spending.

The term “innovative financing mechanisms” is a U.N. euphemism for global taxes. But the document actually goes further, praising the “Task Force on International Financial Transactions for Development” for its work on the subject of mobilizing additional “resources” for countries to achieve the MDGs. This is a body tasked with proposing and implementing global tax schemes.

“We consider,” the document says, “that innovative financing mechanisms can make a positive contribution in assisting developing countries to mobilize additional resources for financing for development on a voluntary basis. Such financing should supplement and not be a substitute for traditional sources of financing.”

In other words, the revenue from global taxes should be in addition to foreign aid spending.

Obama has been a major U.N. supporter since he was in the Senate and sponsored a bill, the Global Poverty Act (S 2433), to force U.S. compliance with the MDGs.

Obama Endorses Global Taxes on Eve of U.N. Summit

He's a true Marxist.

 

[boedicca]

Yet More Evidence that Obama is the Anti-Colonialist hellbent on realizing The Dream From His Father of redistributing the wealth of colonial exploiters to the victims in their former colonies.

Hey, didn't you hear? The Washington Post said all the "anticolonialist" stuff was hooey!

They're not going to be happy until we're all a third world country.

Well, considering the state of the Mainstream Print Media industry, their businesses have already achieved third world status.

 

[Charles_Main]

In a classic case of misdirection, while the media are preoccupied with the fate of the Bush tax cuts, President Obama is preparing to attend a United Nations summit next week to endorse “innovative finance mechanisms”—global taxes—to drain even more wealth out of the U.S. economy.

A draft “outcome document” produced in advance of the September 20-22 U.N. Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) commits the nations of the world to supporting “innovative financing mechanisms” to supplement foreign aid spending.

The term “innovative financing mechanisms” is a U.N. euphemism for global taxes. But the document actually goes further, praising the “Task Force on International Financial Transactions for Development” for its work on the subject of mobilizing additional “resources” for countries to achieve the MDGs. This is a body tasked with proposing and implementing global tax schemes.

“We consider,” the document says, “that innovative financing mechanisms can make a positive contribution in assisting developing countries to mobilize additional resources for financing for development on a voluntary basis. Such financing should supplement and not be a substitute for traditional sources of financing.”

In other words, the revenue from global taxes should be in addition to foreign aid spending.

Obama has been a major U.N. supporter since he was in the Senate and sponsored a bill, the Global Poverty Act (S 2433), to force U.S. compliance with the MDGs.

Obama Endorses Global Taxes on Eve of U.N. Summit

He's a true Marxist.

More like a Marxist Idealist. One of those poor fools that thinks he can get it right this time.

 

[Epsilon Delta]

I'm highly skeptical of documents such as this, especially when it involves the concept of UN taxes. I'm not saying its wrong, but I am saying it is likely the writer is highly partisan and pushing an ideological agenda, and thus distorting the news to illicit a response. For example, it says this

The proposal, popular at the United Nations for decades and long-advocated by Fidel Castro, is called the Tobin Tax and named after Yale University economist James Tobin. Steven Solomon, a former staff reporter at Forbes, said in his book, The Confidence Game, that such a proposal “might net some $13 trillion a year…” because it is based on taking a percentage of money from the trillions of dollars exchanged daily in global financial markets.

The Tobin Tax is a concept supported by a wide range of people for a variety of reasons. However, the writer chose to cite one single person who supports this tax, Fidel Castro. Clearly, he did that because he's trying to scare people by referring to a Communist henchman and enemy of America, as opposed to, say, Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister of Britain, who also supported this idea. Its a lot easier to scare the right-wing into action by invoking the name of Fidel Castro than it is Gordon Brown.

For the record, the Tobin Tax will almost certainly never come into existence because it would require the coordination of all the major countries in the world. If just one or two countries declined, it couldn't work. Oh, and the Tobin Tax is a terrible idea.

I also liked the reference to the $13 trillion in taxes, which is another scare tactic. The GDP of the US is over $14 trillion and represents about 30% of global GDP. Do you honestly believe that by taxing all financial transactions we could raise nearly a third of global GDP that would then be transferred elsewhere? Be serious.

I don't know if Obama supports this or not, but this article seems highly politically biased and appears to be playing to the gullible, so we should be skeptical of it.

This is exactly what I was thinking, Toro, about the obvious bias of the article and also the name of the thread - it's meant to mislead (so much for "Accuracy in Media"). The idea of putting a small tax on international financial transactions is nothing new and it's been on the table as a source of revenue for the international system and governments for a while now.

I disagree though, about the Tobin Tax - why do you think it's a terrible idea? It's been implemented elsewhere (though not as a currency exchange tax but financial transactions tax) and it's raised huge amounts of revenue, I think the biggest example is in the UK, where the rate's 0.5% on share purchases. They've had it for decades and London's still a main hub of financial activity. Do you think it's a bad idea as just as a currency exchange tax or as an FTT tax in general?

 

[The T]

Obama Endorses Global Taxes on Eve of U.N. Summit

He's a true Marxist.

More like a Marxist Idealist. One of those poor fools that thinks he can get it right this time.

Which makes them either poor students of history...or Hell-Bent on Power/Control.

 

[Toro]

This is exactly what I was thinking, Toro, about the obvious bias of the article and also the name of the thread - it's meant to mislead (so much for "Accuracy in Media"). The idea of putting a small tax on international financial transactions is nothing new and it's been on the table as a source of revenue for the international system and governments for a while now.

I disagree though, about the Tobin Tax - why do you think it's a terrible idea? It's been implemented elsewhere (though not as a currency exchange tax but financial transactions tax) and it's raised huge amounts of revenue, I think the biggest example is in the UK, where the rate's 0.5% on share purchases. They've had it for decades and London's still a main hub of financial activity. Do you think it's a bad idea as just as a currency exchange tax or as an FTT tax in general?

There are very small taxes on trades for securities listed on exchanges in America too, but they are minute and don't raise much revenues.

The question is, why do you want it? What is the purpose of it? What are you trying to accomplish?

The UK isn't a financial hub because of the stock market. Stocks are a small portion of the total amount of financial products in the UK. London is the largest location for currency trading in the world. There are no taxes on currency trading. That would change overnight if a Tobin Tax was implemented.

The UK is a hub because it has low taxes on capital and a light regulatory environment. This is why AIG's division which wrote all the CDS - the products which took AIG down - set up in London - because of light regulation. Most of those transactions are structured in offshore special purpose entities based in places such as Bermuda, the Caymans or Jersey. They aren't taxed. You cannot tax them. So what's the point? The products which took down the financial system are totally beyond the reach of any type of Tobin Tax, and that's not changing anytime soon.

There are many reasons why this is a bad tax. What the heck does the stock market have to do with the Financial Crisis? Proponents of this tax say that those who helped create this mess should pay for it. But the people who would pay this tax aren't the people responsible for this mess, so why make them pay? There is this amorphous view on the left that "the rich" are all the same, but in fact, that's totally wrong. Its just lumping everyone who transacts securities into the same pot with no understanding what got us into this mess in the first place.

Tax systems are supposed to be designed not to discriminate against specific economic activities, unless society deems it such that we want to discourage that activity. So taxes are high on smoking and drinking, but we generally don't discriminate between industries. If someone worked in the film industry, why should they pay a higher tax than someone who works in the hospitality industry? So why would you discriminate against someone who works in the financial industry?

Or worse yet, why would you discriminate against someone who is saving? The Tobin Tax is a tax on savings.

It is especially egregious given that it would be applied to someone who loses money. Taxes on capital are the worst taxes from an economic standpoint because they deplete the capital stock of the country. Even such, we recognize as a society that all sources of income should be taxed to some extent, which is why we have taxes on capital gains and dividends, which are corporate profits. Taxes shouldn't be paid on losses. However, we also recognize that losses on capital are compensated in some manner, i.e. your future capital gains are offset by current capital losses. But a Tobin Tax is applied to losses anyways. And the worst of the worst are taxes which target savings, as a Tobin Tax does. If you want to hamper economic growth and the long-term base for your economy, implement a tax like "every year 5% of all savings will be taxed" regardless of gains or losses. That would be beyond stupid, and we generally don't do that except for the estate tax, which is seen as a socioeconomic tool to damper the formation of dynasties and aristocracies.

Its also worth noting that James Tobin proposed this tax as a means to temper capital flows into small countries, whereby small economies could be destroyed by capital speculation. He never meant to as a means of raising substantial revenues. I believe he has come out in opposition to such ideas in the past.

I spend much of my time here hammering the right for their dumb economic ideas, i.e. Laffer Curve. But the Left has a lot of dumb ideas too, and there aren't many worse than a Tobin Tax.