Robin Hood Tax? More like Oliver Twist crumbs…

You’ve probably heard about the new proposed Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions.

Related to the Tobin Tax that has been suggested for a while, the idea is that by taxing financial transactions of the city by 0.05%, $400Bn could be raised for good causes.

But here are some uncomfortable questions:

• Why only 0.05%? Why is it not 0.5%, 5% or 50%? I’m not saying which it should be, but who decides? Presumably it’s set at 0.05% because it has to be palatable to the banks? Is that how we set tax levels in the UK?
• Why split the money equally between domestic and global needs? Does the UK need the same amount to “stop cuts in public services in the UK” as the world needs to “help fight poverty and climate change”? Does that strike anyone else as absurd?
• Who will decide how it’s spent? Will it be another exercise in undemocratic G20/World Bank aid distribution? Another excuse to pump money into fancy white UN cars in poor countries?

The fact that Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy are all in support of this campaign should not be a cause for joy, but just another bit of evidence that this isn’t really about changing any fundamentals.

it has creepy echos of Tony Blair wearing the white wristband.

The fact that all the main NGOs are supporting this initiative is both an example of how deep the malaise in our political system has become and that NGO action is not the answer.

Why do we have to launch a YouTube campaign to ask the banks to cede a tiny bit of cash, while we weren’t subjected to twitter stunts from the City asking us to sign a petition for their billions of bailout money?

Why would the financial centres of the world – London, New York, Tokyo – agree to any significant tax? The politicians who can implement this are not accountable to those facing starvation or climate chaos, so why should they agree to large-scale redistribution? They won’t of course. They might agree to a token amount of cash if the domestic pressure is enough, but it has to be domestic pressure. So guilt-related charity, that’s all this is. The same game as before. Don’t call it tax, call it charity.

While the short-term aims of this campaign – to raise some money for those who seriously need it – are valuable, the failure to see the bigger picture perpetuates these power imbalances.

This campaign doesn’t change the underlying dynamic of charity/NGO-led development: it’s about getting people in rich countries to lobby themselves so that they can throw a few more crumbs in the direction of people on the frontline of climate change and global poverty – a position they face often as a result of rich-country consumption and emissions.

Robin Hood? Please. It’s more like Oliver Twist.

Why can’t we learn lessons from history? We didn’t build a National Health Service or free education system based on “Alms for the Poor”. It was a stake in the political cake that changed charity into tax.

Are we ready to do this with global aid? You certainly won’t hear many NGOs calling for it. It’d put them out of a job.