UK Student riots

i do apologise 0.05% :mickey:

as you are now (hopefully) in a question answering mood... would the robin hood tax also implement legislation to prevent banks simply adding that 0.05% to interest rates?

 

ok, last question... first i need to point out something, apparently this is "everything you need to know" about the robin hood tax

http://www.robinhoodtax.org.uk/how-it-works

that tells us nothing

the question is simple, where the hell do you get reall information about what this organisation is proposing? simple stuff like what is teh criteria that makes a company elligible to pay? would the royal bank of scotland have to pay, how would the tax effect foreign companies who operate in the british financial sector and vice versa.. how will the tax be enforced...where does it get it's figures from? .. that kinda thing

 

aahh noway, they double in Ireland.. there was some trouble, and the Gardie(police called Gardie here, its gailge) beat some peaceful protesters...... ahh drama.

 

ok... very very last question promise, cross my heart, call me a banker if i lie etc..

how do you keep an even playing field?

it's a transaction tax .... so if the transaction is taking place between two countries that both agree with the robin hood tax, all good... but is a complete worldwide agreement on a tax on financial transaction even a remote possibility? and how would this affect state run banks? especially those owned and ran by poor countries?

oh, and how would you collect a tax that in many cases is going to be a very small amount effectively? i assuming that collecting tax on literally billions of financial transaction is gonna take a huge workforce.. is there anyway to find out a credible estimate on how many transactions are gonna be taxed on a yearly basis?

 

Thanks for the questions, I wouldn't have thought to ask them. I can't afford the time to answer them right now so I'll not attempt to as I don't want to fob you off. Let me do the research for you and I'll answer them shortly...seriously good questions

 

appreciated :sunny:

no hurry man, alla time in the world

 

Ok, I'm fobbing you off for the minute..but I will still come back to you and answer your questions fully! For now I want you to ponder over these other objections...your own objections are more than welcome, they can only make the cause stronger. As I said, will come back to you when I understand the world economy!! Time is tight right now, I've just started a new job and I've been up to no good so sit tight dude, I will come back to you on said questions/objections!

Copied from Robinhood Tax discussion board...
Wow! There are so many of us! Have had a look online and there’s loads of negative comments out there about this. Thought it would be cool to fight back.

Would welcome feedback / new ideas.

Anti: Banks won’t do this because it will cost them too much money
Pro: This is only £5 from every £10,000. The global financial market is worth more than £3000 trillion. Work out how much 0.05% of your income is (income divided by 100 times 0.05). How much would you miss it if you knew it was doing good? Now imagine you earned $3000 trillion!

Anti: Countries won’t do this because their banks will lose a competitive advantage
Pro: They said abolishing the slave trade was too expensive and that too many people would lose too much money. We did it because it was right, not because it was easy.

Anti: This would hit everyone too hard
Pro: The trading taxed by this is very limited. Most banking business wouldn’t be touched. It taxes a small fraction of apparently risky trades. It wouldn’t be felt outside of specialist markets that use a lot of the profits to pay the traders. Law, regulators and standard practices would be used to ensure the cost is never passed on to high street bank customers.

Anti: It would cost too much to implement
Pro: Just plain wrong. The relevant systems are already used to move money/trades around the world, track it and tax it. It would almost cost nothing to get this tax going. Not much more difficult than a Facebook update. It certainly wouldn’t be more than a fraction of the $400bn (ish) we would raise in the first year.

Anti: None of the money will go to the right place, it’s just charities/governments making money
Pro: Wrong. Part of the deal is that 50% of the money goes to good causes in the place where the trade happened. 50% will be spent elsewhere in the world. All of it will be used for a good cause. Bankers understand what accounts and audits are. So they also understand that it would be possible to show how this money is spent. They think we’re foolish.

Anti: The banks won’t suffer, they’ll just pass the cost on to the customer
Pro: This isn’t about making the banks suffer. This is about taking a tiny fraction of profit and ensuring it is used to do some good. The cost won’t be passed on because the law and regulators will make sure it can’t be. The banks will suck it up because it’s not actually that much money to the businesses involved; it’s just a lot of money to bankers who are used to keeping the profits for themselves.

Anti: The banks will all move abroad!
Pro: Nope, too expensive to move their massive operations. The cost of moving would far out-way the cost of paying the tax.

Are there any Merry (Wo)men who want to pick up their bow and take the fight to the sheriff? If we’re seen to be supporting this, other people will too. The more we're seen, the bigger we are!

 

From the info you've quoted I can make out that..every company would be eligible to pay. The organization is proposing to take .05% from all transactions between banks and companies. Yes the Royal bank of Scotland would be eligible to pay...it's a bank! I think they are trying to make it a worldwide project so yes Foreign companies would be eligible to pay eventually. Why don't you contact the organization with your questions. I've forwarded them on for you but haven't received an answer yet. I'm happy to support it in the early stages myself but like you I'd like to know exactly how they propose to enforce it etc...

...the have a contact email address on their site http://www.robinhoodtax.org.uk/contact

Sorry I've not been much help. You have to admit though, if it worked it would be pretty awesome.

 

Ok, as 'The Robinhood tax' organizers are unable to answer the above questions it has become apparent that they have know idea how they're actually going to do it. So I find it difficult to back them one 100%

However, I think this guy has a viable answer...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/20/charlie-brooker-how-cut-tuition-fees

Good old Charlie Brooker.

 

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How to cut tuition fees

We should teach only the useful stuff: scavenging, strangling and how to operate a water cannon

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• • Charlie Brooker
  • The Guardian, Monday 20 December 2010 <li class="history">Article history
  You can't put a price on a good education. Except, actually, you can – and it turns out that price is just over £9,000 a year.
  Unsurprisingly many students are furious at the hike in tuition fees; but apart from shouting about it or trying to smash the Treasury to bits with sticks, what practical steps can we take to make education more affordable?
  Nine thousand pounds a year sounds like a lot – but actually, it's shitloads. Yet it turns out that if you divide shitloads by 52, it comes out at around £173 a week, which sounds more achievable. Especially if your course only lasts seven days. So let's only provide week-long courses.
  Obviously, to compress a three-year course into one week, the field of study will have to be streamlined a bit. Whittled down. Reduced to a series of bullet points. But in many cases, that's an advantage.
  Take history. There's already far too much of it. In fact, mankind is generating a "past mountain", which grows 24 hours in size every single day. No one can be expected to keep all of that in their head. There simply isn't room. Even award-winning historians will be lost for words if you unexpectedly leap out in front of them and demand they list everything that happened on, say, 6 July 1919, before the special quiz music ends, especially if they thought they were alone in the house.
  So instead of studying the whole of human history, why not focus on a concentrated period, such as the most exciting five minutes of the second world war? That way you just get the fun bits with the machine guns and everything, and there's none of that boring exploration of the "consequences" or the "causes" or "how we can stop it happening again". The philosopher George Santayana famously remarked that those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. But if you have forgotten history, you won't know you're repeating it – so it won't matter. And you won't have heard of George Santayana, either. Which is just as well, because, to be honest, he sounds like a bit of a smart arse.
  Likewise, when it comes to studying politics, let's not waste time examining both sides of an argument – that's just confusing. Instead of learning the pros and cons of say, slavery, why not just learn the pros? Not only is it far quicker, but you actually stand more chance of getting a job when you graduate, perhaps as a feisty TV news pundit or Daily Express columnist. Or as the owner of a cotton plantation.
  Speaking of careers, there are far too many courses with no clear vocational goal. If you're not studying with a view to ensuring your future prosperity, why, precisely, are you bothering to read the Decameron? For the cultural benefit of all mankind? Look around you. Culture's doing just fine without your help. We've got everything we need – from cage-fighting at the lowbrow end of the spectrum through to the dizzy heights of James Cameron's Avatar right up at the top. There's something for everyone.
  Rather than providing frivolous courses in artsy-fartsy-thinky-winky subjects with no obvious revenue stream, our educational institutions could save a lot of time and unnecessary expense by only providing courses that train students for jobs we're definitely going to need in the brilliant future we're steadily carving for ourselves. What's the point in learning botany? We all know there won't be plantlife. Apart from maybe the odd triffid, or whatever sort of moss can withstand a dirty bomb. So why bother learning about it? There's no money to be made.
  Instead, let's focus on giving young people the skills society will be crying out for in the years or months to come. Practical vocations such as water-cannon operator, wasteland scavenger, penguin coffin logger, Thunderdome umpire, dissident strangler, henchperson and pie ingredient.
  Come to think of it, even those courses are going to be costly, and the eventual wages so insultingly low it'll take them three lifetimes to repay the loans. They can make up some of the shortfall by taking part in medical experiments, fellating ministers or breeding offspring for food, but the chances are that the big society will never recoup the funds it lent to these little people.
  Which leaves us one final option. Let's simply give up. You know, as a species. Put an end to this weird "progress" experiment we've all been taking part in and actively revert to the level of farmyard animals. They look happy, don't they, with their tails and their mud? Let's join them.
  Starting tomorrow, let's stop bothering to learn or teach anything. Within months the whole world will be far simpler for all concerned. We can issue the next generation with a few basic instructions, some warm clothes and toilet paper, and leave them to it.
  Eventually society will regress to the point where there are only two words – "boh" (meaning good) and "bah" (meaning bad). Everything will be either bah or boh; we'll shuffle around bah-ing or boh-ing, chewing the cud or eating the vitamin rusks they occasionally fire in our direction from the turrets on their trucks. And everyone will be happy. Or ignorant. Or both.
  Merry Christmas.
  

 

Bah or Boh? Or even Beh?