Robin Hood? The bows and arrows guy who stole from the rich and gave to the poor? What does he have to do with tax??
Well, a lot, it turns out. The Robin Hood Tax campaign is a movement bringing together dozens of organisations that work both to reduce poverty in the UK and overseas, and to tackle climate change They have come together during the economic crisis and came up with a simple yet brilliant idea – create a tiny tax on bankers that would raise billions of pounds to tackle poverty and climate change, in the UK and abroad.
By taking an average of 0.05% from speculative banking transactions, hundreds of billions of pounds (which is a lot of dollars!) would be raised every year. That’s easily enough to stop cuts in crucial public services in the UK, and to help fight global poverty and climate change overseas.
But why is this happening now? Because of the financial crisis, frontline services in the UK – like the National Health Service and our schools – are under fire. At the same time, poor communities and the environment are being hit hard – as aid and green budgets are slashed by rich countries. The agencies behind the Robin Hood Tax are saying it’s time for the people who caused this mess to pay to clean it up.
So who supports this idea? Well, a variety of people actually. Gordon Brown (The UK Prime Minister), Angela Merkel (the German Chancellor) and Nicolas Sarkozy (the French President) have all spoken out in support of a tax on financial transactions.
Plenty of business bigwigs are on-board too. Like Lord Turner (from the Financial Services Authority), George Soros (the philanthropist) and Warren Buffet (US businessman extraordinaire). And then there are the hundreds of economists who have backed the idea, too, including the infamous Jeffrey Sachs.
In the words of the campaign team,
“This isn’t some crazy pipedream. It’s a simple and brilliant idea which transcends party politics and which – with your support – can become a reality.”
For more info, check out the website here.