Ian Sullivan explains how a tiny tax on financial transactions would raise billions to tackle poverty and climate change, at home in the UK and abroad.
I’ve always been frustrated when I read about the credit crunch, global recession, economic meltdown, or whichever term you want to use. Thanks to the reckless gambling of the banks, our economy is a mess. But what if there was a way to turn this crisis into an opportunity?
What if we could repair the human damage, protect public services at home, fight poverty abroad and help foot the bill for climate change? Would you be in? And if we got to wear green masks, shoot pretend arrows and generally do cool stuff then surely we could build an unstoppable campaign.
It may sound all too good to be true (not green tights – obviously). But if governments around the world introduced a tax on transactions between financial institutions then we could raise hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The between bit is important because that means it’s not a charge for us to get our money out the bank, or to get currency for our holidays, so they can’t just pass it on to their high street customers.
We’re calling it A Robin Hood Tax. It would start at just five pence for every thousand pounds traded – an average of 0.05 per cent. Even such tiny taxes would raise as much as £250 billion every year.
That’s more than double what the world currently gives in international aid. That money could be used to fight poverty, protect public services and tackle climate change. Sounds good doesn’t it. It’s world changing, it makes sense and it is possible.
I won’t go into the ins and outs of how banking greed got us into this mess – there’s some excellent analysis by Professor Stiglitz. Basically, we have an opportunity to make the financial system work in the interests of normal people all around the world.
As we slowly recover from the credit crunch we can’t just go back to “business as usual”. To steal a phrase from the bank that we all own, the Royal Bank of Scotland, “You deserve a better bank”.
Support the Robin Hood Tax and we might just get it.
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