Yes....hence the 'Robin Hood" theme. Robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Sounds like a completely legit idea to me.

Or would you prefer the poor rely on voluntary charity, seeing as how it has worked so well to date?

In reply to this comment by bcglorf:
It costs nothing and it will raise billions!

Don't question it or think about it, just say it fast enough and it'll be true. Or, at least it will be true if the billions raised come out of somebody else's pockets, but truth like that doesn't sound as reasonable.

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by blankfist.

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by Throbbin. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Bill-Nighy-Nails-The-Haughty-Banker-In-The-Robin-Hood-Tax

This movie looks like it's gonna suck.

Then again, Robin Hood looked like it was going to be awesome...

Tags for this video have been changed from 'gilliam, robin hood' to 'gilliam, robin hood, john cleese' - edited by rasch187

>> ^MaxWilder:
And NetRunner, you really think there's a lot of competition in banking? Come on. There's like three or four major corporations running all the banks. Even without the cost being transferred directly to the average mortgagee or checking account holder, this still looks like a boondoggle to funnel more cash through the government. I'm not all that paranoid about government corruption, but nobody can deny the tendency for government pork projects and general waste.


I meant my questions mostly to serve as a Socratic way of making a point.

You answered the one about competition, and said that in effect there ain't no competition. I agree.

Here's my next question along that chain: What exactly determines their profit margin then? In that environment, aren't profits exactly like a tax, only instead of having a plebiscite to determine the rate, and having the money dispensed in some public program, it's being set and pocketed by some of the wealthiest people in modern society?

Here in the US, we're still expecting competition. The UK seems to regulate from the assumption of an effective cartel. We should either follow their example, or end the cartel.

Oh, and about the tax "slowing down the economy", it's really just a disincentive to engage in high volume short term trading, or more to the point, it encourages investors to use longer term investment strategies. It doesn't seem to me that that would necessarily raise unemployment, in fact it might actually make the economy a lot less prone to booms and busts.

Gee...What a shock. Is there -anyone- on this site that couldn't have predicted this unsupported claim from the guy that thinks government can do nothing well or right?
>> ^imstellar28:

Exactly correct; and the government is the largest (and most wasteful) of them all.
>> ^Sve
NitoR:
Waste and inefficiency is not a government problem. It's a problem with -all- large organizations.

Exactly correct; and the government is the largest (and most wasteful) of them all.

>> ^SveNitoR:

Waste and inefficiency is not a government problem. It's a problem with -all- large organizations.

>> ^Stormsinger:

Waste and inefficiency is not a government problem. It's a problem with -all- large organizations.
>> ^MaxWilder:
... I'm not all that paranoid about government corruption, but nobody can deny the tendency for government pork projects and general waste.



I never thought about it that way, that all large organizations have a lot of inefficiency. I always heard people say "if private companies were run like the government is, all companies would go bankrupt." Thanks for sharing that thought!

Seriously? Have you any experience with a large corporation? They waste money like you wouldn't believe... I worked for a major insurance company for 12 years back in the 80s and early 90s. The wasted funds were easily in the same scale as anything I've ever heard of. $600 hammers were nothing. They spent 2 years paying a dozen consultants to build a reporting system, cost: a few million dollars. Flew two people from each city office to Hartford for training and bought new computers specifically to run these reports, cost: ~ $10K per office...so another couple million. Ran the reports once, and abandoned the system. I'm not even sure that one run was ever actually looked at by anyone. This was standard procedure, not some isolated event.

Waste and inefficiency is not a government problem. It's a problem with -all- large organizations. At least there is some slight hope of finding out what happens with the government. There is no such hope for corporations...at least not for unregulated (or poorly regulated) corporations...or any business, not just corporations. A company is -always- paranoid about keeping its books private, and accountants are great at finding ways to disguise the facts when required to display them.
>> ^MaxWilder:

... I'm not all that paranoid about government corruption, but nobody can deny the tendency for government pork projects and general waste.

@imstellar28, this makes me think there's some way for us to eventually see eye to eye about things:

Society is like a pyramid...built on the backs of the working class who comprise the base. Nobody at the top cares about the poor - nobody - because the poor must exist for them to be rich. You think this tax gives money to the poor, all this does is give more money to the rich. Get real, who do you think you are talking to? You think I'm the CEO of Citibank or something? Why would I want to make more money for anyone at the top? Why would I want to take money from anyone at the bottom?

I'm all for the intentions of this measure - save the poor etc.

It's very Marxist of you to see things through the lens of a class struggle.

You also say:

This "Robin Hood" idea rests on the very naive assumption that if a bank adds a -$100,000,000,000 line to their operating expenses they would just say "oh well" I guess we are all taking pay cuts from now on, and the poor would rejoice with their newfound money. You must be kidding if you think thats what happens in the real world.

This, I think, is at the heart of our disagreement. Why do banks get to dictate their own profit margins? Why must the rest of society bend around the immutable preservation of these self-decided profit margins?

Isn't the price of a product based on "what the market will bear", and not "how much profit does the producer want to make?"

Putting a really fine point on it, why are you assuming that profit margins work exactly like production costs? Shouldn't competition reward the bank that pays the largest share of the tax out of their profit margin?

Also, $100 billion in the hands of the poor seems like it would have a positive effect on the level of consumer demand and the economy as a whole, especially when you're in a deep recession. It seems to me that banks might stand to make as much as they lose, and possibly more, assuming they're actually good at picking investments.

Mostly though, my point was that you seem to be downright hateful towards people who have a different viewpoint than yourself on how best to approach public policy, to the point where I often see you bluntly advocating violence. I also see a lot of conceit in your insistence that all people who disagree with your view are ignorant.

So I say, from the bottom of my liberal bleeding heart: Let go of the hate, man.

>> ^Stormsinger:

I know I've seen this one before, but I'm not sure it was here. Worth an upvote anyway, for sheer hilarity.


Indeed it was here coz i posted it.
http://videosift.com/video/Bill-Nighy-Nails-The-Haughty-Banker-In-The-Robin-Hood-Tax

(more evil thoughts)

@NetRunner

1. Clearly you haven't ever seen any Robin Hood movies...you know...the guy who "steals from the rich and gives to the poor." This is the Robin Hood tax we are talking about after all...

2. You don't think poor people have checking accounts? Car loans? Mortgages? Rent from people with mortgages? Buy goods from small businesses who have business loans? Use credit cards? Maybe .01% sounds like a small increase in APR, but for a lot of people its enough to make a monthly payment just out of reach.

All this tax would do is give yet another person access to the cookie jar. Right now, its just banks, but this tax would expand it to bureaucrats -- you know, the guys who make $100,000 a year in pensions after they retire -- the guys who contribute and produce nothing in society. This "Robin Hood" idea rests on the very naive assumption that if a bank adds a -$100,000,000,000 line to their operating expenses they would just say "oh well" I guess we are all taking pay cuts from now on, and the poor would rejoice with their newfound money. You must be kidding if you think thats what happens in the real world.

The rich will NOT be paying for this tax, not one cent - the poor will because all they are going to do is pass along the expenses; and by getting the oh-so efficient-and-just government involved you can be assured that they will take their cut too. In reality, the banks will raise rates by $100,000,000,000 while the bureaucrats spend money on themselves and their cronies.

Society is like a pyramid...built on the backs of the working class who comprise the base. Nobody at the top cares about the poor - nobody - because the poor must exist for them to be rich. You think this tax gives money to the poor, all this does is give more money to the rich. Get real, who do you think you are talking to? You think I'm the CEO of Citibank or something? Why would I want to make more money for anyone at the top? Why would I want to take money from anyone at the bottom?

I'm all for the intentions of this measure - save the poor etc. but this implementation, formulated with emotion, hate, and ignorance, will ensure that those intentions are never achieved. We don't live in a fantasy world and Robin Hood doesn't save the poor with his merry men. The rich are rich because they are shrewd and calculating, and if you think something like this could possibly have any bearing on the rich you are daydreaming.

Disheartening? Maybe, but you can't change anything if you can't see it for what it really is.

A Tobin tax is probably not a terrible idea, but why do they have to associate it with Robin Hood? That will just piss off everyone who doesn't have an envy-based view of economy.
And while Bill Nighy is brilliant at squirming awkwardly, why can't we get some real replies from a real banker?

And why do they focus so much on the banker guy squirming? We don't get to see the (also greedy) face of the interviewer, or hear much of an argument besides righteous retribution against the selfish banker class.

How will they use the funds they raise to help 'the poor'? Straight up alms? Hundreds of billions of pounds applied irrationally can be quite destructive.

Jeez, UK policymakers can just make anything feel ominous, clumsy, greedy and obnoxiously P.C.