Attac Ireland

Another World is Possible

  • 
  • 
  • 
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are?
    • Mission Statement
  • Campaigns
    • EuroMarches 2015
    • Human Rights
    • Financial Transaction Tax
    • Tax Justice
    • Debt
    • Trade
    • Solidarity with Greece
    • TTIP
    • Climate Justice
  • Get Involved!
    • Join Us
  • Events
    • People rise up against Finance! STOP TTIP!
    • International CETA Speaking Tour
    • OXI March in Solidarity with Greece
    • Lux Leaks
  • Whats New!
    • Attac in the Media
  • Blog
  • Contact Us
You are here: Home / Attac Campaigns / London Review of Books Lecture by James Meek. “Taxation, ‘Robin Hood in a Time of Austerity'”

London Review of Books Lecture by James Meek. “Taxation, ‘Robin Hood in a Time of Austerity'”

February 18, 2016 by Attac Ireland Leave a Comment

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The Robin Hood Tax or Financial Transaction Tax (often labelled an FTT in the acronym soup of financial jargon) is a tiny tax on the financial sector, typically only a fraction of one percent. The key reasons for its implementation we can see from the original folk tale,

robin-hood-tax“consider the entire Robin Hood myth, the ideal remains familiar in our outlaw-free world. The myth requires a great mass of heavily taxed poor people who work terribly hard for little reward. The profits of their labour, and the taxes they pay, go to support a small number of lazy, arrogant rich people who live in big houses, wallow in luxury, and have no need to work. Any attempt to resist, let alone change, this unjust system is crushed by the weight of a vast private-public bureaucracy, encompassing the police, the courts, the prison system, the civil service, large property-owners and banks, all embodied in the ruthless figure of a bureaucrat-aristocrat, personification of the careerist-capitalist elite, the sheriff of Nottingham.”

So, the idea of an FTT is to take from the wealth of the financial markets in order to provide societal goods, health and education or social housing for example.

A more complete explanation of the Robin Hood Tax can be found in the documentary.

Filed Under: Attac Campaigns, Financial Transaction Tax Tagged With: EU, Financial, financial justice, Financial Transaction Tax, Ireland, social justice, Tax, Tax Justice

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe to our Newsletter

Upcoming Events

There are no upcoming events at this time.

Attac’s 7 Principles

  1. Take public finance away from financial markets
  2. Escape from the debt trap
  3. Give state finances a sustainable basis
  4. Disarm financial markets and put the banking sector under public control
  5. public and democratic financing of the economy
  6. Europe for the people, not for profits
  7. Real democracy now

Tags

#NoPegida anti-fascism anti-racism banks Barry Finnegan CETA climate justice commons Debt Debt Justice EU EU crisis Europe events Financial financial justice Financial Transaction Tax France Greek Debt human rights Ireland Irish water ISDS Justice Lux Leaks LuxLeaks migration money party politics Pegida privatisation Robin Hood Tax social justice Solidarity Greece Tax tax havens tax heavens Tax Justice TISA Trade trade agreements Trade Justice Transaction TTIP water
  • About
  • Campaigns
  • Get Involved!
  • Whats New!
  • Blog
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Climate Justice

Like Us On Facebook

Join our announcements mailing list!

Search this Site


  • 
  • 
  • 

Copyright © 2021 — Attac Ireland • All rights reserved.

Designed By Barefoot Responsive Web Design