Comments on: On the Tobin Tax

By: Bill Nighy gets a kicking « Peter's Place

Bill Nighy gets a kicking « Peter's Place — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:44:42 +0000

[...] (Tim Worstall has written previously on why the Tobin Tax is not the panacea that Bill Nighy thinks it is. The Adam Smith Institute has also produced a paper on the subject.) [...]

By: Hugo

Hugo — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:12:39 +0000

Two more reasons it’s moronic:

it creates a competitive advantage for size, encouraging bigger financial institutions

it would have to be implemented in every country in the world to stop transactions just being routed abroad.

Gordon is a moron.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:42:19 +0000

Let me get this straight:
In order to pay back to the Taxpayer the money used to bail out the Banks, they’re going to raise Taxes?

By: The Great Simpleton

The Great Simpleton — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:31:13 +0000

As Sir Humphrey said to Jim Hacker – The treasury doesn’t work out how much Government aims to spend and then raise taxes, it works out the maximum it can take and then spends it – or words to that affect.

That’s why green taxes and the Tobin tax are so popular, they are seen as new sources of income, not as a way of shifting the tax burden.

By: diogenes1960

diogenes1960 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 12:02:52 +0000

Gordon Brown and messy thinking….surely some mistake.

the taxpayer is already paying to recapitalise the banks…why should we pay again through a Tobin tax?

By: Kay Tie

Kay Tie — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:42:00 +0000

“Surely the object of a tax system is to extract the maximum of feathers from the goose with the minimum of squawks.”

Err, no. The object of a tax system is to pay for the functions of government that have to be done collectively. The goal ought to be to keep to a minimum the tax taken. This automatically reduces the squawking.

By: Pat

Pat — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:17:24 +0000

Surely the object of a tax system is to extract the maximum of feathers from the goose with the minimum of squawks. Hence taxes that appear to tax businesses are always and everywhere attractive to government, it does a lot to reduce the volume of squawks.

By: Brian, follower of Deornoth

Brian, follower of Deornoth — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:38:58 +0000

Extra taxes benefit the state. They don’t care who they screw.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 10:18:29 +0000

“Quite, and there was a very specific reason to: it was a world of fixed exchange rates. What he wanted to do was preserve the rigidities of the Bretton Woods settlement, to make it possible for countries to pursue independent economic policy paths without having their (fixed rate) currencies coming under attack and thus forcing them to change those policies.”

Source? He mentioned it in a lecture in 1972 and first published it in 1974, after Bretton Woods had broken down, and speficially has said he doesn’t support a return to fixed exchange rates