A little introduction to the piece on the Robin Hood Tax.
Amazingly, no one at all who supports the RHT has seen fit to respond to the critique of it. Not even a Yah! Boo! You Smell!
Wonder why?
A little introduction to the piece on the Robin Hood Tax.
Amazingly, no one at all who supports the RHT has seen fit to respond to the critique of it. Not even a Yah! Boo! You Smell!
Wonder why?
Nice backhander in the conclusion BTW:
“There have also been studies from organisations such as the TUC and the Robin Hood Campaign, but we have restricted ourselves to details from those bodies with at least a working knowledge of economics and financial markets”.
When I read the para highlighted by Offshore Observer, it was vocalised in disdainful Peter Ustinov.
“Bill Gates has announced that he backs the Robin Hood Tax”
Yes, how generous of someone who has already amassed his fortune to place even more barriers in the way of everyone else at the bottom! This is the same ploy as Buffett.
“Wonder why?”
Erm…maybe it’s because you are an irrelevant gobshite who delights in writing for the Mail?
Maybe if it came from a more credible source….?
Tim adds: Quite possibly true Arnald. Except I didn’t write in the Mail, they reported on a study I did for the IEA.
Now if you want to say the IEA is not a credible source then fine, that’s up to you. But if they’re not then nor are Ritchie, nef, Compass, the TUC, Oxfam, Christian Aid and the rest.
Surely it’s because the important bits were just a precis of the European Commission’s report? Did they respond to that?
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Come on Timothy, it’s hardly a secret that the IEA is an extremist pile of shit
http://thinktank-watch.blogspot.com/2007/12/sir-anthony-fisher.html
Only nutters believe in that bollocks.
Oh…I see…
“Arnald // Nov 21, 2011 at 9:35 pm
Come on Timothy, it’s hardly a secret that the IEA is an extremist pile of shit
http://thinktank-watch.blogspot.com/2007/12/sir-anthony-fisher.html
Only nutters believe in that bollocks”
Your moderate and polite language is not very convincing.
The fact that you attack the IEA and not the figures implies that you are either too lazy to read it or unable to refute it.
Which is it?
Arnald, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for delighting me with your amusing scrawls and perverse logic. But most of all, thank you for making me only the second dimmest person who comments here.
Whenever I’m feeling doubtful about my abilities, I’ll always have you to remind me that things could be worse.
Dim, moi?
No doubt, in the scheme of things.
But denying that the think-tanks that Worstall, and possibly you, are so fond of are deeply rooted in extremist ideology is no defence.
As for the language; do you not read the abuse and ad hominems Worstall is fond of?
Well done.
‘Extremist’? LULZ.
Richie? Is that you? How many proxies are you hiding behind?
At least Tim doesn’t hit the edit button at the slightest criticism, like Richie does.
So, Arnald. Where’s your opinion? Do you have one? Or are you just vacant and spineless? As well as a shit.
(Excuse the language, everyone, but Arnald talked me into it…..)
James
Shall we compare Timothy’s original counter to my factually correct abuse.
“Ritchie, nef, Compass, the TUC, Oxfam, Christian Aid and the rest.”
“…and the rest.” is fairly important here. The rest are merely the usual punchbags.
Heaven forfend the desire to mitigate the financial industry’s stranglehold on the real world against the logic derived from the man that industrialised dead fucking chickens.
A mediocre metal dealer’s damning ideological best guess based on a blind textbook belief of decades of absolute delusion.
Nick
Again. It’s amazing.
Using moderation is simply a factor of taking stuff seriously. It’s a media thing, hmmm?
It proves unequivocably that Timothy is just a spaz-spankering deviant only supported by self-satisfied fundamentalists pretending to understand their relationship with actuality.
I’m here all week
Arnald – Just to make you feel more at home here I’ve put in a technical request for a “green crayon” option to be added to the comments section of the blog.
hoho Pogo!
So facts are not your strong point? Have a look at the track record of these “think tanks”.
It;s shit. Refute it.
Twat
Arnald, the dumbest man in Guernsey, is off his meds again. “Factually correct abuse” is a phrase I’ll use sometime when I prefer not to actually offer any, you know, facts, and I just want to spout crap.
Isn’t “spaz-spankering” – if it means anything at all – terribly insensitive and un-PC?
If I could raise the tone a bit, may I point out that mostof us usual leftie suspects can’t see the problem with Tobin. The City makes money by skimming perecentages off the flows of international capital that come their way in vast quantities..Another very small fraction skimmed for public benefit is not going to make much difference.I think that would be the attitude.
I would also defend TW on grounds of tolerance.
His is the only anti-left blog that invariably gives leftie comments the courtesy of a hearing.If he disagrees he tends to engage and argue it out.
So Arnald proves Tim’s point perfectly.
No refutation.
Not even an attempt at refutation.
Just abuse.
Arnald,
you may disagree with the conclusions of the IEA or the NEF if you believe that they are either too partisan in thier approach. You may even disagree with TW because you may beleive he is also to partisan. But have you considered the conclusion of the Centre for European Policy Studies report avaliable here:
http://www.ceps.be/book/will-financial-transaction-tax-ftt-enhance-stability
CEPS is an independnet EU think tank. It has some really controversial ideas such as: increasing dialogue between the EU and its citizens, curbing speculative attacks on currency, regulation of credit rating agencies. Things so maintstream that even you would agree with the vast majority of thier findings.
Here are thier comments about the proposals for an FTT:
“According to the Commission’s own arithmetic, the proposed FTT can raise anything between €25 billion to €45 billion per year. Whether it will achieve these aims is highly dependent on the plausibility of the Commission’s underlying
assumptions on avoidance and relocations. The probability of it being the best fiscal response
among the existing potential policy options is even more questionable.”
….
“the FTT fails to address the inherent
weaknesses in the global financial system and should not undermine the chances of other tax
options in the future.”
Essentially CEPS does not believe that an FTT will achieve its goals, and even they question the underlying assumptions in the European Commission’s own studies. Of course they do not look at the impact on tax revenue in the whole in the way that the IEA has, but Tim has used the Commission’s own numbers in coming to his conclusions. You cant criticise his analysis on the basis of the source of his data.
Of course maybe you just perfer to sneer and hate rather than think for yourself. Then again I suppose that makes life simple as you don’t have to accept responsibility for anything and can just blame “neo-liberals” or as George Orwell called them in a 1984 … “the evil Goldstein”.
@19 “The City makes money by skimming perecentages off the flows of international capital ” is similar to saying a shop makes percentages off the flow of beans from Heinz to the buttered toast. It’s ignoring the role the City has in providing a service to its customers. No-one’s obliged to use those services. They’re used because the benefits provided by them are greater than their cost. The vast majority of the charge for the service is absorbed by the cost of providing the service. Premises, staffing, infrastructure…..A lot of it’s paid to the exchequer in taxes. Payroll, corporation tax…… The bit that’s ‘skimmed ‘ is the profits after all that & if there weren’t profits no-one would bother providing the service.
Your FTT does the exact opposite. It imposes a cost without providing a benefit. As Tim as shown there’s not even the benefit of the tax raised because the knock-on effects of the tax are greater than the yield.
To go back to the shop analogy, if VAT was put on beans it’d make the prospect of eating beans on toast less achievable, not more .
Arnald’s from Guernsey ?
That explains everything. The only place in the British Isles where you can get a birthday card for Uncle Dad 😉
DBC….
I would also defend TW on grounds of tolerance.
His is the only anti-left blog that invariably gives leftie comments the courtesy of a hearing.If he disagrees he tends to engage and argue it out.
That’s an interesting point question: Is Tim anti left or just anti the bogus mongers like RM and Polly?
As he doesn’t have a dig in the same ways at Chris Dillow , although does argue with him, I suggest that Tim isn’t anti left in the way you mean it.
Tim adds: Strangely, I actually think of myself as being a leftie. You know, make the poor richer, a greener better world for all. I just try to concentrate on methods that actually achieve this…..
DBC, I’ve puzzled on this one, too.
The people who propose it seriously themselves say it will reduce economic activity and the total tax take. in other words, if the aim is to raise money, it won’t work.
plus most of the arguments seem to depend on the same level activity continuing taxed as it does now untaxed. doesn’t seem likely.
if the money is to depress activity, which is clearly some people’s aim, it’ll work unless all it does is shift the activity elsewhere.
I suspect some people just want to cut London down to size, and see a source of income, however inefficient, FOR continental europe, and FROM the UK. Looks like a winner to them. And if I were still a New Yorker, I’d be all for a European RHT.
My unanswered issues are around how tiny the margins are on the transactions that make up the volume that everyone sees and wants to tax. because they are tiny – you need very large sums indeed to make money moving deposits around overnight, or borrowing and lending stock. because it’s the tax v the income, not v the turnover that will have the impact.
my own final view is that we have no idea what the effect would be, so we shouldn’t do it. too uncertain.
“You cant criticise his analysis on the basis of the source of his data.”
Well, Murphy can, and has done.
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2011/11/22/worstalls-odd-little-note-on-financial-transaction-taxes/#comments
Tum te tum….
Actually Arnald,
That response from Mr. Murphy contains so many ridiculous statements … Some examples
“Third Worstall assume that marginal rates of tax in Europe are between 40% and 50%. That’s not true. Average overall rates in Europe are less than 40% ”
He can’t even distinguish between overall and marginal rates…
“since most tax systems are regressive at the higher end where the impact of this tax is likely to be rates should be lower than he forecasts”
Right, now the European tax-systems are regressive…
“He can’t both argue that corporations if charged to this tax will relocate transactions to avoid it and at the same time say that the incidence is never on corporations, as he does. Firstly, if the incidence is never on corporations they would take no action to avoid the tax.”
This is just plain stupid. Of course the owners and employees of the corporations + a large part of their customers would have an incentive to relocate transactions (as has been empirically shown in the past).
“First, companies are not just bundles of contracts that mean they act merely as agents for human beings. This is what Worstall implies and it’s a claim about as close to reality as is belief in the Efficient Market Hypothesis”
Does anyone even understand what Murphy tries to say here? Do companies act as agents for human beings or not? And if they do how would acting as such agents not make them relocate their transactions?
“the extraordinary and I think near fraudulent evidence some supposed economists put forward to argue that it is always labour that pays the price of any tax”
Who has said that? Tim has surely said that it is a combination of labour, capital and customers and that the distribution depends on the circumstances.
“Companies can, for example, very clearly choose in a great many cases when, where, in what form and to some degree in what amount they record transactions and so tax. ”
How can the fact that companies can arrange their affairs so as to influence their tax be an argument for them not being able to relocate their affairs?
“If there was less liquidity in these markets there would, very obviously, be much less volatility than we are witnessing at present”
Sic … what is “very obviously” to Mr. Murphy has of course been proven wrong over and over again
“The cost of capital may or may not increase as a result but the quality of return to investors will undoubtedly rise as a consequence, and that is what matters.”
How does one measure quality of return? That investments are made into those activities that Mr. Murphy likes?
“Reducing GDP for this reason would be as welcome as a fall in GDP resulting from the ending of pollution or the ending of divorce – both of which add to misery and GDP at the same time. ”
He now also wants to decide about people’s marriages
“This logic is similar to that of the supposed ‘squeezing out’ of the private sector by the state so beloved by the right wing, even if without apparent evidential support in that case ”
There is apparently no evidence that the state can squeeze out the private sector… (Kuba and North Corea never happened)
“Well, Murphy can, and has done.”
I don’t see a single criticism there of Tim’s sourcing his data from the CEPS. There’s a criticism of him not sourcing a figure from Reuters. Not, oddly, from the actual EU press release.
But the criticism is irrelevant – if a tax of 0.1% causes (according to the EU itself) 1.76% GDP losses (with concomitant reductions in other taxes), that there will also be a tax of 0.01% on a similar but different bunch of things (with losses not yet estimated) does not invalidate the original criticism.
Oh, and no worries, we’ll change the fundamental rules of the EU to make it legal.
“Oh, and no worries, we’ll change the fundamental rules of the EU to make it legal.”
Isn’t that what campaigning is all about, yer know, to change things?
Arnald @29,
I think everyone understands that – AIUI this particular point is about how Murphy casually handwaves away that objection (like so much else).
In my industry there is a measure that everyone agrees ought to be introduced – my industry, the Government, the Opposition, the public – with some urgency (to protect the children, no less). We just need a relatively simple statutory instrument, a Minister getting his finger out, placing the statutory instrument before Parliament and notifying the EU, a process that should take up to six months.
It has been 18 months and there is still no indication of any movement. And remember, this is something urgently needed to protect children.
“Arnald // Nov 22, 2011 at 12:16 pm
“You cant criticise his analysis on the basis of the source of his data.”
Well, Murphy can, and has done.”
A man who only allows positive comments on his blog – is possibly not the most open minded critic.
Murphy does not address the important thing.
That the FTT will make the economy grow slower and stop people getting jobs.
G.Orwell
Actually he addresses it and thinks it’s something positive because then people will get back to doing what they are “supposed to be doing” instead..
Arnald, if you live in Guernsey then you are not part of the EU. So you are essentially arguing for a treaty change in another jurisdiction. do you really think it appropriate for someone in a different country to argue for regime change in another? the US tried that in Iraq and look how that worked out. Palestine are attempting the same in Israel, China in Tibet and India and China in Kashmir.
Ultimately a treaty change in the EU is a matter for the citizens of the EU which you simply are not. Perhaps you should tend to your own backyard.
Tim, I’ve written a piece disagreeing with your comments about the effect on volatility of an FTT. I think your conclusion “it won’t reduce volatility, a desired aim, it will increase it” is not a fair reflection of the source your cite for it. More here: http://pb204.blogspot.com/2011/11/financial-transactions-tax-and.html
(I posted a similar comment last night, which has disappeared. I’m guessing that this is a glitch rather than your finger on the delete button.)
offshore observer
Do I really need to rise to such a bollocks confrontation?
Ermmmmm…..Worstall is installed in Portugal. He was a shite spreader for swivel eyed lunatics that can’t decide between fucking Farage and a flag made up of public school wank stains.
He demonstrates time and time again how he favours the privileged lazy above the working man. There is no argument that his proposals surrounding the complexity of life is in any way WHATSOEVER (tim, you cock, rilly, you cock) amassing to a better society.
Until you twats type any thing other than self interested onanism, you will be regarded as extremist wannabes.
You can’t even do extremism well.
Do you need lessons?
I hear the US right wing needs some input. I look forward to more bollocks in the meantime