Comments on: ‘As serious as a heart attack’: Robin Hood Tax Global Week of Action Kicks Off https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/as-serious-as-a-heart-attack-robin-hood-tax-global-week-of-action-kicks-off/ How active citizens and effective states can change the world Fri, 14 Jul 2017 12:33:16 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.15 By: Ian https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/as-serious-as-a-heart-attack-robin-hood-tax-global-week-of-action-kicks-off/#comment-3676 Fri, 18 May 2012 17:13:37 +0000 http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=10173#comment-3676 I think the phrase “the unproductive and destabilising casino behaviour of the financial markets” is a bit extreme. While on the one hand its true that people who participate in markets largely do so for personal gain rather than altruistic reasons, on the other hand markets perform critical economic functions. Without financial markets and currency exchanges (including speculation) there would be a heck of a lot less wealth to go around. How well markets are functioning and how they are regulated is of serious concern – but I think it isn’t correct to describe them as unproductive and destabilizing.

On the basis of the current discussions on the potential uses of the FTT I think if things continue as they are it will need to be rebranded as if it is to be mostly spent on helping reduce rich world public spending deficits it wouldn’t seem appropriate to keep calling it a “Robin Hood” tax.

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