Under intense pressure from environmental and socialist
NGOs, Belgium has put the controversial Tobin tax on foreign exchange
transactions on the discussion agenda for its current six-month presidency
of the European Union. Tobin tax supporters hope that Belgium might rally
EU support for the measure to be included in discussions on reforming the
"architecture" of the international financial system, something
the UN and international institutions have been discussing for several
years. The Tobin Tax would tax all international financial exchanges at a
small percentage, and the revenues would go to funding the UN.
A 0.5 percent tax could yield the UN upwards of $1
trillion dollars a year, about 100 times more than its current operating
budget. NGOs believe the Tobin tax could fund a massive rise in financial
support for the world's poor. Think again. Assuming the tax were
authorized in a new UN Charter, UN documents show most of the money would
go to building the UN bureaucracy. Very little would wind up in the
pockets of the poor, which is to be expected with global governance.
Regulating every human being on earth will be expensive!
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