Bill Gates Urges Obama to Embrace Global Tax
When Barack Obama was a senator, he proposed a Global Poverty Act to fulfill the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals. The cost in additional foreign aid: $845 billion. On Thursday, as part of the G20 summit, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, delivered a report on “financing for development” that proposes global taxes on America and other “rich” nations to make the Global Poverty Act a reality.
“I am honored to have been given this important opportunity,” said Gates, founder of Microsoft. “My report will address the financing needed to achieve maximum progress on the Millennium Development Goals, and to make faster progress on development over the next decade.”
The report, available on the website of the Gates Foundation, proposes a financial transaction tax (FTT) as well as taxes on tobacco, aviation and bunker fuel, and carbon (energy), by G20 countries and other members of the European Union. The G20 are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Republic of Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
On Wednesday, as part of the coordinated campaign to pass such a tax in the U.S., Democratic Senator Tom Harkin (Iowa) and Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio (Oregon) introduced legislation to put a tax on “certain trading activities undertaken by banking and financial firms.” What they didn’t say was that it would affect stocks and bonds bought and sold by the average American investor.
Kenneth Bentsen Jr., executive vice president for public policy and advocacy at the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, said, “A financial transaction tax is essentially a sales tax on investors. At a time when we face a slow economic recovery, such a tax will impede the efficiency of markets and impair depth and liquidity as well as raise costs to the issuers, pensions and investors who help drive economic growth. Major economies that have adopted such taxes have had overwhelmingly negative results, including reduced asset prices, trading moving to other venues, market dislocation and decreased liquidity. We encourage Congress and the Administration to continue to resist efforts to implement such a tax.”
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Read More at aim.org By Cliff Kincaid, aim.org
