Monday, January 31, 2005

Chirac proposes taxing the entire world

Once again, French president Jacques Chirac demonstrates that he's never at a loss for incredibly bad ideas:

French President Jacques Chirac called for an "experimental" international tax to help fund the war against AIDS, suggesting it could be raised via a levy on airline tickets, some fuels or financial transactions.

Chirac acknowledged that his proposal would be widely debated, an allusion to US opposition to any international tax, and said there was "no question" of treading on each country's right to set its own levies. "But there is nothing to prevent states from cooperating and coming to an understanding on new resources and their allocation to a common cause," Chirac added. He said a tax on international financial transactions would be implemented sparingly and at a very low rate and would not be an obstacle to normal market operations. It could raise 10 billion dollars a year, he went on.

If there's one thing about new taxes that history has shown us, it's that they never go away. And besides, I seem to remember another worldwide tax that popped up a couple thousand years ago. Do we really want to go back to that?

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