WHO Wants to Tax Everyone on the Planet

Just about.

U.N.'s World Health Organization Eyeing Global Tax on Banking, Internet Activity (George Russell, 1/16/2010 Fox News)

"The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering a plan to ask governments to impose a global consumer tax on such things as Internet activity or everyday financial transactions like paying bills online.

"Such a scheme could raise "tens of billions of dollars" on behalf of the United Nation's public health arm from a broad base of consumers, which would then be used to transfer drug-making research, development and manufacturing capabilities, among other things, to the developing world.

"The multibillion-dollar "indirect consumer tax" is only one of a "suite of proposals" for financing the rapid transformation of the global medical industry that will go before WHO's 34-member supervisory Executive Board at its biannual meeting in Geneva.

"... WHO's so-called Expert Working Group has also suggested asking rich countries to set aside fixed portions of their gross domestic product to finance the shift in worldwide research and development, as well as asking cash-rich developing nations like China, India or Venezuela to pony up more of the money." (The article continues.)

UN/WHO wants rich countries (i.e. developed countries who are not so rich any more) to set aside fixed portions of GDP to give to the poor countries under the guise of "global medical research and development". But that's not all. UN/WHO wants to tax citizens of the world, just about all of them.

How? This is from the executive summary of the scheme by WHO Executive Board, dated December 23, 2009 (page 9):

• a 10% tax on the international arms trade market, which might net about $5 billion per annum

• a digital tax or 'bit' tax [Fox article misquotes it as 'hit' tax]: Internet traffic is huge and likely to increase rapidly; this tax could yield tens of billions of U.S. dollars from a broad base of users
  
  
• Brazil's financial transaction tax: a tax on bank account transaction, set at 0.38% levied on paying bills online and major withdrawals, it was raising an estimated US$20 billion per year and funding some 87% of the Government's key social protection programme, before it was voted down [Good for Brazilians to vote that down!]
  
  
• UNITAID airline tax: an international solidarity micro-levy is well accepted by the public and causes no economic distortion [Solidarity levy on airline tickets raises almost all US$300 million UNITAID revenue.]
  

'Bit' tax proposal is nothing new. Back in 1999 during Clinton Administration, UN/WHO proposed the 'bit' tax to levy 1 cent per every 100 emails sent. They are at it again, and this time they may get away with it, at least in the U.S. where the proposals to tax every trade on financial instruments (stocks, options, futures, derivatives, etc.) and to tax the liabilities of nation's top 50 financial institutions are being considered and may be gaining support among the naive Congress who seem to think striking such a populist image would win them the support from their constituents. Both proposals are absurd, and will end up punishing the purported victims to be saved (i.e. the general public).

So, for the sake of transferring further wealth from developed and rich developing countries to the poor countries, everyone in the world who has Internet access and/or email account can be taxed. If your email account is hacked and someone is sending a million spam mails from your account, good luck to you. If you withdraw a chunk of money from your bank, you will be taxed. If you pay your bill online from your bank account, you will be taxed. If you fly, you will be forced to show international solidarity by paying additional airport tax.

I do not like the fact that these are being proposed by a supra-national organization like UN and WHO. IMF, another supra-national organization, has already floated the idea of global financial transaction tax. INTERPOL, whose U.S. branch is located within the U.S. Justice Department, now has full diplomatic immunity within the U.S. soil, thanks to President Obama. Though rebuffed for now, the Obama administration is pushing the new tax on financial institutions to be adopted worldwide. There is some uneasy theme here, isn't there?

Will it ever stop? We the proverbial frogs in a pot are being boiled very quickly and the heat are getting too uncomfortable. Will we able to stop this insanity?

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