Walter Frederickson: A tax for the people, not on the people

August 1, 2012 by

Walter Frederickson, R.N.

Earlier this spring, I stood on the steamy streets of Chicago and witnessed a revival that my union brothers and sisters in the Windy City said was a long time coming. I’d been swept into town a day earlier along with hundreds of nurses, union members and others to help National Nurses United (of which MNA is a founding member) launch what quickly became a national movement – the call for a “Robin Hood Tax” on the “Too Big to Fail” banks and Wall Street speculators who created this financial nightmare.

NNU put on a visual spectacle that afternoon, one that included hundreds of nurses dressed in bright red scrub tops, green masks and the type of pointy hats everyone associates with Robin Hood. Dozens of nationally-recognized speakers and musicians took the stage to share their support, and my union friends in Chicago told me it had been far too long since the city had seen this type of peaceful, public protest filling its streets. While I like to think our colorful costumes and pointy hats had something to do with the energy and passion that was unleashed in and around Daley Plaza, the reality is this: People of all stripes are ready to embrace an idea whose time has come.

It’s a simple concept: Putting a small “Financial Trans-action Tax” of less than one-half of one percent on the types of speculative Wall Street financial transactions that created the global economic crisis we’re still trying to recover from.

A simple idea, sure, but one that carries the support of a powerful and diverse group of people, including Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Nobel Prize-winning economists and thought leaders, religious entities and faith leaders, politicians and many more – from nurses to firefighters to AIDS activists to environmentalists to small business owners.

In the U.S., the Robin Hood Tax has the power to raise hundreds of billions of dollars every year. It can provide funding for jobs and put our union brothers and sisters back to work. It can kick start the economy and get us back on our feet. It can provide education, health care and financial support for the least among us by funding social safety net programs. And that’s just for starters!

Best of all, the Robin Hood Tax won’t affect ordinary Americans. It won’t touch our personal savings or other everyday consumer activity such as ATM withdrawals or our use of debit cards. It’s easy to enforce and tough to evade.

This is a tax on Wall Street, which created the greatest economic crisis in our nation since the Great Depression. These are the same people who have returned to record profits and bonuses while ordinary Americans, the 99 percent, continue to pay the price of the 1 percent’s self-created financial meltdown. The Robin Hood Tax is not a tax on the people. Rather, it is a tax for the people.

Take a minute to learn more at www.RobinHoodTax.org. And if you want to don a pointy hat, wear a green mask and take to the streets to let people know about this growing movement, know this – I’m with you!

– Walter Frederickson, RN, is executive director of the Minnesota Nurses Association, a union of 20,000 nursing professionals.

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Nurses call for ‘Robin Hood Tax’ on Wall Street transactions

June 19, 2012 by

Registered nurses Elayne Best (left) and Carol Diemert join the call for a “Robin Hood Tax” outside J.P. Morgan’s Minneapolis offices.

Dressed as modern-day members of the band of Merry Men, union nurses fanned out across downtown Minneapolis today, doling out bottles of water and a prescription for healing what ails the American economy.

The nurses’ solution? A “Robin Hood Tax” on Wall Street transactions.

The plan would place a small sales tax – less than half of 1 percent – on trades of stocks, bonds, derivatives and currencies. Revenues would help reverse declining public support for schools, health care and infrastructure repair and development – and put an estimated 9 million Americans back to work.

Linda Hamilton, president of the 20,000-member Minnesota Nurses Association, called it a “tax for the people, not on the people.”

Hamilton’s union organized the Robin Hood-themed demonstration – many nurses wore pointed, green hats and masks – to coincide with similar actions in 15 other U.S. cities.

The MNA and its parent union, National Nurses United, began calling on lawmakers to “take from Wall Street and give to Main Street” last year. Since then they have been joined by dozens of other public-health, civic and advocacy organizations, as well as prominent economists and celebrities.

The Robin Hood Tax is aimed at high-volume trading, which today makes up a majority of all trades. Experts say the tax will help place limits on the reckless short-term speculation that threatens financial stability.

“Wall Street’s reckless speculation and risky deals caused our economy’s most devastating crash since the Great Depression, forcing millions of Americans to lose their jobs, their homes and their pensions,” said Jean Ross, a MNA member and co-president of NNU. “Three years later, Americans on Main Street still struggle to recover from a crisis we didn’t create. This is the way to start to turn it around.”

In Minneapolis, nurses rallied outside the offices of J.P. Morgan Chase, the financial giant that recently announced it had lost more than $2 billion by gambling on credit derivatives.

MNA staff representative Linda Lange and registered nurse Bob Michaelson hand out water and fliers downtown Minneapolis.

It is that type of risky behavior, MNA member Bob Michaelson said, that a “Robin Hood Tax” would help curtail. A former accountant, Michaelson switched careers 10 years ago. He entered the medical field and has worked as a registered nurse at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis for the last year.

When he saw his union’s plan for combating Wall Street greed, Michaelson, who calls himself a “recovering corporate tax accountant,” knew he had to get involved.

“The ‘Robin Hood Tax’ makes sense because of the volume of transactions that we have on Wall Street that do not generate income for the common good,” Michaelson said. “It’s the Wall Street banking firms that profit from all these trades.”

Nurses don’t need a background in economics to know the U.S. economy isn’t working for middle class families, Michaelson added. After all, Robin Hood didn’t have his MBA.

“Nurses are concerned about the daily lives of everybody,” Michaelson said. “People look to us for good judgment on things.”

MNA President Hamilton put it this way: “People are suffering, and nurses take care of people. Nurses are coming up with solutions.”

For more information on the “Robin Hood Tax,” go to www.robinhoodtax.org.

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